Performance Management: Changing Behavior That Drives Organizational Effectiveness (part 7)

The Value of Intermittent Reinforcement

by

Charles Lamson

A reinforcer is a stimulus (such as a reward or the removal of an electric shock) that increases the probability of a desired response in operant conditioning by being applied or effected following the desired response. Common sense tells us that if people receive reinforcers every time they do something, they will maximize their efforts. If you knew that every time you performed a certain way, you would get something you want, wouldn't you work your hardest? If you answered yes, common sense would have led you astray.

The answer to this question, believe it or not, is no. Once the basic performance has been well established, intermittent reinforcement generates higher levels of performance than continuous reinforcement.

There are at least four advantages to intermittent reinforcement.

1. Intermittent Reinforcement Maintains Performance

If you have a reinforcer and deliver it effectively, performance will usually change rapidly. Your goals will be reached and often exceeded in less time than you ever imagined. Maintaining this performance gain in the ensuing months and years requires intermittent reinforcement. What could make a fisherman spend hours sitting nearly motionless, holding on to a pole with a piece of string dangling in the water? For simplicity, let's regard the behavior as fishing and the reinforcer as catching a fish. Examine the following sequence of events.

On the first few fishing trips, a young fisherman is successful, he catches fish each trip. After several successful trips, he goes on a trip where he catches no fish. Will he go again? Probably. Suppose on his next trip he is successful again, but on the next two trips he is unsuccessful. Will he go again? Probably.

With this kind of reinforcement history, he will most likely continue fishing for a long time even though he will have occasional trips when the fish aren't biting. His experience has taught him that if he does not catch fish on one trip, he might catch fish the next time out. His performance will probably be maintained despite failure because catching fish is on an intermittent schedule of reinforcement.

Some hunters hunt all season without killing a deer. Football fans continue to go to games in spite of their favorite team's long losing streaks. Many golfers have vowed to quit the game during a bad round, only to change their minds after hitting their best drive ever on the last hole. Millions of people buy tickets to the state lotteries every week but rarely win. Many writers persist in writing in the face of numerous rejections. Thomas Edison was reputed to have said that he discovered 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb before he found a way that worked. Examples of this kind of motivation are endless. You might say that a history of intermittent reinforcement gives people hope.

People do, however, give up on projects and lose interest in hobbies and activities. If reinforcement does not reach some minimum level, extinction will occur (Extinction refers to a procedure in which reinforcement of a previously reinforced operant performance is discontinued. When a previously conditioned performance is extinguished (no longer reinforced), it generally occurs initially with a high frequency and then falls continuously until its rate reaches near zero.). However, intermittent schedules produce behavior that is relatively resistant to extinction.

To help people develop a habit that is resistant to extinction, the behavior must get high levels of reinforcement early in the learning stage. If that is done, the habits can be maintained with relatively little reinforcement.

The advantage that intermittent reinforcement provides for organizations is that it permits employees to maintain high levels of performance under limited supervision. Salespeople working away from the office for extended periods of time, long-distance truck drivers, service technicians, security guards, night-shift employees, auditors, entrepreneurs, and consultants are a few of the jobs that must be established on intermittent schedules for best performance. An additional advantage of intermittent schedules is that they allow a manager to be away from the office for a long time and not have decreases in performance due to lack of social reinforcement. The advantage that intermittent reinforcement has for individuals is that you can't just pat someone on the head and forget about him. Some reinforcement is required on a continual basis. In other words, don't take high performance for granted. Managers frequently ask, "How long do I have to reinforce behaviors?" The answer is as long as you want that behavior to continue.

2. Intermittent reinforcement avoids the problem of satiation.

Reinforcers lose their effectiveness if they are used too often. We all experience this condition when we tire of a particular food or dessert because we have had it too frequently within a short period of time. It happens with clothes, with activities, and can occur with practically all reinforcers. Satiation is especially likely when the selection of tangibles is limited. How many logo pens, key chains, or coffee mugs do you really need? Using tangibles only occasionally will sustain their reinforcing properties for a longer period of time. Reinforcement on an intermittent schedule and using a variety of social and tangible reinforcers maximizes effectiveness.

3. Intermittent reinforcement frees managers to reinforce many different behaviors and performances.

Managers are responsible for numerous performers and their many behaviors. Reinforcing all of the behaviors on a continuous schedule is impossible. There simply is not enough time. Intermittent reinforcement makes reinforcing the behavior of many individual performers possible. Often, in organizations using Performance Management, managers or supervisors have five or more performance improvement plans under way at the same time. This is possible because as the demand for reinforcement decreases on one project, another can be started.

4. Intermittent reinforcement explains why some people seem to perform without reinforcement.

You may occasionally encounter a situation where people perform at a high level apparently in the absence of positive reinforcement. To the skeptic, this apparent exception proves that reinforcement is useful only for some problems and for some people.

Consider the star performers who are constantly prompt, efficient, and productive. In watching them perform over extended periods of time, you may not witness any positive reinforcement. In response to surveys, they may not recall receiving any reinforcement. But a long time ago, most likely when they were children, their parents probably gave them attention for achievements and for learning new tasks. Or, perhaps as new employees, they were fortunate enough to receive a good bit of reinforcement. As they learned the job, their supervisor or trainer may have given considerable reinforcement as they made progress.

After awhile, as a natural course of events, the supervisor began to reinforce their performance less and less often as they became more and more proficient in the job. By that time, even if new supervisors took over, an occasional comment about their work would be all it took to keep performance at a high level. Now, years later, they seem to work independently of reinforcement. In reality, they can sustain high performance on a very lean schedule of reinforcement because of a rich reinforcement history.

People who respond with high levels of behavior, even with little reinforcement in the present, can do so because of their reinforcement history. These people are typically referred to as self-motivated, inner-driven, or self-starters. And you will discover, even these people need reinforcers on some schedule.

Eisenberger (1992) in a series of studies investigating what he called learned industriousness found that people with a history of reinforcement for extra effort, generated not only a high rate of performance on the reinforced tasks but approached other tasks with the same high effort. This same history also produced performers who were more persistent, who tolerated aversive tasks better, and who were more honest than those with a history of continuous reinforcement.

*SOURCE: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: CHANGING BEHAVIOR THAT DRIVES ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS, 4TH ED., 2004, AUBREY C. DANIELS & JAMES E. DANIELS  PGS. 77-80*

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