Confronting Your A nx iety 79
way. Dogs will do almost anything for a tasty treat and can
easily be trained to behave in complex ways (believe it or not,
dogs have been trained using operant conditioning to drive
cars!). Humans are also easily trained to behave in specific
ways. There are many examples of operant conditioning in
your everyday life: you go to work to get paid, you wear your
seatbelt to avoid a fine, you study for a test if you want to pass
it, you do good work at school or your job to avoid being criti-
cized, or you take a dollar from your child’s allowance if he or
she says a bad word or neglects a chore. Do you notice a
common theme among these examples? Essentially, operant
conditioning can be used to shape behavior, and even control
it, based on positive and negative actions. It also can help you
respond differently to your anxiety, especially when used
during the exposure practices later in this chapter.
Practice Think of some operant conditioning responses you
have to your daily environment. For example, have you ever
behaved in a certain way to obtain a reward or avoid punishment?
Try to think of examples from multiple contexts in your life, such as
at home, at work, at school, and during social interactions.
Shaping Your A nxiety Responses
Through ReinforcementThe tools used to shape behavior in operant condition-
ing are known as positive and negative reinforcement and posi-
tive and negative punishment. Reinforcement is used to
increase a desirable behavior, whereas punishment is used to
decrease an undesirable behavior. A good deal of your operant
behavior is based on external inf luences (such as other