An event can function as an antecedent, a behavior, or a consequence. For example, Ted's sympathy with Joan functions as a positive consequence and also as an antecedent to Joan's cessation of her crying. And of course Ted's sympathy is a behavior evoked by the antecedent cue of Joan's crying, and is negatively reinforced by the cessation of Joan's crying.
This is the essence of what is commonly called the "vicious cycle": Ted's sympathetic attention maintains Joan's crying behavior and Joan's cessation of her crying maintains Ted's sympathetic behavior. Experientially, however, Joan and Ted probably both feel the other is "making" them behave the way they do, and probably neither is aware of how they stimulate and maintain the other's behavior. This dynamic is particularly evident in conflicts in which both parties point to the other as the cause or instigator of the problem. Most people are unaware of how their actions and reactions control others, but are very aware of how others' actions and reactions control them.
On the basis of this functional analysis, one could predict that Joan will cry more when criticized by the boss and Ted will sympathize more when Joan cries. A careful functional analysis is an essential step in modifying a behavior such as crying at work. The analysis reveals the factors that prompt and maintain each behavior in a cycle, and a manager could use this to determine the most appropriate point to intervene.
How Antecedent Cues Are Established
As stated earlier, antecedents are events or stimuli that signal that a certain behavior should be performed. Antecedent cues can be established in two ways. With respondent behaviors, the antecedent usually gains its power through classical conditioning or association. Recalling Pavlov’s dogs, when an unconditioned stimulus such as meat is paired repeatedly with a neutral one such as a bell, the neutral stimulus will eventually elicit the salivation by itself. In other words, the bell has become the cue that elicits the salivation. If this conditioned salivation is then reinforced repeatedly, the association between the bell and salivation will become permanent and it will never again be necessary to pair the bell with the meat.
As another example, consider Little Albert again. Little Albert learned to cry at the sight of a white rat because he associated it with a loud and frightening noise. And this learning generalized to white rabbits, white dogs, and a hairy Santa Claus mask. Now suppose Little Albert sees a rat or a Santa Claus (the antecedent cue or conditioned stimulus) and begins to cry (the learned or conditioned response). When his mother hears him crying she gives him a lollipop. That is a positive consequence, since the lollipop is a positive reinforcer. If this sequence were repeated several times, Albert would probably learn that the sight of a white rat or a Santa Claus is a cue to cry and thereby receive a lollipop. Thus, the power of the white rat (antecedent) to evoke crying (behavior) would have been established through classical conditioning and maintained with lollipops (consequence) through operant conditioning. It would never again be necessary to pair the loud noise with the rat, because the crying behavior would be maintained by the reinforcement delivered by the mother.
In contrast with operant behaviors, the antecedent cues are established by repeated association with a particular behavior consequence sequence. When a behavior is consistently reinforced or punished in the presence of a stimulus, the stimulus becomes an antecedent that cues the person to the likely consequences of that behavior in that situation. In other words, antecedents cue a person to the "if-then" (or contingent) relationship between a behavior and its probable consequence-that is, if I do this, then a particular event is likely to happen.
Antecedents can become so powerful that they evoke certain behavior. For example, because ashtrays are usually present when one smokes cigarettes, the sight of an ashtray alone can evoke smoking behavior. And each time the smoker enjoys smoking after seeing an ashtray, the association is established even more firmly. Expressed in terms of the ABCs, the ashtray is the antecedent cue, smoking is the behavior, and enjoyment is the reinforcing consequence. In short, behavior is influenced by what precedes it and by what follows it. The antecedents elicit or set the occasion for the behavior, and the consequences strengthen or weaken the behavior.
The establishment of antecedent cues is crucial in the development of stimulus control. This means that the likelihood of certain behaviors is increased in the presence of some antecedents and de creased in the presence of others. For example, consider Jefi?, the office gossip. Suppose that whenever Jeff tells John a juicy story, John responds with interest, whereas whenever Jeff gossips to Susan, she responds with irritation. John's interest reinforces the gossiping, and Susan's irritation punishes the gossiping. Very quickly Jeff's behavior will come under stimulus control: John's presence becomes an antecedent that cues gossiping, and Susan's presence becomes an antecedent that discourages gossiping.
Stimulus control is established through discriminative learning in which the individual learns that a particular behavior pattern (such as wearing sexy clothes) will be reinforced in the presence of certain environmental cues (such as friends at a party), but punished in the presence of others (such as the supervisor at the office). It is through stimulus control or discriminative learning that an employee can learn such things as where and when to look busy, who can be trusted with privileged information, how to identify a defective product, or who will provide an answer to a difficult problem.
It is also possible for a particular response to generalize to more than a single environmental setting or cue. Generalization occurs when the same behavior is reinforced or punished in the presence of a variety of environmental cues. It may also occur when a behavior is reinforced in the presence of a cue similar to but different from the original one. This is the way in which many children learn to respect people who wear uniforms. A child might be praised for acting respectfully toward a police officer, and because a police officer's uniform is very similar to a fireman's uniform, the child might then act respectfully toward a fireman. After many such experiences, the child learns to act respectfully toward anyone wearing a uniform. Over time, acting respectfully might generalize from people in uniform to anyone in a position of authority.
The phenomenon of generalization is important in any training program. It would be a waste of time to train people to deliver a sales pitch if they could do so only in the presence of the trainer. The trainer is hoping that what the trainees learn will generalize from the classroom to the work setting.
Chained Behavior
Thus far we have reviewed how a single behavioral event is learned, but most work performance is a series of numerous behavioral events. The principle of chained behavior explains how performance is prompted and maintained. Almost all work performance is a chain of behavioral events. Functionally analyzing the ABCs that make up a performance chain is important in three ways. First, it is a guide for the training director who wants to teach a particular performance. By breaking the performance into its chain of behavioral events, the trainer can arrange learning experiences to teach each behavior in the chain. Second, analyzing the chain can assist managers in identifying the locus of the problem when performance is inadequate or incomplete. That is, a manager can observe the discrete behaviors of an employee who is unable to carry out a performance successfully, so that the manager will know where to intervene by having identified which behavioral event needs to be learned or modified. Finally, by examining chains, managers can identify behavioral events that are irrelevant or counterproductive to desired performance.
Avoidance and Escape Behavior
The principles of aversive antecedent cues and negative reinforcement explain how many nonproductive work behaviors are established and maintained. All too frequently a person engages in various work behaviors not to gain a positive consequence but to avoid or escape a negative one. To explain how avoidance and escape behavior is established, consider the case of Joe. Suppose that Joe has been criticized several times by his boss for loafing. And suppose that Joe has learned that when he does work his boss does not criticize. This is a situation in which the presence of the boss (an aversive antecedent) stimulates work behavior (avoidance behavior), which is negatively reinforced by the absence of criticism (the withholding of something unpleasant). When the boss is not present, Joe is likely to loaf, because such behavior in the boss's absence does not bring the danger of criticism. In fact, loafing in the absence of the boss might be positively reinforced by the pleasure of socializing with others. Thus, Joe's loafing is now under stimulus control. When the boss is present, Joe avoids criticism by working but when the boss is absent; Joe loafs and enjoys the pleasure of socializing. The boss and the company have a serious problem: Working to avoid criticism or other negative consequences is inefficient. The only way the boss can increase Joe's efficiency is to monitor Joe's work continually, with the implicit threat of criticism if work is not performed.
Escape behavior is similar to avoidance behavior in that it is established and maintained through negative reinforcement. But whereas avoidance implies that the person engages in a behavior within the situation, escape behavior means that the person leaves the situation entirely: Absenteeism, for example, is frequently an escape behavior. Suppose that during the biweekly supervisory meeting, Ruth is frequently criticized. The day of the meeting could then become an antecedent cue that signals probable negative consequences. If Ruth is absent on the day of the meeting, she will escape the possibility of criticism, so Ruth's absenteeism is negatively reinforced. Consequently, the frequency of Ruth's absence on the day of the meeting is likely to increase.
Clearly, the threat of discipline and other punitive measures can have far-reaching negative consequences for the company and the manager as well as for the employees. Managers who use punitive methods are inadvertently teaching employees to be unproductive workers. Such employees become limited in their capacity to function appropriately in a work setting and in their ability to gain positive consequences (feelings of accomplishment, self-esteem, promotions, pay increases, and so forth). The use of punitive control methods is one cause of the disgruntled, uncommitted, and unproductive work force that is found so often today.
It is often difficult to perform a functional analysis of avoidance and escape behaviors. If the person is successful in avoiding or escaping the negative consequence, then that negative consequence will never occur. One can only guess what is likely to happen if the person does not engage in escape or avoidance behavior. In a functional analysis, identifying the antecedents becomes very important: It is often the only clue as to what is controlling the behavior.
