The push to end sexual violence has sparked a revenge campaign setting fire to women’s rights and pushing young men to the right. But organizers can learn from the movement’s losses
In designing systems for behavioral change you need to plan for the phenomenon of extinction burst - as a behavior becomes irrelevant the learner is likely to more fiercely engage in said behavior before adopting a more functional and socially appropriate behavior. Eg if I have a child who punches their parent for attention and I teach the parent to ignore this behavior while also teaching the child to appropriately request attention and reinforce this new behavior I can expect that the child’s violence will worsen a bit as we make it irrelevant. If the parent truly does a good job of removing the function and ignoring the behavior this is highly likely
This is not perfectly transferable to sociology and group populations but I think there is merit to thinking this way, though I’m not familiar with research on the topic. Metoo was necessary, DEI and affirmative action was necessary, electing a black president was necessary, etc. but the shitheads who resist this social change are possibly going to follow this same phenomenon and rather than adapt they will push even harder to be sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc
Hopefully my framework is applicable. If it is the good news is that it’s called an extinction “burst” because if you power through the behavior reduces quite dramatically. You have to hold your ground though. If you don’t you run the risk of making things even worse: essentially teaching the learner to escalate their behavior to access desired function
Edit: to be clear this isn’t my framework but merely one I am presenting. I don’t want people to think I have the hubris of having come up with these concepts, which would be crazy.
In designing systems for behavioral change you need to plan for the phenomenon of extinction burst - as a behavior becomes irrelevant the learner is likely to more fiercely engage in said behavior before adopting a more functional and socially appropriate behavior. Eg if I have a child who punches their parent for attention and I teach the parent to ignore this behavior while also teaching the child to appropriately request attention and reinforce this new behavior I can expect that the child’s violence will worsen a bit as we make it irrelevant. If the parent truly does a good job of removing the function and ignoring the behavior this is highly likely
This is not perfectly transferable to sociology and group populations but I think there is merit to thinking this way, though I’m not familiar with research on the topic. Metoo was necessary, DEI and affirmative action was necessary, electing a black president was necessary, etc. but the shitheads who resist this social change are possibly going to follow this same phenomenon and rather than adapt they will push even harder to be sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc
Hopefully my framework is applicable. If it is the good news is that it’s called an extinction “burst” because if you power through the behavior reduces quite dramatically. You have to hold your ground though. If you don’t you run the risk of making things even worse: essentially teaching the learner to escalate their behavior to access desired function
Edit: to be clear this isn’t my framework but merely one I am presenting. I don’t want people to think I have the hubris of having come up with these concepts, which would be crazy.