The Book of Jugs: Behavioural Conditioning For Fun and Prophet

Content warning: discussion of techniques (towards the end) which could be classified as deliberate self-harm

What do drugs, World of Warcraft, speeding tickets, Facebook, and Aleister Crowley have in common?

No, whilst "things the Daily Mail disapproves of" is technically correct, it's not the one I was looking for...

Here's a clue:

 

Operant conditioning (hereby referred to as OC) is a particularly interesting bit of psychology, which emerged from the works of noted pigeon-weaponiser, saxophonist, and Chomsky-baiter B.F. Skinner. It can be distinguished from classical (Pavlovian) conditioning in two ways: firstly, because it describes the ways in which a single pattern of behavior can be altered in isolation, whilst the later describes the way in which a stimulus, not a behaviour, is associated with a consequence; and secondly, because it's more about pigeons than dogs.

OC makes a number of assumptions about animal (and, indeed, human) behaviour which may or may not be accurate: the main one is around the ultimately mechanistic origin of many behaviours. However, ignoring some of the somewhat spurious logical-positivist offshoots of Skinner's works, and the consequent endless arguments over free will, it becomes relatively clear that - at least in a subset of cases - OC can work. Adopting a certain amount of theory-agnosticism, I will focus on the effects and uses of OC, rather than whether the underlying assumptions are strictly true.

The mechanisms by which behaviour is changed can be broken into three main categories: Reinforcement, Punishment, and Extinction. The first two are then broken down again into Positive and Negative subcategories. Reinforcement is considered to increase the likelihood of a behaviour; punishment to decrease it. Positive interventions involve adding something - pleasant or unpleasant - whereas negative interventions are considered to be removing something. Extinction, on the other hand, refers to the process which occurs when a behaviour which previously was reinforced or punished no longer becomes associated with any such outcome, or where the outcome becomes sufficiently disconnected from the behaviour.

For example:

• Positive Reinforcement: I go to the gym. I reward myself with coffee. I go to the gym more.
• Negative Reinforcement: I pay off my debts to the mob. I don't get my kneecaps broken. I pay off my debts quicker.
• Positive Punishment: I drink too much. I get a hang over. I drink less.
• Negative Punishment: I have a cigarette. I put a pound in the Quitting Jar, the contents of which will be donated to Westboro Baptist Church. I smoke less.
• Extinction: I go to work, hoping to be paid. I don't get paid. Eventually, I stop going to work.

There is a certain amount of cross-over between reinforcement and punishment, depending on how any given example is worded; for example, I could consider having my knees broken a positive punishment for not paying off my gambling debts, rather than it being a negative reinforcer. The difference is somewhat academic - it boils down to three simple premises, that:

Pleasant outcomes encourage a behaviour

Unpleasant outcomes discourage a behaviour

Unexpectedly pleasant or unpleasant outcomes reduce the degree of encouragement or discouragement.

Numerous factors influence the effectiveness of reinforcements. Humans are pretty terrible at making long-term cost-benefit analyses, so more immediate consequences are generally far more effective than delayed ones, for example; likewise, more extreme consequences generally are more effective than less extreme ones.

There are two interesting observations which spiral off Skinner's research, and which are somewhat intertwined. First, consider the problem of contingency: when a consequence occurs consistently following a behaviour, the behaviour is quickly modified, but should the consequence later become inconsistent, only occurring following a proportion of instances of the behaviour, it will soon become extinguished. Conversely, if a behaviour only triggers a given consequence on occasion, it takes longer for the behaviour to become learned, but likewise takes longer for that behaviour to be extinguished should the stimulus stop.

One good example of this process in action can be found in road speed cameras. It is well known that many static speed cameras across the UK are "empty" boxes, with some areas only having 10% of their cameras actually active at any one time. Whilst there are numerous economic and logistic reasons behind this, it could also be argued to be a subtle method of maintaining the non-speeding behaviour of motorists. Were every camera to be normally active 100% of the time, extinction would kick in relatively quickly upon encountering a camera that had malfunctioned or been taken down for servicing. However, if only a certain, random number of cameras were ever active at a given time, it would take far longer for the extinction of non-speeding - as one would never know if a camera would activate the next time one sped through it, and would thus have to keep on one's toes, so to speak.

The second related phenomena is what emerges when a subject is rewarded and punished with zero contingency; that is to say, on an entirely random basis. Skinner demonstrated that pigeons that were randomly given food pellets quickly developed complex behavioral patterns (pecking, spinning, neck turning, and other such pigeoning things), presumably in an attempt to replicate the conditions in which the food was released.

Admittedly, research subsequent to Skinner does cast some doubt on the validity of this observation - but we may consider it, true or not, to be an interesting and potentially useful explanation for a wide variety of behaviours. The ever-fascinating Derren Brown explored this effect with humans on Trick or Treat in 2008, and showed similar effects, albeit in a much less controlled fashion. One could consider this effect to be closely linked to such things as magical thinking and apophenia.

Turning to matters more esoteric, I now want to look at one of the lesser known and more interesting texts by pioneering mountaineer and scatological poet Aleister Crowley. Specifically, Liber III vel Jugorum (CN - discussion and photographs related to self-harm, albeit not in the context of psychological distress, and allusions to animal cruelty. Contains Crowley.). 

Stripping out the usual incomprehensibilities and allusions to Higher Secrets (which, inevitably for Crowley, are all about sex), this text describes methods of gaining a degree of control and discipline over speech, action, and thought, using techniques that would be best described as positive punishment. A particular pattern of speech, action, or thought, is to be designated as taboo for a week or more, and all breaches of this taboo are to be punished by the aspirant. Crowley suggests using a razor to make a cut upon one's arm or wrist every time such a taboo is broken, and that one should record the number of breaches by the number of cuts.

These taboos are - intentionally - entirely arbitrary. Some examples, taken directly from Liber III, are given here:

• Avoid using some common word, such as "and" or "the" or "but"; use a paraphrase.
• Avoid using some letter of the alphabet, such as "t", or "s". or "m"; use a paraphrase.
• Avoid using the pronouns and adjectives of the first person; use a paraphrase.
• Avoiding lifting the left arm above the waist.
• Avoid crossing the legs.
• Avoid thinking of a definite subject and all things connected with it, and let that subject be one which commonly occupies much of thy thought, being frequently stimulated by sense-perceptions or the conversation of others.
• By some device, such as the changing of thy ring from one finger to another, create in thyself two personalities, the thoughts of one being within entirely different limits from that of the other, the common ground being the necessities of life

The aim here is not to change one's behaviour permanently; rather, it is to develop a certain awareness of one's thoughts, speech, and actions, and the discipline both to suppress such behaviours, and to punish oneself when one breaches the taboos. For Crowley, such a degree of awareness and control was considered central to all forms of magick; along with yoga, the practices here were a major pillar of his magickal system, the order known as the A.'.A.'. (commonly, though incorrectly, said to stand for "Argentium Astrum" or "Arcanum Arcanorum").

The methodology is interesting, though personally I wouldn't use a razor for the self-punishment aspect. A common suggestion is to use a thick rubber band around the wrist, which can be snapped back sharply; some Thelemites of my acquaintance swear by the electric-shock device known as the Pavlok. The exact method doesn't really matter - the stimulus is the important part.

I've experimented a couple of times with this system, using the rubber-band technique, and from my own observations, it is quite an eye-opener. One tends to initially miss a lot of taboo-breaches; over time, these become more noticeable, but equally one becomes more adept at avoiding the taboo and working around it. Eventually, it almost becomes natural; in a way, it follows the competence curve from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence, though this fades a few days after completing the exercise due to the extinguishing effect described above.

What I'm trying to say, is that magick and psychology have an awful lot of crossover.

The first is pretty much an applied form of the second, anyway...