Personal Account: Lip Smacking and The Use of Motivating Stimulus to Reduce The Habit

I have a tendency to smack my lips whenever placed in an awkward scenario. This specific behavior is of interest to me because I think I learned it from a friend, as to whether I really did or not will be discussed later. There is nothing particularly bad about this behavior, except that it becomes irksome once noticed. It’s similar to when you realize you’re saying “uhm” or “like” and it starts to bother you because now you’re aware of it. It’s fine until I realize that I’m doing it, then it has to stop, but that’s easier said than done. Thus, a plan was put into action to extinguish this behavior, but in order to do this, the possible origins of this behavior (classical or operant conditioning) were first examined.

Analyzing the origins of the behavior lip-smacking is difficult to say the least because my learning history isn’t documented. However, plausible explanations for the basis of the behavior, lip-smacking, can be made. Perhaps, during arguments, there were awkward silences and smacking my lips led to a break in the silence, which led to the other party laughing because they thought it was strange. Thus, lip-smacking would be the second-order conditioned stimulus (CS2) and the CS1 is the break in awkward silence that is paired with the unconditioned stimulus of laughter. The conditioned response is the desire to smack my lips when placed in an awkward silence. Laughter, being an unconditioned stimulus, is paired with the unconditioned response of happiness. Because CS2 occurs at the same time as CS1, they are simultaneous conditioned. The US could either overlap with CS1 or occur after a time gap between each stimulus, they can be either delayed or trace conditioned. This theory implies that there was already a previous pairing of breaking the silence with the unconditioned stimulus, laughter.

Though higher-order classical conditioning could be a reason as to how I learned the behavior, the more likely origin of this behavior is due to social observational learning. The model due to negative reinforcement had learned to escape the aversive situation, awkward silence, by smacking her lips which successfully created a diversion from the silence. By observing the model’s behavior and consequences, my behavior was strengthened, thus the behavior was vicariously reinforced. The only person I know to do the behavior is my friend, and with this information, she could be used in a possible plan to extinguish this behavior.

After going over potential origins for the behavior, plans can be made based on these explanations. Extinction can be applied to weaken and eventually eliminate the conditioned response, desire to smack lips during awkward situation. Extinction occurs when presenting the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus. For this case, it would be when the subject does lip-smacking, CS, and laughter, US, would not occur. In terms of operant conditioning, the subject would technically be on a fixed ratio schedule, where it would take an infinite amount of lip-smacking to have the reinforcer, laughter. Another possible plan is to weaken this behavior through positive punishment. Whenever the behavior, lip-smacking, is observed, the subject would be reprimanded; this should lead to a decrease in the behavior. An additional plan could be utilized and that is to use social observational learning. The model would display the behavior, lip-smacking, and as a consequence be reprimanded, which should vicariously punish the subject. To make this plan more effective, my friend could be the model; this would be more effective because I already thought she was a good model since I had learned lip-smacking from observing her,

Of the three plans given, the second plan, using positive punishment to weaken the behavior, was implemented over a period of three weeks. I told my friends about this project and asked that every time they noticed the behavior to bluntly tell me to stop. The behavior was positively punished on an intermittent schedule because the behavior was not punished every single time. Because it was impossible to keep track of how many times the behavior occurred nor tell everyone I knew to reprimand the behavior whenever they noticed it, the punishment was on a variable ratio schedule.

Fortunately, I typically hung out with three people on the daily basis, all of whom I told and agreed to help in this project. Thus, the contingency that the punishment would follow the behavior was relatively high. In total, there were 15 trials (each person kept track of how many times they told me to stop) that took place within the span of the three-week experiment. The contiguity, or time gap between the behavior followed by the punishment, varied from each person, but was no more than 10 minutes. However, if the time gap was large the effectiveness of the punisher would have decreased. One particular issue with this plan was that the intensity of the punishment varied from each person. One friend was particularly good and when she first noticed the behavior would not only reprimand me but do so in a very angry manner. The other two would notice the behavior but when reprimanding me would only ask me to stop and when the behavior was continued would graduate to an angry mannerism. This is a common issue with punishments in that by starting with a mild punishment and gradually increasing the intensity of the punishment leads to a greater intensity of the punishment to suppress the behavior.

The outcome of the plan was not that the behavior, lip-smacking, was extinguished. However, my friends noted that lip-smacking did decrease comparably so from the beginning of the month to the end of the project. There were problems with the plan such as differences in intensity of punishment as well as inconsistent contiguity. It would have been better to apply all three plans together. However, due to time constraints and practicality, only one plan was employed. If all three plans had been employed then theoretically the behavior should have been weakened quicker because all forms of learning (classical, operant and observational) would have taken place.

In order to extinguish the behavior, lip-smacking, positive reinforcement was used on a variable ratio schedule over a span of roughly a month. The behavior was not extinguished, but had decreased dramatically from the beginning of the month, based on qualitative observation. By no means was the plan utilized to weaken this behavior perfect. There was no quantitative base control to compare the effectiveness of the plan, the intensity of the punishment varied, and the contiguity was inconsistent. However, the theory behind weakening the behavior was in the right direction. I chose to use positive punishment because I thought it would be the most effective way to weaken this behavior, because I’m quick to take complaints to try and fix myself. However, when put into practice it was harsher than I realized. Indeed, the reprimands were effective in getting me to stop my behavior during each trial, but it made me irritated at times to be told to stop. At some points, I grew frustrated with myself that the behavior still wasn’t extinct, but it showed me that behaviors were harder to extinguish than I had expected.