Punishment maths

[Tasmanian Saint]

I read a really interesting thing about the psychology of punishment in a book about maths recently. It was in a chapter in Alex's Adventures in Numberland by Alex Bellos about the statistical phenomenon called 'regression to the mean.' This is about bell curves. There is the mean, where the bell curve is high, and there are the extreme ends of the bell curve, where it's low - meaning whatever you're measuring doesn't happen much under those circumstances. 'Regression to the mean' means after an extreme event, the you will mos likely get an event closer to the mean - otherwise it wouldn't *be* the mean, right?

So. In AAiN, there's this little anecdote.

A psychologist who was also a statistician was giving a talk to Air Force flight trainers. He was telling them that praise is more effective than criticism. A trainer gets up and says he's wrong. How many times has he praised a student for an especially good flight only to get a more mediocre flight the next time. How many times he has yelled at a student for a poor performance to get better results next time.
But those are examples of 'extreme cases' - either extremely good or extremely bad - where the expected next thing would be closer to the mean - a bit less good or a bit less bad - *regardless of what the trainer said or did*.

The psychologist's comment was, "Regression to the mean punishes rewards and rewards punishment"

[CelticJourney]

If we JUST look at the example, then what is really happening imo is emphasis on the good performance as 'extraordinary' rather than attempting to normalize the good performance as the standard.

Some of this is going to be dependent on how the praise was given and to what extent compared to the performance. And how the 'chastisement' is given and to what extent.

So lets pull this into our world and say I want my child to keep his room cleaned up. The mean = bed made, laundry in the basket, trash in the trashcan. If I go into his room and none of that is done and the 'chastisement' includes suggestions on how to improve his performance then a better performance later might simply reflect new skills (comparison, if the leader is shouting at the pilot but includes things like 'why didn't you use x, y or z tactic' then it is reinforcing skill for the future). On the other hand, if I go in and the bed is made, the laundry and trash taken care of several other things are done and I equate those thing to be 'superior' and praise the child in such as way that he thinks he has done something 'super special' (once in blue moon flight) as opposed to 'you have matured into a more aware person' (or better pilot) then I am reinforcing that the action is an out layer (why does that look so wrong?) and not a progression to a new norm.

So I think there is a variable to how the praise and or 'punishment' is given. If I say 'wow, this room is amazing. I never expected you to be able to do this!', I am giving the message that the performance was beyond my assessment of his ability. If I say 'Your room looks great. You did the basics and went beyond them. I'm really glad to see you are starting to take on a little more responsibility for your belongings. That shows you are maturing!' (ok, that's a bit over the top, but you get the idea). This praise shows more of a 'it's not a one time thing, but a reflection of your advancing abilities' that I think DOES move the mean.

If the punishment is simply screaming about mistakes and no education/reinforcement of skills and abilities, then there is still the factor of a pilot being a 1) professional and 2) an adult and 3) doing a very dangerous task. So I don't think that translates to children. But I do think if the sub-mean performance is met with skill reinforcement and a reminder that poor performance equates to grounding, then I think the mean can be moved. For children, such punishment, as always, is about fear...fear of pain, fear of disappointing parents, fear of being a failure. Fear does motivate better performance in the moment but it does nothing for the child overall in their understanding of the task, their skill sets and their perception of themselves as capable.

I also wonder if in the example above whether actual human ability comes into play. You can't perform better than your mind can compute data. Does that establish the mean vs human determination. Just like a two year old might be able to visualize a made bed, but physically can't manage the height and width of the task.

[Tasmanian Saint]

You make good points but... I'm not sure what you're getting at, CJ ... The point I'm making isn't about the child/pilot or the possibility of moving the mean . The point is about the parent/trainer's perception of the short term effectiveness of their actions/words. The fact is, if a child or pilot is having an especially poor day *for whatever reason* (maybe they're coming down with something, maybe they're distracted, maybe they're in a bad mood, maybe they're unlucky) - they will almost certainly perform better next time - closer to their mean - whether you praise, punish, or say nothing at all. And vice versa for exceptionally good performance. But from the perspective of the trainer, it looks like our words have had some effect. And of course that might make some difference as well, but the result can mostly be explained by regression (which goes in both directions) toward the mean.

(I thought when I posted it that I hadn't explained that well. Which was a silly thing to do when that was the point of the post - I hope that makes more sense. If it doesn't, I will cine back and give some unrelated examples of regression toward the mean, or find a good article on the subject to link).

Sent from my GT-S5310B using Tapatalk

[CelticJourney]

Ok...totally didn't get the 'perspective of the practitioner' aspect. So what 'regression to the mean' is saying is that punishment and praise are ineffective...the next action is likely to be the standard 'norm' no matter what you do.

Problem is, from my perspective, is that punishment and praise are not the only variables and I'm not sure they can be isolated...especially when it come to parenting.

So is the take away 'tomorrow will be better' and/or 'enjoy it while it lasts'?

[Tasmanian Saint]

No, it's not saying they're ineffective . In fact, it's saying exactly what you are. There are many variables that will influence any particular moment/action. We certainly can, as parents, be one of those variables and our parenting will have many effects in the long-term. But in the short term - yeah, 'this too shall pass'

Perhaps I should have put this in UPP - the point was what I bolded in my OP. Short-term effects that can be explained by 'regression to the mean' make it easy to *believe* that our punishment has had an effect that it hasn't, which erroneously rewards us, as parents, for punishing. We need to be aware that real effects happen over the longterm, and punishment has been shown to be not the best motivator in the longterm .