Reinforcement Schedules & College Friendships

 Hey everyone! I'm back :)).

Today I started thinking about how I could maintain some of my high school friendships while my friends and I transition to college. Somehow, I ended up also thinking about the concept of reinforcement schedules from my psychology class, and that's when I realized that friendships and psychology are actually interconnected. Interested? Read on!

--The Psychology of Reinforcement Schedules--

At the very basic level, if we want to change an animal's behavior, we can reward them for performing the desired behavior until the start drawing associations between performing the behavior and being rewarded. This training model is called operant conditioning. In a simple case, let's assume we want to train a pigeon to peck a button and that we reward them with some birdseed if they do so successfully. 

The reinforcement schedule refers to how often we choose to administer this award. There are 4 main reinforcement schedules, namely:

• Continuous reinforcement: this actually isn't even a reinforcement schedule because this just means that you reward the pigeon ever single time it clicks the button (eg. feeding it seed whenever it clicks the button)
• Fixed ratio reinforcement: rewarding the pigeon after it clicks the button a certain number of times (ex. feeding the pigeon seed every time it clicks the button 10 times)
• Fixed interval reinforcement: rewarding the pigeon after it performs a behavior for a certain time interval (ex. feeding the pigeon seed every time it clicks the button for 2 minutes)
• Variable ratio reinforcement: rewarding the pigeon after it clicks the button for a random number of times (ex. feeding seed to the the pigeon after it clicks the button 10 times, then feeding it after it clicks the button 5 times, then feeding it after it clicks the button 8 times, etc.)
• Variable interval reinforcement: rewarding the pigeon after it clicks the button for a random period of time (ex. feeding the pigeon seed after it clicks the button for 2 minutes, then feeding it after it clicks the button for 1 minute, then feeding it for clicking the button after 4 minutes, etc.).

Either of these reinforcement schedules should teach the pigeon to click the button. Continuous reinforcement schedules are pretty hard to achieve, and quite honestly, pretty unhealthy for the poor pigeon who will gain a lot of weight. 

Fixed reinforcement schedules generally lead to more consistency than variable reinforcement schedules. The pigeon would consistently click the button since they're regularly being rewarded under a fixed schedule. 

Now, let's say you don't want to reward the pigeon anymore. The pigeon will still click the button, anticipating some seed. However, they'll gradually start clicking the button less once they realize that they're not getting anything out of it. The interesting thing to observe is how the pigeon's behavior is extinguished over time based on the reinforcement schedule that you used to train them.

Take a look at the "extinction" graph (credit)

Basically, the above graph is showing that responses trained from a variably-reinforced response won't be extinguished that easily compared to responses evoked from fixed reinforcement schedules. This makes sense intuitively; variable reinforcement schedules keep pigeons on their toes, clicking just in case for the next random treat. And, as you can probably guess even though it's not on the graph, responses from continuous reinforcement are extinguished very quickly. As soon as the pigeon notices it's not getting treats, it gives up clicking.

--The Connection to Friendships--

When you go off to college, you'll be seeing your friends a lot less often. The behavior you want to encourage in each other is scheduling video calls, and you want to make sure that the desire to do so does not get extinguished over time. When you administer a reward to each other (i.e. when you agree to meet up with each other), everyone's desire to achieve that reward again (i.e. everyone's desire to schedule another meeting) should remain high. The question is this: before you leave, how can you reinforce this behavior within each other so that your desires will be the least prone to extinction once you all head off to college?

If you guessed using variable reinforcement schedules, bingo! That's right. Let's say you used a continuous reinforcement schedule instead. When they ask you to meet up (behavior), you pretty much agree right away (reinforcement). Now let's say you've graduated, headed to college, and aren't that free to schedule video calls anymore. Now, when your friend asks you to meet up, you realize you're going to have to say no more often. Because you had used a continuous schedule to reinforce them sending meeting invites, when you start rejecting them, they'll stop asking a lot more quickly. Their desire to schedule meetings with you will quickly die out. Now, using a fixed reinforcement schedule isn't really feasible in the real world (who goes around accepting every third meeting invite?!). However, using a variable schedule is possible: accept meeting invites infrequently and randomly throughout high school so that when you need to say no in college, your friends' desires to ask you to meet again will not be extinguished that quickly.

Now, I think the above ideas are a little narcissistic and manipulative (who are you to accept invites randomly when your friends are nice enough to ask you to meet up? And I would be pretty sad if my friends started rejecting my invites). I suggest, instead, adopting the idea of fixed or variable rewarding. Meeting every week at a fixed time in high school when you know you won't be able to meet up like that in college is likely to quickly extinguish the desire for everyone to meet up later. You won't be able to keep up with the heavy meeting schedule, will stop asking each other to meet up, and will gradually fade apart. However, if you meet up randomly and spontaneously for video calls throughout high school, your desire to meet is less likely to die out once you head to college. You don't need to reject meeting invites if you get them, but you can try to meet up randomly and spontaneously.

--Conclusion--

Thanks for reading! This post probably has some technical inaccuracies and is oversimplifying the process of operant conditioning, but I hope it was generally informative and interesting :). Let me know what you think below, and see you next time (after a variable interval of time ;)).

P.S. If you enjoyed reading about operant conditioning and are interested in seeing classical conditioning (another similar psychology topic) in action, I highly recommend the below comedy clip from Big Bang Theory.