A
re zero-tolerance policies justified?
Should children who commit minor in-
fractions be punished as severely as those
who commit serious ones? If not, how
should school administrators treat children
who are truly disruptive or violent? Should
schools expel them or are there alterna-
tives? In the home, how should parents
correct their children’s misbehavior? Is “a
good spanking” the best recourse for par-
ents, or should there be zero tolerance
for parents who use any kind of corporal
punishment?
The debate over how to discipline chil-
dren is an old one, and it is part of a
larger issue: How can we change unwanted,
self-defeating, or dangerous behavior? Many
people want to fix their own bad habits, of
course, and they are forever trying to im-
prove or fix other people’s behavior as well.
We imprison criminals, spank children, and
shout at spouses. On the positive side, we
give children gold stars for good work, give
parents bumper stickers that praise their
children’s successes, hand out bonuses to
employees, and award trophies for top per-
formance. Do any of these efforts get the
results we hope for? Well, yes and no. Once
you understand the laws of learning, you will
realize that behavior, whether it’s your own
or other people’s, can change for the better.
And you will also understand why often it
does not.
Research on learning has been heav-
ily influenced by behaviorism, the school of
psychology that accounts for behavior in
terms of observable acts and events. Unlike
the cognitive approach, a behavioral per-
spective emphasizes the influence of prior
experience on current behavior, rather than
thoughts or other aspects of the “mind.”
Behaviorists focus on conditioning, which
involves relationships between environmen-
tal stimuli and behavior. They have shown
that two types of conditioning, classical
conditioning and operant conditioning, can
explain a great deal of behavior both in ani-
mals and in people. But other approaches,
Social-Cognitive Learning Theories
hold that omitting mental processes from
explanations of human learning is like omit-
ting passion from descriptions of sex: You
may explain the form, but you miss its es-
sence. To social-cognitive theorists, learning
includes not only changes in behavior but
also changes in thoughts, expectations, and
knowledge, which in turn influence behavior
in a reciprocal, or two-way, process.
As you read about the principles of con-
ditioning and learning in this chapter, ask
yourself what they can teach us about the
use of punishment to control undesirable
behavior. What happens when punishment
is used inappropriately? What is the best
way to modify other people’s behavior—and
our own?
learning A relatively
permanent change in
behavior (or behavioral
potential) as a result of
experience.behaviorism An ap-
proach to psychology that
emphasizes the study of
observable behavior and
the role of the environ-
ment and prior experi-
ence as determinants of
behavior.Zero-tolerance policies initially gave authori-
ties more leeway in applying them, but critics
charged that they were being administered in
a discriminatory manner; black children were
more likely than white kids to be suspended
or expelled for the same offenses, even when
their ages and disciplinary histories were simi-
lar. As a result, many school districts removeddiscretion in the application of their policies.
But that did not solve the problem. In March,
the Justice Department filed a consent degree
with a Mississippi school district and private
plaintiffs to prevent and address discriminatory
enforcement of discipline policies, after an in-
vestigation revealed that harsher punishments
were being imposed on black students.