Operant Conditioning and Decreasing Alcohol Consumption

This report discusses how operant conditioning can be used to decrease alcohol consumption. It explores the negative health effects of excessive drinking and provides strategies for behavior modification.

Knowledge of Operant
conditioning into practice

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Opearant learning or operant conditioning can be defined as a learning process by which
a strength of a an individual's behaviour is being modified by the process of punishment or
reinforcement. It can also be referred as a process which can be used for bringing such learning.
Operant learning in a person occurs when there is a change in behaviour as function of its
consequences which can be bad for an individual. There can be two classes of consequences
which can be punisher that suppresses or weakens individual behaviour and second one is
reinforcers which helps in strengthening the behaviour. Present report discusses about how an
individual with the help of operant learning can decrease its alcohol consumption behaviour. As
excessive drinking of alcohol can have very negative health effects on individual and can
decrease the quality of life. Once a person become addicted to alcoholism it becomes difficult for
an individual to quit this habit so, this behaviour has been selected.
MAIN BODY
Drinking alcohol occasionally is normal behaviour of an individual but its excessive habit
can result major negative health benefits in an individual. There are various negative
consequences associate with drinking alcohol in excess for example it can result in damaging of
liver and various other liver disease. Also, it can result in excessive weight gain in an individual
who is on continuous consumption alcohol, also it can result in a greater memory loss in an
individual. Alcoholism is considered as the most severe form of alcohol abuse which also
involves inability of managing the drinking habits, it is also called as alcohol use disorder. A
person may get addicted to three different categories such as mild, moderate and severe and each
of this category can result in different symptoms which can cause harmful effects on individual.
A person may struggle a lot with alcoholism and may feel that it can not function normally
without consuming alcohol (Levy, Pryor, and McKeon, 2016). So, due to these factors it is really
important to change this behaviour or decrease consumption of alcohol to normal level.
Changing behaviour can help a person to increase the quality of life and to reduce the health
impact of an individual. It is also essential for a person to develop an action plan in order to
modify its behaviour to decrease excessive alcohol consumption.
A person may have various triggering factors which may evoke a person towards
alcoholism but it depends of person to person and also depends condition that a person is in.
Person can become alcohol dependent quickly and aggressively which may surface over a longer

period. The two common antecedents which can evoke the target behaviour can be
environmental factors and psychological factors. Within the environmental factors a person can
get influenced from various factors which can result in excessive alcohol consumption (Janssens,
and et.al., 2019). For example person may get influenced from other people like family and
friends, their role models like actors they want to copy and various other social factors like their
culture, religion and work influence. If a person is living near to an alcohol establishment can
have a positive outlook for drinking and have high chances of participation in the activity. A
person from childhood can gets influenced from its childhood and believe that it is a normal
behaviour which can be a major cause for evoking this habit. Another environmental factor
which can also trigger this behaviour can be a persons views about alcohol. A person may get
influenced to drinking as it may be part of its culture or religion which permits an individual to
consume alcohol and this results in alcohol use disorder. A person may be involved in various
religious and work occasion where a person gets a chance to drink and it slowly and steadily
turns in excess. Person may develop a mind set and believes that it is really important to take a
drink during these occasions and thus it results in alcohol use disorder in person (Whitaker and
et.al., 2017). It is a desire of an individual to fit and be well liked by others or wants to please
their gods may result in the participation of an individual in drinking which can result in
excessive drinking behaviour.
Second factor which can evoke persons behaviour for drinking alcohol is psychological
factor. A psychological condition of an individual can be a major factor which provokes a person
to drink and may even result increase in chances of heavy drinking. It depends upon the
individual how to handle situation and may have unique way of handling the situation. Person
feelings, stress level and person view of coping with these feeling and behaviours can have s
strong impact on person's behaviour of drinking. For example if a person feels highly stressed
and wants to relive this stress at any cost to which an individual can think alcohol is the best to
deal with it. As, drinking excessive alcohol decreasing thinking ability and does not have control
its mind and behaviour (Racine, Psych and Nielson2017).. Person does not want to recall its bad
experiences and turn towards alcoholism. In simple manner it can be said that in order to cope up
with its feelings and behaviours person thinks that drinking is the best way for ignoring the
feelings and decreasing the stress level. In these types of situations alcohol is often used in order
to suppress the feelings and relive the symptoms of various psychological disorders in a person.

So, these are the two main evoking behaviour which can trigger this behaviour in an individual
and these behaviours are too hard for an individual to control due to presence of these factors
which an individual can not ignore at all.
By developing a self modification program can help an individual overcome its
dysfunctional or unwanted behavioural responses for drinking alcohol. In order to decrease the
overconsumption of alcohol a person has to identify the reasons which influenced him towards
drinking or what are the factors which is forcing an individual to drink alcohol and for this it is
important to develop a proper self modification program. In order to decrease the level of alcohol
consumption a person could involve a reinforcer which is Cutting Back, i.e. decreasing the
alcohol consumption slowly and steadily by making minor changes in behaviour. Cutting back
may be a long procedure but it is effective for an individual who is involved in drinking alcohol
in excess. Also, it is very difficult for a person to stop drinking alcohol instantly and factors
influencing an individual are not eliminated so, cutting back can prove the best reinforcement for
an individual to decrease alcohol consumption (Gading and et.al., 2018). In order to modify the
behaviour, a person should set a realistic goal which is very important to achieve them. This may
include writing down how much drinks a person can decrease per day and how many days a
week a person want to drink. For example an individual has set a goal of decreasing 1 drink per
day which can take an individual six months to stop drinking alcohol completely. In order to
follow this program it is important for a person to count its drinks by keeping record on drink if
person a fails to count a number of drinks, a punishment an individual can set for it self is he has
to stop drinking at time a go to home. By setting punishment for itself it will allow an individual
to follow a plan and also increase the chance to quit this behaviour (Kamei and et.al., 2015). It is
also really important for an individual to measure drinks it is not only about counting the drinks
but has to measure as well. A person should be able to understand that standards of drinks which
can be easily measured. Also, an individual should pace down the drinks with greater spaces and
should try to drink more water along with the alcohol. Also, one major factor for modifying
behaviour is that a person should be able to avoid triggers like if a person is stress he should
make himself calm and try to avoid negative thoughts. It can also be done by keeping itself busy
with other activities like hobbies. If a person is unable to follow this program it should various
forms of punishments for its self like giving 10 pound in charity or decreasing the drinks by in

next day. This punishment can help a person in decreasing the drinking behaviour and make
them follow the program.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that operant learning can help an individual to change a behaviour
but it is really important to identify various evoking factors which influence a person towards the
behaviour. One of the best way to change behaviour in a person is developing a self modification
program and setting a punishment and reinforcer for decreasing the behaviour. There are various
challenges that can be faced such as having control on individual thoughts and it is very
challenging to ignore antecedents which trigger the behaviour.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Gading, I. K & et.al (2018). Effectiveness of Self-Modification Program in Smoking
Reduction. The Social Sciences. 13(1). 63-69.
Janssens, T & et.al (2019). Placebo and nocebo effects and operant pain-related avoidance
learning. Pain Reports. 4(3). e748.
Kamei, T and et.al (2015). Effectiveness of a home hazard modification program for reducing
falls in urban community‐dwelling older adults: A randomized controlled trial. Japan
journal of nursing science. 12(3). 184-197.
Levy, I. M., Pryor, K. W., & McKeon, T. R. (2016). Is teaching simple surgical skills using an
operant learning program more effective than teaching by demonstration?. Clinical
Orthopaedics and Related Research®. 474(4). 945-955.
Racine, M., Psych, C., & Nielson, W. (2017). OPERANT LEARNING ACTIVITY PACING
THERAPIST’S MANUAL.
Whitaker, L. R & et.al (2017). Bidirectional modulation of intrinsic excitability in rat prelimbic
cortex neuronal ensembles and non-ensembles after operant learning. Journal of
Neuroscience. 37(36). 8845-8856.