Question

Can Bullying Be Mitigated Through Behaviorist Approaches?

A classic example of bullying is a scenario in which a much larger, stronger bully physically intimidates and harasses a smaller, weaker victim to steal the victim’s lunch money. You might think that the obvious solution to the bullying in this example is to punish the bully to prevent the behavior from reoccurring. It would be nice if the solution were that simple, but it often is not. The bully may receive gains from the behavior (positive reinforcement; e.g., money to buy more food at lunch or respect from peers) that outweigh the punishment. Furthermore, if the bullying has occurred over a length of time with the same victim, the victim may also develop a conditioned response. For example, suppose that the school bell signaling that it is lunch time rings just before the bully approaches the victim for his lunch money. Initially the bell is a neutral stimulus that produces no specific response. Over time, the victim may associate the bell with the fear response of being bullied, such that the bell alone triggers a fear response in the potential victim. Now the bell is a conditioned stimulus because it elicits a conditioned response.

Classical and operant conditioning can be used to understand why bullying occurs, as illustrated in the previous example, and to design effective interventions to reduce bullying behavior. In this discussion, you will use classical or operant conditioning to propose a strategy to mitigate bullying.

To Prepare:

Pay particular attention to the meaning of the terms in each type of conditioning. Classical conditioning terms include: UCS (unconditioned stimulus), UCR (unconditioned response), NS (neutral stimulus), CS (conditioned stimulus), CR (conditioned response). Operant conditioning terms include positive reinforcers, and negative reinforcers, and punishers.

Select one conditioning approach and use it to propose a strategy to mitigate bullying.

Operationalize the characteristics of your strategy. For example, if you selected the classical approach, identify which aspects of your strategy represent the UCS, UCR, NS, CS, and CR. If you selected the operant approach, identify which aspects (or operants) of your strategy represent positive reinforcers, negative reinforcers, and/or punishers.

Describe the conditioning approach you selected. Explain how you used this approach to identify a strategy to mitigate bullying. Following your mitigation strategy, operationalize the characteristics of your strategy according to the conditioning method you chose, such as UCS, UCR, NS, CS, CR for classical conditioning; and positive reinforcers, negative reinforcers, punishers for operant conditioning.

Answer 1

Bullying in school follows a similar pattern where the student who is weaker, vulnerable, or younger is humiliated or harmed by the students who are much stronger, loud and bossy. Bullying is done repeatedly and deliberately to earn favor or frightened the other students. The child bullies because he knows he gets what he wants by using his strength when he succeeds in his first attempt it gives him more confidence and the act is repeated and becomes a durable behavioral style.

To mitigate bullying I would prefer to use operant conditioning of B. F Skinner that defines a. the behavior can be strengthened by using reinforcement and it can be weakened by punishment. He defined positive reinforcement where a reward or verbal appreciation is added to strengthen the behavior and negative reinforcement is applied by removing an unpleasant reinforcer.

The punishment can be positive or negative it weakens the behavior and decreases the likelihood of a behavior being repeated.

In the scenario where the child who is getting bullied has to realize his strength and use positive reinforcement by becoming his(B) friend or appreciating him(B) for being a good student because verbal appreciation acts like positive reinforcement. A cannot match in strength to (B) he can use other strategies like appreciation and admiring the bully(B).

Or the victim (A) can use negative reinforcement by stop giving him (B) the lunch money by not carrying it at all with him. The repeated act of refusal would weaken B's behavior and the unsuccessful attempts would take him away from the boy (A).

In the event of no co-operation by the bully (B), A can complain about it to the management and his teacher. The teacher has the authority to punish or reinforce the child by explaining or taking strict action against him.

The negative punishment is scolding, warning or explaining the child the consequences of the negative behavior. The positive punishment would be like removing a pleasant stimulus. During education, the grade and marks are the stimuli the teacher can deduct 5 marks from each subject as a punishment in order to decrease the negative behavior.

The reinforcement strengthens the behavior but the punishment suppressed and weakens the behavior, it can resurface once the punishment is no longer present, and it can increase aggression and feeling of revenge.

To mitigate bullying the reinforcement is more advisable if the victim takes the help of his teacher, the teacher can very well use positive reinforcement by announcing a reward of 5 marks for not bullying in the class or school. She can use negative reinforcement by deducing the 5 marks; the negative reinforcement is similar to punishment.

Once the behavior is strengthened it can become strong, the other way of strengthening the behavior would be group discussion in a class about the ill effect of bullyings like suicide or revenge and make them understand the ill effect of the bullying.