Covert conditioning is an interesting variant of operant conditioning where, instead of using an external stimulus to modify someone’s behaviors, you just have them imagine themselves doing things and then receiving rewards or punishments. For instance, an alcoholic could imagine drinking alcohol and then immediately feeling nauseated. Or a student could imagine deciding to do his homework and then suddenly winning a million dollars.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure whether covert conditioning works. The linked Wikipedia article doesn’t really give much evidence. If covert conditioning works, it seems like it could be very useful, especially in situations where ordinary reinforcement techniques are hard to use. For instance, one could easily reinforce sociability, which is hard to reinforce through ordinary methods because you don’t want to look weird in public. Or one could train oneself to avoid unhealthy food by imagining that it makes one nauseated, precluding the need for actual emetics.
(Not going anywhere in particular with this, just curious what people’s thoughts are.)
I attended a fire preparedness course, and the instructor told us that actual fire evacuation drills were not necessary. It was enough just to spend a couple of minutes vividly imagining what we would do in case of a fire. Our chances of surviving would greatly increase if we imagined the situation in advance. Unfortunately he gave no references to that claim.
Yesterday at the Lesswrong Berlin meetup I taught a technique for dealing with emotions. On of the things I learned from the experience is that it’s hard to get people in the LW crowd to strongly associate emotions through bringing up memories.
Or a student could imagine deciding to do his homework and then suddenly winning a million dollars.
That’s a bad idea. Most people are not motivated to engage in actions that make them win a million dollars. It’s outside of their comfort zone to just win a million dollar. It requires people to update their self identity in a non trivial way to win a million dollars. You want to imagine situations that feel good but that are easily accessible.
Using tricks with mental imaginary is a large part of what hypnosis is about.
Changing sociability in a lasting way isn’t easy because we have had strong conditioning about what to feel in the past.
Even through my German vocabulary is bigger and it’s my native language I’m frequently more let go in social interaction when they are in English because I learned to speak English socially with people in environments that have generally an upbeat vibe like Toastmasters while I spoke a lot of German in my life in situations like school where I behaved socially inwardly.
If I can get someone in a deep enough trance in hypnosis then I can attach an emotion to a well defined behavior. The emotion will come up the next time the behavior is triggered.
If it’s something like sociability and the person gets often negative feedback in social situations then the emotional trigger will burn out and soon lose it’s effect.
I personally consider implementing negative emotional responses to be dark, but if anyone who comes to the LW Europe Community Camp in Berlin wants a 1-on-1 hypnosis 30 minutes experience to associate a positive emotion to an experience just approach me. As far as I understand there going to be lots of unsheduled time at the weekend.
Covert conditioning is an interesting variant of operant conditioning where, instead of using an external stimulus to modify someone’s behaviors, you just have them imagine themselves doing things and then receiving rewards or punishments. For instance, an alcoholic could imagine drinking alcohol and then immediately feeling nauseated. Or a student could imagine deciding to do his homework and then suddenly winning a million dollars.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure whether covert conditioning works. The linked Wikipedia article doesn’t really give much evidence. If covert conditioning works, it seems like it could be very useful, especially in situations where ordinary reinforcement techniques are hard to use. For instance, one could easily reinforce sociability, which is hard to reinforce through ordinary methods because you don’t want to look weird in public. Or one could train oneself to avoid unhealthy food by imagining that it makes one nauseated, precluding the need for actual emetics.
(Not going anywhere in particular with this, just curious what people’s thoughts are.)
I attended a fire preparedness course, and the instructor told us that actual fire evacuation drills were not necessary. It was enough just to spend a couple of minutes vividly imagining what we would do in case of a fire. Our chances of surviving would greatly increase if we imagined the situation in advance. Unfortunately he gave no references to that claim.
Yesterday at the Lesswrong Berlin meetup I taught a technique for dealing with emotions. On of the things I learned from the experience is that it’s hard to get people in the LW crowd to strongly associate emotions through bringing up memories.
That’s a bad idea. Most people are not motivated to engage in actions that make them win a million dollars. It’s outside of their comfort zone to just win a million dollar. It requires people to update their self identity in a non trivial way to win a million dollars. You want to imagine situations that feel good but that are easily accessible.
Using tricks with mental imaginary is a large part of what hypnosis is about.
Changing sociability in a lasting way isn’t easy because we have had strong conditioning about what to feel in the past.
Even through my German vocabulary is bigger and it’s my native language I’m frequently more let go in social interaction when they are in English because I learned to speak English socially with people in environments that have generally an upbeat vibe like Toastmasters while I spoke a lot of German in my life in situations like school where I behaved socially inwardly.
If I can get someone in a deep enough trance in hypnosis then I can attach an emotion to a well defined behavior. The emotion will come up the next time the behavior is triggered.
If it’s something like sociability and the person gets often negative feedback in social situations then the emotional trigger will burn out and soon lose it’s effect.
I personally consider implementing negative emotional responses to be dark, but if anyone who comes to the LW Europe Community Camp in Berlin wants a 1-on-1 hypnosis 30 minutes experience to associate a positive emotion to an experience just approach me. As far as I understand there going to be lots of unsheduled time at the weekend.
How well does operant conditioning work where there’s a perceived causal link compared to when there is not?
I think a stable causal link helps to stabilize the conditioning against changes over time but it’s not required to get emotional responses.