More probable behaviors reinforce less probable behaviors.
Premack's 1959 formulation and experiments, elaborated through the 1960s and sometimes called Grandma's rule: eat your vegetables and then you may have dessert. The reinforcer is whatever the person would rather be doing.
In practice
- A child who will not do twenty minutes of reading does it in exchange for the tablet, and the tablet is not a bribe but the more attractive activity.
- A team that schedules the tedious reconciliation before the interesting design work gets both done; the reverse order gets one.
- Standing
- Strict applications of reinforcer relativity have a thinner applied-human evidence base than textbook treatments imply.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- A century and a half of measuring the mind