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If I state that Children of Alcholic Parents are losers in the same manner that you stated your depression dissertation, does that make you more inclined or less inclined to self examine yourself? Or does the presentation put you into a defensive position instead of introspective?
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During my last thread, I recieved a lot of feedback (PMs and otherwise) that my threads often derailed because I went back and addressed personal attacks rather than continuing with the purpose of the thread.
While I recognize and appreciate your desire to discover where the ideas I possess COME FROM, it has an undesirable effect on threads in which it occurs. Hopefully I will be able to respond to this while simultaneously supporting the idea that those who perpetuate a depressive state are in fact, failures.
NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
In response to your question, IF I associated myself with that group I would ACTUALLY be much more likely to analyze myself if you called me a "loser" that if you had not. I personally respond better to negative reinforcement than positive reinforcement, as do many people. In the case of positive reinforcement, people recieve support and therapy in the form of consoling -- "You can get over this, you're strong.." or "it's not so bad." This has absolutely no effect on me, and makes me just as unresponsive as you claim to be to this thread. Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, works well (for me).
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Negative Reinforcement strengthens a behavior because a negative condition is stopped or avoided as a consequence of the behavior.
A rat is placed in a cage and immediately receives a mild electrical shock on its feet. The shock is a negative condition for the rat. The rat presses a bar and the shock stops. The rat receives another shock, presses the bar again, and again the shock stops. The rat's behavior of pressing the bar is strengthened by the consequence of the stopping of the shock.
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The "suck it up, bucko" effect works for those strengthened by negative reinforcement. In their case, they were ignoring the negative consquence on their health and well-being until someone pointed it out. In this case, I called them a failure. It worked for me, it worked for my girlfriend. It worked for my roommate. It's worked for quite a few people - those strengthened by demonstrations of the flaws, rather than false praise. Someone telling me that "You will get through it" does nothing for me, whereas something like "Can you really handle this task?" does. Both are accepted methods of conditioning.