I think this has the same problem than any kind of self-conditioning. I watched the video and the social community and gaming thing seem actually motivating, but I’m not sure about the punishment because you can always take the wristband off. Maybe there’s a commitment and social pressure not to take the wristband off, but ultimately you yourself are responsible for keeping the wristband on your wrist and this is basically self-conditioning. Yvain made a good post about it.
Suppose you have a big box of candy in the fridge. If you haven’t eaten it all already, that suggests your desire for candy isn’t even enough to reinforce the action of going to the fridge, getting a candy bar, and eating it, let alone the much more complicated task of doing homework. Yes, maybe there are good reasons why you don’t eat the candy – for example, you’re afraid of getting fat. But these issues don’t go away when you use the candy as a reward for homework completion. However little you want the candy bar you were barely even willing to take out of the fridge, that’s how much it’s motivating your homework.
If the zap had any kind of motivating effect, wouldn’t that effect firstly be directed towards taking the wristband off your wrist and not the much more distant and complex sequence of actions like going to the gym? I don’t think small zap on its owns could motivate me to do even anything simple, like leaving the computer. Also, I agree with Yvain that rewards and punishments seem only have real effect when they happen unpredictably.
A more low-tech solution, which is recommended by countless self-help books/webpages of dubious authority, is to snap a rubber band against your own wrist when you have done something bad. It seems this should work roughly as well as the Pavlov? In theory it should suffer the same “can’t condition yourself” problem. On the other hand, if lots of people recommend it, then maybe it works?
I suspect that if electric zapping or snapping a rubber band work (I don’t know if they do), they do so by raising your level of attention to the problematic behaviour. A claim of Perceptual Control Theory is that reorganisation—learning to control something better—follows attention. Yanking your attention onto the situation whenever you’re contemplating or committing sinful things may enable you to stop wanting to commit them.
I think this has the same problem than any kind of self-conditioning. I watched the video and the social community and gaming thing seem actually motivating, but I’m not sure about the punishment because you can always take the wristband off. Maybe there’s a commitment and social pressure not to take the wristband off, but ultimately you yourself are responsible for keeping the wristband on your wrist and this is basically self-conditioning. Yvain made a good post about it.
If the zap had any kind of motivating effect, wouldn’t that effect firstly be directed towards taking the wristband off your wrist and not the much more distant and complex sequence of actions like going to the gym? I don’t think small zap on its owns could motivate me to do even anything simple, like leaving the computer. Also, I agree with Yvain that rewards and punishments seem only have real effect when they happen unpredictably.
A more low-tech solution, which is recommended by countless self-help books/webpages of dubious authority, is to snap a rubber band against your own wrist when you have done something bad. It seems this should work roughly as well as the Pavlov? In theory it should suffer the same “can’t condition yourself” problem. On the other hand, if lots of people recommend it, then maybe it works?
I suspect that if electric zapping or snapping a rubber band work (I don’t know if they do), they do so by raising your level of attention to the problematic behaviour. A claim of Perceptual Control Theory is that reorganisation—learning to control something better—follows attention. Yanking your attention onto the situation whenever you’re contemplating or committing sinful things may enable you to stop wanting to commit them.
See also the use of the cilice.
I’ve mostly seen that technique described as a way to cope with self-harm.