Assignment 4:

HABITS WORKSHEET

This assignment will help you apply behavioral techniques to your own life. We all have habits – some good, some bad. In an effort to improve our lives, we should work on reducing the habits that aren’t helpful to us and increasing the ones that are helpful or beneficial.

Instructions:

1. Identify a current habit you wish you did not have. This needs to be a habit that you are willing to talk about with classmates. Using a lot my self self phone.
2. Answer the following questions:
3. What is the habit and how did you acquire it?
4. How do you maintain this habit? Describe the behaviors and/or thoughts/feelings (both positive and negative) that you have about this habit.
5. How frequently do you do this habit? (where, how, when, etc.)?
6. Have you tried to break this habit before? If so, how did it go?
7. Outline a plan detailing how you could change this using the principles of operant conditioning.
   1. Your plan should include how you will use reinforcers (positive and negative) and/or punishers to change your habit.
   2. What kind of schedule of reinforcement will you use? Why?
   3. Will you use the concept of shaping as you try to change this habit?
   4. How effective do you predict your plan will be (chances that you will be successful, i.e., 50%)

Remember: reinforcers are used to increase a behavior and punishers are used to decrease a behavior. After reading the material in this chapter, which will you use?