In: Psychology
An article in the New York times states that there is a shocking new way to lose weight. A new wearable device called Pavlok claims it is successful in helping people lose weight. Here is how it works, whenever the wearer takes a bite of the foods they want to avoid, like chocolate or Cheez-Its, they use the Pavlok to give themselves a lightning-quick electric shock. “Every time I took a bite, I zapped myself,” one user said. “I did it five times on the first night, two times on the second night, and by the third day I didn’t have any cravings anymore.” As a psychology student you understand that the Pavlok is using the learning principles of classical conditioning to try to change behavior. Discuss the following: Identify the unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, neutral stimulus, conditioned stimulus, and conditioned response. Based on Pavlov's work what do you expect will happen when the user stops shocking themselves when they eat junk food? What is the term given to this in classical conditioning? Not everyone wants to shock themselves to try to lose weight. Using the principles of operant conditioning develop a behavior modification plan that will help this person change their eating behavior, without having to shock themselves. What would you suggest to get them to increase the amount of fruit and vegetables they eat? What would you suggest to help them decrease the amount of junk food they eat? Make sure you discuss postive and negative reinforcment. Make sure you discuss positive and negative punishment.
The act of shocking provides a form of negative reinforcement to the client, which inhibits them from indulging in foods, which make them gain the extra pound.
It is the classic pavlonian way of making a habit stick or become scarce by the act of introducing neither stimuli, in this case, the shock.
Although, if the patients stop shocking themselves and indulge in junk food, the condition would have said to become extinct. A term used for the weakening of the conditioned response by the aid of weakeking of the conditioned stimuli.
A better way of handling this would be sinners technique of operant conditioning, which leads in building a feedback form. This feedback loop is created through incentives that makes people hooked and adhere to certain behavior. They could be given brownie redeemable points for use or something of the sort to better apply the weight loss program.
Positive and negative punishment can be used for this.
For instamce in case of the former, deduction of points could take place to thwart the behavior of binge eating.
Or in latter, they could be told that the longer they took to reduce the pounds the more they have to weight to increase their desired points.