By my estimations, it was around the turn of the 20th Century when the scientific case for proving that Nice Guys Finish First began to take shape. At that time the fields of psychology and physiology were beginning to merge in an attempt to explain scientifically how and why people behave. This study of human behavior came to be known accordingly as "behaviorism." And while my second grade teacher, Sister Anthony, was no behavioral scientist, her classroom could have given Pavlov's and Skinner's lab experiments a run for their money.
Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner were two of the most well-known pioneers in the field of behaviorism. Pavlov was a Russian physiologist/psychologist/physician who in 1904 was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in "Classical Conditioning." Most of us have heard the expression, "Pavlov's dogs." His experimental model with dogs showed the relationship between behavioral stimuli and a physiological response by the animals. When the dogs heard a bell ring and were brought food, they salivated. Eventually the dogs would salivate simply at the sound of the bell. He called this phenomenon the "conditioned response."
Skinner's work focused on what he called "Reinforcement Theory." Through experiments with rats he showed that a desired outcome could be promoted through the use of either positive reinforcement (e.g., a reward of food for desired behavior) or negative reinforcement (e.g., electric shock applied until desired behavior occurs) when applied to the rats. Through repeated exposures to each, the rats' behavior became both predictable and modified. Apparently the choice between receiving electrocution and food was very clear, even to rats. Dale Carnegie referred to the significance of Skinner's work in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, saying the following:
"B.F. Skinner, the world famous psychologist, proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behavior will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behavior. Later studies have shown that the same applies to humans. By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment."
Skinner drew a distinction between negative reinforcement and punishment, declaring that negative reinforcement was designed to promote a desired outcome, while punishment was designed to avoid or decrease a certain outcome. While this principle became a scientific mainstay, I'm not sure my second grade teacher, Sister Anthony, recognized the subtleties in such a distinction.
Sister Anthony and Behaviorism
For the first three years of my elementary school education I followed in the footsteps of my parents and my two older brothers by attending our local catholic parochial school, Saints Phillip & James. Obviously my parents had recognized some value to a catholic-based education over that offered by the local public school district, where all of my best friends attended. I must admit, I failed to recognize that value myself at the time. From my perspective all I could see was that my friends from the neighborhood got to ride together on the same bus, wear whatever clothes they wanted and enjoy a relatively liberal learning environment. On the other hand my brothers and I had to wear school uniform. By my estimations, it was around the turn of the 20th Century when the scientific case for proving that Nice Guys Finish First began to take shape. At that time the fields of psychology and physiology were beginning to merge in an attempt to explain scientifically how and why people behave. This study of human behavior came to be known accordingly as "behaviorism." And while my second grade teacher, Sister Anthony, was no behavioral scientist, her classroom could have given Pavlov's and Skinner's lab experiments a run for their money.
Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner were two of the most well-known pioneers in the field of behaviorism. Pavlov was a Russian physiologist/psychologist/physician who in 1904 was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in "Classical Conditioning." Most of us have heard the expression, "Pavlov's dogs." His experimental model with dogs showed the relationship between behavioral stimuli and a physiological response by the animals. When the dogs heard a bell ring and were brought food, they salivated. Eventually the dogs would salivate simply at the sound of the bell. He called this phenomenon the "conditioned response."
Skinner's work focused on what he called "Reinforcement Theory." Through experiments with rats he showed that a desired outcome could be promoted through the use of either positive reinforcement (e.g., a reward of food for desired behavior) or negative reinforcement (e.g., electric shock applied until desired behavior occurs) when applied to the rats. Through repeated exposures to each, the rats' behavior became both predictable and modified. Apparently the choice between receiving electrocution and food was very clear, even to rats. Dale Carnegie referred to the significance of Skinner's work in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, saying the following:
"B.F. Skinner, the world famous psychologist, proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behavior will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behavior. Later studies have shown that the same applies to humans. By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment."
Skinner drew a distinction between negative reinforcement and punishment, declaring that negative reinforcement was designed to promote a desired outcome, while punishment was designed to avoid or decrease a certain outcome. While this principle became a scientific mainstay, I'm not sure my second grade teacher, Sister Anthony, recognized the subtleties in such a distinction.
Sister Anthony and Behaviorism
For the first three years of my elementary school education I followed in the footsteps of my parents and my two older brothers by attending our local catholic parochial school, Saints Phillip & James. Obviously my parents had recognized some value to a catholic-based education over that offered by the local public school district, where all of my best friends attended. I must admit, I failed to recognize that value myself at the time. From my perspective all I could see was that my friends from the neighborhood got to ride together on the same bus, wear whatever clothes they wanted and enjoy a relatively liberal learning environment. On the other hand my brothers and I had to wear school uniforms every day (which included a dress shirt, neck tie and black dress shoes), ride on a special bus with kids we didn't know from other towns, and endure an academic environment that was much more strict than what my friends were experiencing.
Sister Anthony seemed to embody the full stereotype of what anyone might imagine a strict catholic nun to be like. She was a large and intimidating woman who always wore a traditional habit and sported thick, winged-tip, horn rimmed glasses. She operated under her own rules of behaviorism, combining an interesting blend of Theory X assumptions with her own interpretation of negative reinforcement. She ruled all 51 of her second grade students with an iron fist - or actually - a wooden paddle, to be more accurate. That's because on Sister Anthony's birthday, one student - or more likely, that student's parents - thought it would be amusing to actually give Sister Anthony a large wooden paddle with her name engraved upon it. And since none of us believed that Sister Anthony owned a canoe, we all knew what this paddle's intended purpose was. At first the apparent mock gift seemed amusing to us students as well. But the humor faded completely when we showed up the next day to see that Sister Anthony had mounted the paddle on the wall in front of the room for all to see. To a bunch of eight-year-olds just its presence on that wall had the desired behavioral response of intimidation and deterrence from any shenanigans or tomfoolery. If Sister Anthony's physically ominous presence wasn't enough to scare us straight, the added effect of the wooden paddle dangling in front of our faces each day sure did the trick. Like a gallows in the village square, the paddle was the ultimate symbol of Sister Anthony's potential consequences. And we all understood it; all of us, that was, except for Barry Raspini.
Unfortunately for Barry, he just happened to be one of those kids whom child psychologists today would likely say had Oppositional Defiance Disorder. He couldn't seem to accept one single directive from Sister Anthony without a challenge of some sort. As a consequence, all of the rest of us spent the first two months of the school year fearing for Barry's life. Then one day it happened. The eraser dust had hit the fan and Sister Anthony had had it with Barry. I don't even remember what set it off, other than that Barry had chosen to defy one of her requests, place a scowl firmly on his face, and then angrily refuse to get up from his desk as ordered by Sister Anthony. This was once again not a smart move on Barry's part. After all, we were talking about a woman who: 1) chose a man's name for her sisterhood nomenclature, 2) had never smiled once in the 300 hours I had spent in her classroom to that point (except, of course, when she received the paddle on her birthday), and 3) was so strictly regimented that she used a lifeguard whistle to blow commands for her students to switch seats between the front half of the room and the back half of the room each day.
The whistle-blowing routine in particular seemed to be the daily highlight for Sister Anthony. The drill went something like this: First whistle, everyone promptly stands at attention. Second whistle, front-half-of-the-room students march around the classroom perimeter and stand in formation at the back of the room. Third whistle, all students march to their afternoon-assigned desks. Fourth whistle, all students promptly sit down. Pavlov would have been proud. And believe me, we had the synchronization of a skilled drill team since we had spent hours of class time practicing this ceremony to perfection under the watchful glare of Sister Anthony. It's no wonder I didn't know my times tables when I got to third grade.
Barry Raspini's "Unconditioned" Response
Anyway, there was Barry, white-knuckled hands gripped firmly to his desk, teeth clenched, and tears already streaming down his red face as he stared in defiant anger at the large nun. It had all the tension of a gunslinger's stand off. Sister Anthony made the first move. Before we knew it, Sister Anthony had arisen from behind her desk - a rare occurrence in and of itself - raced over to Barry's desk (the kind of desk where the chair was attached to the writing table) and tried to pull him out of his seat. But Barry - now practically foaming at the mouth - was hanging on to his desk for dear life and wouldn't budge. As Sister Anthony jerked Barry back and forth in an attempt to dislodge him, the desk jerked right along with him. In growing frustration Sister Anthony then picked up the entire desk with Barry still sitting in it. As if this marvel feat of strength was not impressive enough, she proceeded to turn the entire collection of boy and desk upside down, dropping poor Barry on his defiant cranium in a pile of books and papers, before scooping him up from the floor by his shirt collar. And it wasn't over yet. Sister Anthony, in a convincing state of rage, dragged Barry by that same shirt collar to the front of the room and stood directly in front of the paddle on the wall. She gave Barry a menacing look - even more menacing than usual - and one that seemed to say, "Finally, I get to use The Gift on the one who has earned it the most." She grabbed the paddle off the wall and stormed out of the room with Barry in tow, being literally dragged kicking and screaming all the way. As the door slammed shut behind them, the 50 remaining second graders sat in silence with our eyes wide open and mouths agape, and - in the absence of Sister Anthony's whistle commands - with no idea what to do. To be perfectly honest, to the best of my eight-year-old recollection I can't actually remember ever seeing Barry Raspini again.
A year and a half later, when my parents finally transferred me to the local public elementary school for my fourth grade, I single handedly validated the theories of Skinner and Pavlov each time I was called on by the teacher to answer a question, because I would instinctively stand up at attention by my desk to offer my response, as Sister Anthony had trained us to do. The other students laughed and snickered every time, while the nice fourth grade teacher kept politely reminding me that, "students did not have to stand to answer questions in this school." She was very sweet and patient. It took me three months to kick that habit and re-modify that behavior. That negative reinforcement sure was effective.
As I think back on that story I'm reminded that too many of our managers, supervisors, sports coaches and other leaders still take the easy way out by using centuries-old conditioned response approaches to affect behavior and achieve a desired outcome; they still rely too heavily on the negative and punitive response mechanisms from threats, intimidation and coercion. As the old models have long since proven, such forms of punishment certainly work and can be extremely effective in getting animals (and humans) to do something. But as Dale Carnegie said, "the best way to get someone to do something is to get them to want to do it." Surely we can do better than the modern day equivalent of electric shock, whistles and wooden paddles. Unfortunately, though, it'll be too late for Barry Raspini.s every day (which included a dress shirt, neck tie and black dress shoes), ride on a special bus with kids we didn't know from other towns, and endure an academic environment that was much more strict than what my friends were experiencing.
Sister Anthony seemed to embody the full stereotype of what anyone might imagine a strict catholic nun to be like. She was a large and intimidating woman who always wore a traditional habit and sported thick, winged-tip, horn rimmed glasses. She operated under her own rules of behaviorism, combining an interesting blend of Theory X assumptions with her own interpretation of negative reinforcement. She ruled all 51 of her second grade students with an iron fist - or actually - a wooden paddle, to be more accurate. That's because on Sister Anthony's birthday, one student - or more likely, that student's parents - thought it would be amusing to actually give Sister Anthony a large wooden paddle with her name engraved upon it. And since none of us believed that Sister Anthony owned a canoe, we all knew what this paddle's intended purpose was. At first the apparent mock gift seemed amusing to us students as well. But the humor faded completely when we showed up the next day to see that Sister Anthony had mounted the paddle on the wall in front of the room for all to see. To a bunch of eight-year-olds just its presence on that wall had the desired behavioral response of intimidation and deterrence from any shenanigans or tomfoolery. If Sister Anthony's physically ominous presence wasn't enough to scare us straight, the added effect of the wooden paddle dangling in front of our faces each day sure did the trick. Like a gallows in the village square, the paddle was the ultimate symbol of Sister Anthony's potential consequences. And we all understood it; all of us, that was, except for Barry Raspini.
Unfortunately for Barry, he just happened to be one of those kids whom child psychologists today would likely say had Oppositional Defiance Disorder. He couldn't seem to accept one single directive from Sister Anthony without a challenge of some sort. As a consequence, all of the rest of us spent the first two months of the school year fearing for Barry's life. Then one day it happened. The eraser dust had hit the fan and Sister Anthony had had it with Barry. I don't even remember what set it off, other than that Barry had chosen to defy one of her requests, place a scowl firmly on his face, and then angrily refuse to get up from his desk as ordered by Sister Anthony. This was once again not a smart move on Barry's part. After all, we were talking about a woman who: 1) chose a man's name for her sisterhood nomenclature, 2) had never smiled once in the 300 hours I had spent in her classroom to that point (except, of course, when she received the paddle on her birthday), and 3) was so strictly regimented that she used a lifeguard whistle to blow commands for her students to switch seats between the front half of the room and the back half of the room each day.
The whistle-blowing routine in particular seemed to be the daily highlight for Sister Anthony. The drill went something like this: First whistle, everyone promptly stands at attention. Second whistle, front-half-of-the-room students march around the classroom perimeter and stand in formation at the back of the room. Third whistle, all students march to their afternoon-assigned desks. Fourth whistle, all students promptly sit down. Pavlov would have been proud. And believe me, we had the synchronization of a skilled drill team since we had spent hours of class time practicing this ceremony to perfection under the watchful glare of Sister Anthony. It's no wonder I didn't know my times tables when I got to third grade.
Barry Raspini's "Unconditioned" Response
Anyway, there was Barry, white-knuckled hands gripped firmly to his desk, teeth clenched, and tears already streaming down his red face as he stared in defiant anger at the large nun. It had all the tension of a gunslinger's stand off. Sister Anthony made the first move. Before we knew it, Sister Anthony had arisen from behind her desk - a rare occurrence in and of itself - raced over to Barry's desk (the kind of desk where the chair was attached to the writing table) and tried to pull him out of his seat. But Barry - now practically foaming at the mouth - was hanging on to his desk for dear life and wouldn't budge. As Sister Anthony jerked Barry back and forth in an attempt to dislodge him, the desk jerked right along with him. In growing frustration Sister Anthony then picked up the entire desk with Barry still sitting in it. As if this marvel feat of strength was not impressive enough, she proceeded to turn the entire collection of boy and desk upside down, dropping poor Barry on his defiant cranium in a pile of books and papers, before scooping him up from the floor by his shirt collar. And it wasn't over yet. Sister Anthony, in a convincing state of rage, dragged Barry by that same shirt collar to the front of the room and stood directly in front of the paddle on the wall. She gave Barry a menacing look - even more menacing than usual - and one that seemed to say, "Finally, I get to use The Gift on the one who has earned it the most." She grabbed the paddle off the wall and stormed out of the room with Barry in tow, being literally dragged kicking and screaming all the way. As the door slammed shut behind them, the 50 remaining second graders sat in silence with our eyes wide open and mouths agape, and - in the absence of Sister Anthony's whistle commands - with no idea what to do. To be perfectly honest, to the best of my eight-year-old recollection I can't actually remember ever seeing Barry Raspini again.
A year and a half later, when my parents finally transferred me to the local public elementary school for my fourth grade, I single handedly validated the theories of Skinner and Pavlov each time I was called on by the teacher to answer a question, because I would instinctively stand up at attention by my desk to offer my response, as Sister Anthony had trained us to do. The other students laughed and snickered every time, while the nice fourth grade teacher kept politely reminding me that, "students did not have to stand to answer questions in this school." She was very sweet and patient. It took me three months to kick that habit and re-modify that behavior. That negative reinforcement sure was effective.
As I think back on that story I'm reminded that too many of our managers, supervisors, sports coaches and other leaders still take the easy way out by using centuries-old conditioned response approaches to affect behavior and achieve a desired outcome; they still rely too heavily on the negative and punitive response mechanisms from threats, intimidation and coercion. As the old models have long since proven, such forms of punishment certainly work and can be extremely effective in getting animals (and humans) to do something. But as Dale Carnegie said, "the best way to get someone to do something is to get them to want to do it." Surely we can do better than the modern day equivilant of electric shock, whistles and wooden paddles. Unfortunately, though, it'll be too late for Barry Raspini.
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