Pyschology - Aversive Control essays

Pyschology - Aversive Control essays The way in which parents choose to deal with their children plays an important role in the personality they will develop, and the way they handle their own kids. Ive observed several tactics that my aunt uses with her kids and deduced several conclusions from my examination. Generally, problems are initiated over fighting between her two children. She almost always responds to their fighting with a shrill scream of disapproval. Thus, creating an uncomfortable, almost hostile environment in an attempt to stop the children from fighting. The kids immediately try to defend their side of the story as to why the fight began in order to 1) justify their negative behavior and 2) prevent my aunt from being mad at them. My aunt typically becomes so overwhelmed with the bombardment of account and shouting, that she herself screams even louder- threatening the children with the suggestion that they will be sent to their rooms if they dont stop. Consequently, the children have a tendency to cry and receive sympathy from my aunt. Now there are several concepts that can be taken out of this situation and analyzed- the first being the effects of aversive stimuli when dealing with reprimanding children. My aunts screaming to attempt to paralyze the fighting was an aversive stimuli that tells the children, if we dont want to hear her yell anymore, we should stop fighting. Next, she uses a threat of punishment as an aversive stimuli that tells the kids, we should stop arguing, if we want to avoid this punishment. The children respond by crying, an aversive stimuli that causes my aunt to retract her threat and attempt to comfort the children. The main problem with this type of behavior is that no progress is really made. It simply creates a pattern where the kids know how to escape a bad situation. Yes, for the moment it stops the fighting and arguing, but the kids never learn to properly deal w...