Verbal Community Reingorcement, With An Illustration Using the Esoteric
Buddhist Concepts of Fuse and Muzai No Nanase
by Bernard Guerin & Sejima Junichiro
The Psychological Record
Vol.47 No.2
Spring 1997
Pp.233-241
COPYRIGHT 1997 Psychological Record
Skinner defined verbal behavior as behavior which is mediated
through other people, and this includes the use of language forms,
gestures, and many other behaviors (1957, p. 14, p. 224). This
definition, however, was left unclear. For example, using a
coin-operated drink machine only works through the mediation of
other people who provide the drinks, clean the machines, and remove
our money, but we would not want to call using such a machine verbal
behavior. As well, allowing the shaping of a rat's behavior to be
called verbal behavior reduces the usefulness of the term (Skinner,
1957, p. 108, Note 11). Hayes and Wilson (1993) have also pointed
out that verbal behavior allows tact-like responses which have no
history of shaping and therefore cannot be discriminative stimuli.
Another way of defining verbal behavior is therefore required which
changes the scope of Skinner's definition while retaining its
substance.
Some behavior analysts have added scope to a definition of verbal
behavior by noting specific properties that separate it from
nonverbal behavior or nonsocial behavior. Chase (1986a) suggested
four properties that differentiate verbal and nonverbal behavior:
They affect speaker and listener similarly, they are portable, they
can act as a substitute for their referent, and they provide an
infinite number and variety of behaviors for shaping. Hayes and
Hayes (1992; and Parrott, 1986) have argued that the arbitrary and
referential nature of verbal behavior is sufficient, although the
basis to the equivalence class formation they utilize to make these
arguments is still undecided. Finally, Horne and Lowe (1996) argued
that verbal behavior was based on a naming response repertoire
learned early in life.
Elsewhere it has been argued that verbal communities might be
defined not only by the form of behavior they maintain (that
mediated by other people), but functionally by the properties of the
system of shaping used by a community to maintain such behaviors
(Guerin, 1992, 1994). Other definitions, which also put the
definition of verbal behavior back equally on the listener and the
speaker, usually emphasize the effects on the listener rather than
the form of the shaping (Parrott, 1984; Schoneberger, 1990). The
modest aims of the present paper are first to elaborate on the
notion of the type of consequences provided by a verbal community
and how that enters into verbal behavior, and second, to illustrate
this by some notions found in Esoteric Buddhism.
Defining Verbal Behavior
When we act on the physical environment there is usually a specific
and often repeatable contingent effect. If I hit my hands together,
each time I get a similar, specific outcome - that of clapping, with
its associated noise. But if I hit someone else's hand repeatedly,
however, I soon get very different effects happening. Social shaping
is not usually repeatable and different effects are likely to occur
each time we repeat a behavior. For this reason, social shaping by a
verbal community does not have the mechanical appearance that the
physical environment does, even though it is based on the same
principles. The variability of shaping, the way that a verbal
community shapes a speaker, might therefore define verbal behavior
(Chase, 1986b).
One suggestion has been that verbal communities are groups that
shape loosely or indiscriminately and engage in reciprocal shaping
over a long period (Guerin, 1994, 1995). It is suggested that such
an evolved system of shaping gives rise to the special properties of
verbal communities. The nontechnical term "loosely shaped" is meant
as a shorthand to indicate that the consequences that maintain
verbal behavior are generalized over time, setting or context,
persons, and behaviors.
For example, if a listener does not understand every part of what a
speaker is saying, or even if they dislike what is being said, they
do not immediately extinguish or punish the behavior, or walk away
and do something else instead. Rather, they encourage the speaker to
continue by smiling and nodding, and thus loosely shape verbal
behavior they do not even understand or like. Similarly, if friends
do things we do not like, we do not immediately punish them and
leave. Friendships are, in this sense, "forgiving" or
"cushioning"(1) and the contingencies that maintain such groups are
shaped over a longer period. Most of what we say and do to members
of our groups has extremely generalized outcomes (Guerin, 1995).
Because verbal communities loosely shape verbal behavior in this
way, a wide range of flexible and often arbitrary relations become
possible which could not be shaped by the physical environment
alone.
The same generalized effects can be seen for the large verbal
communities which maintain languages such as Japanese and English.
For any particular instance of producing an instance of that
language there might be little or no ostensible reinforcement. If
someone asks us to tell them the time, in our language, we usually
respond with the correct time, but there is minimal reinforcement
contingent upon doing this and only mild punishment if we refuse.
What reinforces speaking in a language and responding to a language
is not that it is immediately reinforced in any specific way, but
that the participation and membership in the verbal community is of
enormous benefit over time, most importantly when the listener
speaks. Any particular responding might not be reinforced, but the
overall use of the language is continued because it makes available
to us so many other opportunities for shaping. If we stop speaking
altogether, or we speak only a foreign language, then we lose many
effects not otherwise possible.
Other forms of social behavior also show the loose or generalized
shaping by other people, including "cognitive" phenomena. For
example, answering "five" to a spoken "What is 2 plus 3?" or "2+3 =
?" might seem specific shaping, but what exactly are the
consequences for saying five? What happens if we do not say five?
Probably every time we have produced five to "2+3" something
different has occurred: It might have allowed us to remember
something longer; it might have allowed us to do a further
mathematical operation based on "5" instead of "2+3"; or many
different people might have said many different things following our
production of "five." We add two and three regularly in different
ways in our lives but these probably have very different contingent
effects. This is why cognitive psychologists can talk about people
processing information without discussing the consequences
maintaining the "processing": The behaviors nominalized as
"processing" are reinforced through generalized social shaping. We
learn in childhood to "read information" when someone asks us to.
Social anthropologists and social psychologists have recognized such
loose systems of shaping in social groups and called them
generalized reciprocity and interactive dependence, and they argue
both that such reciprocal arrangements rely on the long term
stability of verbal communities, and that the reciprocal
arrangements underlie symbolic and ritual behavior patterns (Hart,
1986; Hogg, 1992; Peterson, 1993; Sahlins, 1965; Yamagishi & Cook,
1993).
People in such exchange communities do not usually restrict
themselves to exact or specific exchanges but give effects to
speakers freely and flexibly. This stops, however, if the exchanges
become one-sided in the long run or if social conditions become
unstable (Hart, 1986). For example, in times of war or resource
scarcity, generalized exchange is greatly reduced (Hart, 1986;
Turnbull, 1973). In times of conflict between friends, the
(ex)friends will not spend time listening to one another and require
more immediate reinforcement of their listening to do so. This is
often a role for a third-party mediator.
It has been argued that there are many effects available from
membership of a verbal community, both verbal and nonverbal, and
that, over a longer time period, belonging to a verbal community is
highly reinforced (Guerin, 1994; Hogg, 1992). Although there is no
immediate, material reinforcement for providing reciprocal
reinforcement to a speaker who is saying something you do not like,
belonging to such a verbal community pays off in the long run and
participation has been shaped through a lifetime. The difficulty in
making this analysis is that the reinforcing effects are not those
seen in the immediate situation. For example, taking the bread in a
Catholic Mass is not reinforced by the food, but because not taking
the bread would lead to expulsion from the group and the loss of all
the benefits that group provides (Guerin, 1995) (benefits which have
nothing otherwise to do with the eating of bread).
To put this into better behavioral terms, belonging to groups (or
producing the relevant behaviors for this in appropriate
circumstances) and conforming to groups is a setting event for many,
social and nonsocial, powerful reinforcers not otherwise available.
It is not that such individual, conforming behaviors magically
appear, or are somehow a part of a fictitious "group reinforcement,"
but that those behaviors are shaped because they make available
access to other powerful yet unrelated (arbitrary) contingencies.
To give another example, chatting briefly with one's neighbors is
probably not reinforced by anything immediate or obvious. It is
suggested that chatting or even greeting your neighbor from a
distance is maintained by previous outcomes of forming memberships
which have other unrelated outcomes (Litwak & Szelenyi, 1969;
Wellman & Wortley, 1989; Williams, 1995). Belonging to neighborhood
groups by chatting provides potential outcomes such as borrowing
lawn mowers for short periods and getting help with short-term
problems; belonging to families provides other outcomes (borrowing
larger sums of money, receiving help with long-term problems such as
illness); and belonging to a group of language users provides many
highly generalized but powerful outcomes.
To summarize this necessarily loose description of the verbal
community system of reinforcement, it has been argued that what
connects the different forms of verbal communities, audiences, or
listeners is the loose nature of the consequences, where "loose"
refers to the highly generalized consequences for behaving. Behaving
with verbal behavior is reinforced over long periods, over many
people, over many different settings, and with many different
effects as the outcomes for the same behavior. Verbal behavior
therefore most often appears to have no maintaining consequences but
only because they are generalized and not obvious. In this way,
cognitive psychology and social psychology have been able to carry
on without dealing with consequences, because the cognitive and
social phenomena they deal with mostly have generalized
consequences.
The particular system of shaping suggested as defining verbal
communities might also explain the arbitrary nature of verbal
behaviors. As an example, the use of the English word "cat" for the
object cat requires the formation of extremely arbitrary relations
because "cat" does not look like or share any stimulus features of
the object cat (Chase, 1986b; Sidman, 1994). To be able to reinforce
responding to a stimulus that in no way "resembles" its referent
might only be possible with the properties that arise from the way
that verbal communities reinforce.
If true, this has possible implications for the growing research on
stimulus equivalence classes and the relation of equivalence classes
to verbal behavior (Hayes & Hayes, 1992; Sidman, 1994). Children
learn such arbitrary relations early in life although it is still
not clear how they do this, because equivalence formation is not
like normal stimulus generalization (Horne & Lowe, 1996; Sidman,
1994). What has not been explored sufficiently yet is the natural
shaping required for the formation of these arbitrary relations; how
such arbitrary relations can be shaped without the special
reinforcement procedures used in the experimental research. One
suggestion has been that a naming response is learned early in life
(Horne & Lowe, 1996) although the finer details are still required.
Another closely related suggestion is that equivalence formation
arises from the natural shaping of generalized social interaction
(Guerin, 1994, p. 66). Given that early social shaping will train
reciprocity or generalized exchange in social relations, this
probably trains nonlinguistic (but verbal) identity, symmetry, and
transitivity relations even before language use (cf. Doise & Mugny,
1984; Doise, Mugny, & Perret-Clermont, 1975; Goody, 1995; Kent,
1993; Sahlins, 1965). It is suggested that shaping the use of highly
generalized forms of reinforcement during nonlinguistic social
interaction might shape both the naming function (Horne & Lowe,
1996) and the special form of generalization which are found in
equivalence class formation (Hayes & Hayes, 1992), or it could at
least make them both possible (cf. Peterson, Merwin, Moyer, &
Whitehurst, 1971; Peterson & Whitehurst, 1971; Steinman, 1970).
Buddhism and Generalized Reciprocity
Social anthropologists have given many interesting and informative
examples of the dynamic ways in which generalized reciprocal
relationships work. The Appendix to Sahlins (1965), for example,
contains many interesting case studies. Outside of anthropology
there are fewer examples showing the ways that verbal communities
deal with generalized and loosely discriminated reinforcement of
members, although some forms of psychotherapy will be mentioned
briefly later. To give an extended example from another area of
human social behavior, we will discuss some notions from Buddhism.
In Esoteric Buddhism (Sekiguchi, 1988) we can find some notions of
generalized exchange relationships that nicely illustrate the loose
verbal community reinforcement. Although this does not empirically
prove an analysis of the properties of generalized, reciprocal
shaping in any way, it provides a nice example and can help us learn
to recognize and analyse the ways that verbal communities maintain
their relationships when there is only very intermittent
reinforcement available for both listeners' and speakers' behavior.
Fuse: The Giving of Alms or Charity
One of the older concepts of Esoteric Buddhism is that of Fuse.
Although Fuse now means giving money to a monk, its original meaning
was an offering or giving of alms, and at the same time a
renouncement of possessions (Sekiguchi, 1988). This was considered a
positive behavior to help get through life. One does not offer up
possessions "in order to" receive happiness, but Fuse leads to
happiness. In the extreme case, Fuse means altruism.
Fuse in this older sense is very similar to "charity" in
Christianity, one of the major virtues to show in life. Christians
are admonished to be charitable towards others. In particular,
charity is most important not when you have many possessions and
give some away, but when you are poor and yet still make offerings
to other people.
With respect to verbal communities, both Fuse and Christian charity
can be seen as societal rules which help in the formation and
maintenance of verbal communities. As discussed earlier, the
reinforcement which maintains verbal communities only reinforces
loosely and over a long time period, so supplementary control from
verbal rules is probably required. The rule-governed control gained
from training Fuse or charity can help achieve this. Following such
rules might not lead to happiness in the short term, but will over a
longer time period because it makes available, or is a setting event
for, access to other group contingencies. Thus listeners and
recipients of someone else's boring verbal behavior will continue to
respond.
In the extreme case of altruism, it has been suggested elsewhere
that altruism will not occur without this form of verbal community
because the immediate outcomes cannot be reinforcing (Guerin, 1994,
1995). Maintaining a verbal community is therefore essential to
maintain altruism within a community. In these cases, behaviors of
Fuse and charity become essential in order to maintain the loose
reciprocal reinforcement, so it is clear why altruism is emphasized
when discussing both Fuse and charity.
Muzai No Nanase: The Seven Charities
Maintenance of verbal communities does not only consist of altruism
and giving away of possessions. We do not give someone our food
every time they speak English or Japanese to us. So "giving of alms"
in a strict interpretation will occur infrequently and under special
conditions.
To suggest other ways of maintaining the verbal community form of
reinforcement to a speaker, especially without giving possessions,
Esoteric Buddhism combines Fuse with the concept of Muzai No Nanase.
In the original philosophy of Buddhism, Muzai meant a state of
innocence or lack of possessions, and Nanase meant seven charities
(Sekiguchi, 1988). The original concept meant that even when someone
is without possessions at all, there are still seven ways in which
they can be charitable (or loosely reinforce a speaker in our
interpretation).
The seven ways of being charitable are to show a gentle face, to
show gentle eyes, to speak politely, to behave politely, to
sympathize with others, to offer your seat to someone, and to
receive guests warmly. These behaviors can be widely observed in
conversations between friends. As mentioned earlier, when a friend
is saying something with which you disagree, you do not punish them
immediately but sympathize or speak politely back to them. So the
Nanase are not only applicable when lacking possessions and unable
to give, but also when it is inappropriate to give something at the
time. In everyday life, it is inappropriate to give food or money
reinforcers to maintain verbal behavior, but the older Buddhist
philosophy tells us that there are still at least seven ways to
provide generalized reinforcement in such cases. And as mentioned in
the earlier suggestion of a definition of verbal behavior, such
reinforcement is only loosely contingent upon particular behaviors.
The same seven behaviors can also be seen in various forms of
psychotherapy. One goal of psychotherapy is to form a trust or
reciprocal exchange relationship with a client who is initially a
stranger. In such situations it is inappropriate to give them food
or possessions, or any direct material objects, and so all seven
behaviors specified as Nanase can be found in such situations.
Indeed, some psychotherapies, such as Rogerian therapy, explicitly
train gentle eyes and face, sympathizing, and loose reinforcement of
behavior (called "unconditional positive regard").
Conclusion
We have shown that some of the ideas involved in a modern definition
of verbal behavior and verbal community can be found in the original
Esoteric Buddhist concepts and teachings, as ways to shape and
maintain a verbal community system of reinforcement with its
emergent properties. The phenomena are not unique to Buddhism but
occur under different guises and different names in all verbal
communities. To face life alone is difficult or impossible, and we
are shaped to have other people help us have useful effects on the
physical environment. To achieve this, we need communities that only
loosely reinforce behavior because specific and repeatable
reinforcement is less likely to lead to arbitrary relations. To
achieve such a community system of loose reinforcement to "cushion"
behavior which would otherwise extinguish, various cultural
practices (Glenn, 1989) are required.
In the concepts of Muzai and Nanase we can find good examples of one
approach to these questions. These concepts provide verbal
instructions for members to follow which train reinforcement of
other members' behavior even when providing that reinforcement is
not immediately reinforcing (Fuse). It further specifies that
following the instructions will be reinforcing in the long run, and
that the instructions can be followed even if there are no material
possessions which can be used (Muzai No Nanase).
The first author thanks the Japan Foundation and Keio University for
supporting this work. Both authors thank anonymous reviewers for
making helpful comments.
1 We thank William Baum for suggesting this second word to describe
the properties of verbal community reinforcement systems.
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