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Thoughts & Rants of a Behavior Scientist
In the Thoughts & Rants of a Behavior Scientist Show, Dr. Paul “Paulie” Gavoni looks at common issues or phenomena in our personal and professional lives, gives you his thoughts, sometimes rants about it, and provides you with practical solutions rooted in the science of human behavior.
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Thoughts & Rants of a Behavior Scientist
Decoding Criminal Behavior: Forensic Behavior Analysis and Jeffrey Dahmer with Presley Wanner
Unlock the secrets of the criminal mind with behavior scientist Presley Wanner, as we navigate the intriguing intersection of behavior analysis and forensic investigation. Imagine peering through the eyes of a behavior analyst at the crime scenes frequented by law enforcement professionals; we do just that, offering a fresh and compelling perspective that could redefine criminal profiling. Join me on a journey into the darkest corners of human actions, where we dissect the fabric of criminal behavior, from the infamous deeds of Jeffrey Dahmer to the principles that govern everyday transgressions.
We also wrap up with a critical discussion on the future of law enforcement and community safety, where positive reinforcement triumphs over punishment, and training transforms into meaningful, lasting change. We share inspiring success stories from schools to streets, highlighting the transformative power of behavior analysis in creating safer, more compassionate communities. This episode is more than an educational exploration; it's a rallying cry for a reimagined approach to behavior in our justice system and beyond, laying the groundwork for a society that's both safer and inherently more understanding of the human condition.
Be sure to subscribe to Dr. Paulie's Heart & Science YouTube channel for a variety of content related to behavior science and bringing out the best in yourself and others.
Welcome to the Thoughts and Rants of a Behavior Scientist show hosted by Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Dr Pauly.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Thoughts and Rants of a Behavior Scientist podcast. I'm your host, Dr Pauly, and I'm here with Presley Wanner. How are you doing, Presley?
Speaker 1:Good. How are you doing Presley? Good how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm good, and I came across a social media post and it was about using behavior analysis in forensics and it was about I think it was called a behavior correct me if I'm wrong but a behavior analysis of Jeffrey Dahmer or something along those lines. Yeah, a behavior analytic conceptualization of Jeffrey Dahmer behavior analysis unit, but I don't think it's like real behavior analysis and I'm hoping that maybe that they can, you know, learn from somebody like you and adopt it because you have a background. I went back and I looked at your education. You just didn't come into behavior analysis. You have a background in forensics. I mean, you have a few degrees that are directly aligned with those. I'm clicking on the wrong thing here. Yeah, crime analysis from Penn West, california, that you got a degree in applied behavior analysis, sociology, forensic psychology from University of North Dakota, so it's very cool. So you have all this stuff and then you got ABA and I'm just very interested to see how those two merge. So thanks for coming on the podcast with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:you, I was really excited to get your message yeah, yeah, it's cool man, and so, um, let's first start with are you familiar with the? I don't watch much tv. I watch movies and I watch news and sports, you know, but there is a tv show out there right that has this like a crime unit and behavior analysis there's a few, yeah and am I correct in saying that it's not real behavior analysis as we know it so it's I.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking, are you referring to, like the fbi, bau behavior analysis unit? Maybe we'll go with that one so the fbi has a bau behavior analysis unit out in quantico. Um, that's like so mind hunter, if you've seen that show that sounds like where it came from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, those are the guys at the bau. Um, they are law enforcement, not directly psych or behavior analysis. Um, you have to be an FBI special agent to build up and get into the BAU, which I was bummed about when I found out because that was my goal. But yeah, it's more law enforcement, criminal profiling, than true behavior analysis. But it's very close and we could definitely work together.
Speaker 2:Well, I found that like, for example, in sports right, sports there's a lot of metrics out there and you know, but it's not. I know that when I've gone into I work in sports and MMA and boxing I'm seeing how they're using the metrics and they're doing a lot of great things. But as behavior analysts, we can take that nuance thing. We can find that really pivotal thing that we need to look at and help to make a difference, because sometimes they're just missing that angle of it and gosh.
Speaker 2:Well, hopefully, maybe we do this podcast you can send to the folks, because people don't know what they don't know and I would think I mean this is the greatest you know science in the world for making a difference, and so they're not aware of it or they think they are and they probably maybe they got 80% of it. You know what I mean, but there's that 20% that would make the hugest difference If you would, if you characterize, and because I want to find out all about this. Right, let's start with what the standard people that aren't actually trained in applied behavior analysis. What are they missing in general?
Speaker 1:So I think that, because typically with criminal profiling, you know they still look at patterns of behavior. You know they still, they're still very aware that a past history of violence is the best predictor for future violence. But I think they're really missing the meat of what we do the antecedents, the consequences, what reinforces this behavior? How can we put this behavior on extinction by removing that reinforcer? How can we teach replacement behaviors that match the function? They don't look at any of that. They look at criminal records, support history, education history, things like that, and build a picture. So I feel like behavior analysis and that viewpoint of it, we look very specifically at the crime itself instead of at the overall pattern. We still see those overall patterns because that's what we do, but we look specifically at these behavioral instances and say what is happening here, what are the antecedents that lead to this behavior, what are the consequences that maintain this behavior?
Speaker 2:Okay, so would you be able to, if we could juxtapose it to or contrast it to, if we had a non-behavioral analyst who's an FBA and they're doing lots of good things, right? Just maybe a short like snippet, like here's how they would look at this one situation Maybe it's a crime scene or something like that, or whatever you feel most comfortable with explaining and then, as a behavior analyst, how you would look at it differently than they did. Like concrete example.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's see here. So let's say we have a homicide, okay, Body is found and investigation begins. Those law enforcement individuals are going to do things like canvassing the neighborhood right Looking for witnesses, asking questions. They're maybe going to, once we get further down the investigation, maybe they're going to build a criminal profile based on the FBI's profiling system. They're probably going to do geographical profiling. We know that-.
Speaker 2:Which means what, Just for anybody listening and I'm not quite sure I know what that means.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so geographical profiling. Typically, crimes are committed in the general vicinity of the perpetrator. It's going to be an area that the perpetrator frequents in some way shape or form. So, like triangulation, we're going to center where this body was found and go out a certain radius and look inside that radius. So those are the type of strategies that law enforcement is going to use.
Speaker 2:And those are good strategies, we're not saying those are good strategies. Absolutely Right Okay.
Speaker 1:Yes, they are effective Behavior analytic conceptualization. We are going to look at the crime itself and it'll be more of we could call it profiling of the perpetrator. We're going to determine, well, try to determine. In what setting right Does this occur? What are the potential antecedents? What is the function of this behavior, aka motive right. What is the purpose? Is this individual, was this individual murdered for life insurance money? Right, tangible? That's our function. Were they murdered? Was it a power situation? Right, and then we can identify the consequences as well. So what are they gaining from this? Are they reinforced by the money they receive, the feeling of power? What's the reinforcer? And we can go from there.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, that sounds like the things that they're doing already, though, isn't it? I mean, they do look for the motive, they look for the why behind it. Um, how is that? How is what you know, what you're saying, different from what they they are actually doing? Because I know that they always look for a motive, that's like somebody like me. So how is it? You know what it's. It's I'm sure it's more nuanced the approach that we're, that you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's difficult to give from like a present perspective, because the conceptualizations I've done were after the fact right. So typically with this type of conceptualization that I did with the Jeffrey Dahmer presentation, we are looking after the fact and we're determining what happened here. How can we use this information to move forward and prevent perhaps?
Speaker 2:You're kind of like gathering, like four-term contingency You're looking at, you're getting all the boxes, you're trying to fill up those buckets with as much data as you have. I'm guessing you know, because even like you know you. But you know you, what is the mo here, what was happening a while back? Based on just whatever information you have, it goes in that bucket and I'm just speaking out loud so I can try to figure it out. Right, you know antecedents. Uh, maybe it's not a direct acting contingent, where I guess it could be.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's uh in this area at. You know it's not a direct acting contingent, or I guess it could be. It's in this area at. You know it's. You know 1130 pm. You know this is a pattern of it. You know there's a certain type of person around, right. So all these are antecedents that are involved in it. And again, I'm thinking that this is very similar to what's going on in the behavior analytic, the forensic, what they have. So I don't think it's different there. I think it sounds like it's just conceptualizing it behaviorally, right.
Speaker 1:Yes, Yep, precisely it's not. There are no really huge differences, but how we conceptualize it cops are not looking at this as well. What's the antecedent? What's the establishing operation right? What are the setting events? You know?
Speaker 2:the behavior. You actually can't see the behavior. You have a prominent product, so you have to take that information behavior and then you have to think about what are the consequences of that, what's maintaining it, and so that I guess that's. There's a lot of speculation that goes on there. That's nowhere. Yes.
Speaker 1:And with forensics too, the behavior analysis of forensics that is one of the biggest things is that criminal behavior is generally covert, right. Most criminals are not just out there broad daylight. Hey, I'm going to go rob this bank. Everyone, come stop me. It's covert, right. So unless we have people who were witnesses, right, we're really relying on, just like you said, permanent product. So there's some. I mean, with law enforcement too, we're speculating right into the perpetrator's state of mind at the time, and us behavior analysts we don't like mentalism anyway, right, but so we're looking at kind of a more nuanced view of it.
Speaker 2:Okay, I mean, you know, just like when we normally take the ABCs, we do it because we're hypothesizing a function. Obviously, you can't do a functional analysis in these cases, exactly these cases.
Speaker 1:Yep, and one thing that I mentioned in my presentation, too, is ABA. We have our three levels of control, right, we have description, prediction control. Well, what this does is the first two. Like you said, there's no third level, there's no experimental control. Here we're not doing a functional analysis of crime, we're not turning that on. So all we're doing here we're describing, we're predicting.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Okay, now let's go ahead and maybe we can shift on to just discuss what you did with Jeffrey Dahmer. So help people to, like you know, theorize it more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so with Jeffrey Dahmer. I chose him because there's plenty of data.
Speaker 1:Um, of course, I can't observe the behavior and take direct data, but we have thank goodness books I know we have books, we have um recordings of jeffrey's own discussion of his crimes um one of my main sources was jeffrey dahmer's dad's autobiography speaking about his childhood, all of that. So we have a lot of sources that we can use um some other crimes not so much. Right jack the ripper might be difficult um. So with jeffrey I I did just that. I discussed setting events um. There are a lot of things that happened in his life um, like the, the incident with the bones under the house. That was very formative for jeffrey um but what was it?
Speaker 2:also speak as if nobody knows about it, like okay yeah so bones under the house um.
Speaker 1:One day jeffrey's mom smelled something gross and sent Lionel to check under the under the house. Lionel is Jeffrey's dad.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And, um, he found what was most likely a dead raccoon, something of the sort. He pulled it out and Jeffrey was kind of interested and, um, he picked up the bones and I think Jeffrey was probably five interested and he picked up the bones. And I think Jeffrey was probably five, six, seven and he picked up the bones and he said they're like fiddlesticks and he was interested in the bones and he wanted to play with them. And Jeffrey or, I'm sorry, lionel, being a sweet, innocent, loving, naive father, he said this is great, my kid has an interest. I can shape this, I can turn this into. Maybe he'll be a doctor one day, maybe he'll be a surgeon Biologist, whatever right, yes anything.
Speaker 1:He has an interest in anatomy. This is good. I want to reinforce this. Unfortunately, it didn't go as planned. So that event in Jeffrey's childhood was pretty formative and he had unfortunate genetic predispositions. Had unfortunate genetic predispositions um in my. I teach abnormal psych at north dakota state university and one of my favorite phrases is genetics loads the gun, environment pulls the trigger oh, I like that yeah so it sounds it's very law enforcement ish it is.
Speaker 2:I don't believe we won't use it in the. You know, working in the, the autism areas or whatever, but that yeah no, that's perfect yep, and so joyce jeffrey's mom.
Speaker 1:She had significant emotional disturbances, um, likely borderline personality disorder. She would consistently um overdose. And because jeffrey's father was away at work, he was a um doctorate level pharmacist, I believe, and chemist, I'm sorry, doctorate level chemist and so he was away at work and poor jeffrey, um he, and poor Jeffrey, he had to discover his unconscious overdose mother on more than one occasion. So not only were there genetic predispositions there, but also environmental events finding your unconscious, maybe dead, mom, you know, not ideal for childhood psychology. So there was a lot of these factors, kind of this perfect storm.
Speaker 1:Lionel himself too and this is speculation on my part, but working in autism for some years and having an autism diagnosis myself, I speculate that Lionel was on the spectrum as well. Some of his statements he makes in his book he states that he did not know how to be a father or a son or a husband. He had to do research on what these roles were supposed to be and then acted accordingly. So one thing with high functioning autism we see that adherence to rule governed behavior a lot of times and that was depicted in Lionel's autobiography. So I do believe that Lionel himself had some social issues, as did Jeffrey, obviously, and records have shown too that his parents attempted to seek some sort of behavioral treatment for Jeffrey when he was young Whether it was ABA specifically, you know, in that time period, unsure but they did seek some sort of behavioral treatment for Jeffrey as a kid, for Jeffrey as a kid.
Speaker 1:So there's, like I said, there's this perfect storm of of um preexisting factors. So then we discussed this and then I used a three-term contingency for a bunch of different target behaviors that he exhibited. Um doing a dommer was one of them. So when he was young he would engage in this um really inappropriate attention-seeking behavior at school. Um, he would, you know, run through the halls making noises, talking in weird voices, and Jeffrey didn't have any friends and people laughed and high-fived him when he did these things. So if we're analyzing this right, we have our consequence social positive reinforcement in the form of attention, sometimes tangible. Some kids even paid him um to do certain pranks, things like that. There was one where he photobombed um yearbook photos and I believe some kids offered him money to do that. So interesting.
Speaker 2:I wonder if, as part of that, became like almost like desensitization to to uh, you know, existing rules or something I don't know yep, or could have been, you know, ignorance or disregard for them in the first place interesting.
Speaker 2:All right, so so continue, this is all right. So I can see now, you know, see like a little bit of nuance there and how things are shaping up, like I can imagine law enforcement as it, as it is, but look at those things as well. But we're just going a little bit deeper to say what was maintaining the behavior. So it becomes more behavior analytic. They might just state like you know, he had a history of getting attention or doing some stuff earlier. But then we say you know why, what was maintaining that behavior?
Speaker 1:okay, exactly, yeah, okay. So then, as we move on and we look as jeffrey grows up, so he starts with these inappropriate attention-seeking behaviors in school. He also because he has no friends. This poor young man and you'd never think anyone would say that, right, poor Jeffrey, there was. He was an unfortunate victim of classical conditioning which this might be one of my favorite parts to analyze as young boys.
Speaker 1:Right, you're age 9 to 13,. Right, very important phase in a young boy's life puberty. Yes. So during puberty, right, physical changes happen spontaneous erections, things like this. This is how sexuality is formed. However, in most individuals I don't want to say normal in most individuals these things, these feelings, these physical changes are occurring in the presence of same age peers, right, and then we develop attraction towards same age peers. Jeffrey was not exposed to same age peers, he did not have many friends. So after school he comes home, he goes to his shed in the backyard that is full of dead animals. So jeffrey here is experiencing all of these pubertal changes, these spontaneous erections, these feelings of arousal in the presence of dead animals, not, living humans we're classically conditioning.
Speaker 1:So as he is experiencing arousal in the presence of these animals, exactly that's paired and he talks about as he gets older, that he is not able to achieve an erection, achieve any sort of sexual satisfaction with a living person. So that was rooted in childhood as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting, okay, All right.
Speaker 1:And then, as we go on, and he is so desperate for this social positive reinforcement right, positive reinforcement, right, um he. We also throw another factor setting event in there, of jeffrey's sexuality. Um, jeffrey was gay at that time. That was not okay, right, and he was forced to hide it. He did attempt to talk to his dad about it multiple times and his dad shut it down. He didn't want to hear it. So that behavior of talking was sufficiently punished enough to where Jeffrey didn't talk about it anymore. He didn't access reinforcement. When he did so, he shut up, he quit. So that led to holding all this inside, which then led to the shame and this guilt. Um, and even he even tried I, I do give him props because he tried. Um, there was the whole, the whole thing with the mannequin. Um, jeffrey unfortunately had, because of his abandonment in his childhood and things like that he unfortunately had severe borderline personality disorder as well um, severe abandonment issues oh and his whole thing was that he just wanted someone to be with him, to stay with him.
Speaker 1:He did not necessarily want a person, but he wanted their body. Um, he did before he, he, he murdered. Well, with the exception of um steven hicks, who was his first murder. There was a nine-year break there, um, but in the interim he had stolen a mannequin from a department store and he tried to use that as a replacement behavior, right? Um, that did not work, that was not sufficient. Um, it freaked his grandma out and she demanded he get rid of it. Um which, who knows that if he could have kept that, would that have been where that ended? We don't know, um I knowing what we know about criminal behavior and its escalation, um, I do think that eventually that mannequin would have been insufficient and he would have moved on anyway, but he tried and then, unfortunately, when that was removed, he escalated.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right, I'm seeing the picture, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's see here as he moved out. So, after he moved out of his, his grandmother's Jeffrey was also an alcoholic um, which complicates things as well. So alcohol use was typically an antecedent for his umseeking behavior. Typically he would pick up his victims at gay nightclubs where he was drinking. He would buy them drinks. That is how he would meet his victims. He would then offer them money to take photos. He said he was a photographer, he needed models, so he would offer them money, bring them back to his house where he would then drug them. That was.
Speaker 1:One of the other target behaviors I discussed was the drugging behavior and how it allowed him access to an unconscious body which is reinforcing that behavior. Once he has that unconscious body and this is all a behavioral chain too you cannot murder someone without first having that victim available to you. Correct, yeah, correct. So we have this huge behavioral chain of, you know, the alcohol use in the nightclub, to then the drugging behavior once he gets them home, to then the murder of that individual, to then necrophilia and the rape of that individual, to then evisceration and the dismemberment of the individual and then to finally cannibalism and eating that individual.
Speaker 2:so this is a huge, complex behavioral chain lord, if we could have broken that chain, that would have been nice.
Speaker 1:I know Yep, it really would have been, which is why analysis of these things is helpful, recognizing that this is a behavioral chain and that we can break it somewhere. We just have to know that first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what, as you're saying this, I'm starting to form some thoughts about how this would be applicable because, I mean, still, everything is still hypothetical, but I guess over time you get patterns If you analyze. Because this is all done, it's not like we can change behavior, right, because that's normally what we're trying to do right now. We can't change that person's behavior. It's already occurred, occurred, the outcome has already occurred. Uh, at least you know, not saying they can't be rehabilitated, but but yes, let's just use this example and if we start to see if we have enough data over time, especially if we have stuff where people stopped, um, where they didn't go beyond right, maybe we start to see where the chain, you know, where the, where the important link in the chain needs to be removed, so to speak, or, like you know, of that, of that chain, what was? You know where was the point of no return, for example, what if we pulled out that one in the middle or whatever? I don't know?
Speaker 2:um, I, I can, I can see if we had enough data yes you know, and so you could probably somebody like you could probably go back and profile, take a look at a number of these profiles and kind of sort this data and I imagine putting some grand uh database to see what kind of uh you know what, what pops out, you know making some sort of things that aren't salient right now become like oh, I see, there's a pattern here.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly Like a meta analysis of all of this data, looking at what, where, which which link in that chain is is the weakest.
Speaker 1:Where can we break this? But, like you, you had mentioned rehabilitation, that's another application of this. But, like you had mentioned, rehabilitation, that's another application of this we can look at okay, this behavior historically has been maintained by this reinforcer. This is the function. Okay, now let's teach you an appropriate alternative behavior so you don't need to engage in this criminal behavior.
Speaker 1:One example that I used with Jeffrey, which you know unfortunately couldn't do anything, there was social skills training. Jeffrey did not know how to make friends, how to maintain friendships, how to have functional interpersonal relationships, so he lured people, drugged them just to cuddle with their unconscious bodies and then murder them. Right, if we could. Well, if someone could have looked at that, said, okay, the function of this behavior, even the doing a domo behavior, just being a goofball in school, function of this is social positive reinforcement. I'm going to teach you how to functionally have a relationship, how to have a conversation with a same age peer, how to understand their body language, how to read their facial expressions, how to have reciprocal conversation. Because he couldn't do any of this and so the response effort for that which would be the appropriate behavior was way too high. It was easier for him to engage in these criminal behaviors to access that same form of reinforcement.
Speaker 2:Right, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:So rehabilitation is a big piece of this too. Where are these gaps that this person is missing? How can we fill those gaps with appropriate pro-social behaviors instead of criminal behaviors? Right, right.
Speaker 2:Interesting. So that would be it for the rehabil profile. In prison. We can figure out what the contingencies are. We can apply that to their rehabilitation and perhaps making sure that there's an environment that supports maintaining whatever replacement behaviors they learned in prison or whatever facility that they're in.
Speaker 1:Yep, and there's a lot of good research. Some of it is kind of dated nowadays but my go-to text is the behavioral approaches to crime and delinquency by Edward Morris and Curtis Brockman, and they have a lot of information compiled in there.
Speaker 2:It's an anthology of research and there's so much good information in there about behavioral strategies used in prisons, in group homes, in halfway houses, things like token economies, behavioral contracts no-transcript and of course, along with that I'm an OBMS, so we might figure out how we're going to treat the inmates, to rehabilitate them, but we have to make sure that the security guards and everybody that's working in there engages in the right behavior that's going to support those things. There's a lot of change that needs to be made there.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and that's a huge piece of it as well. Not only do we have to change the inmates behavior, but we have to change law enforcement workers but also society prejudices, I guess, about inmates, criminals, people who engage in criminal behavior. What I've seen is that rehabilitation is not really the goal. More so is punishment, is punishment and um punishment, we know as behavior analysts doesn't work in the long term. Right, short term, yeah, but then once they get out, what are they going to do? Go right back to the behavior that was reinforcing, because those punishing contingencies are no longer in place. So if we can shift that attitude towards rehabilitation, towards empathy, I think we can do some good work. But that is a huge shift.
Speaker 2:It is. I think, before that shift is ever going to happen, we have to have leadership. I'm not getting political here and I want to go down that uh, that path, um, but it's got to be a value to change, uh, and to have an environment that's supportive of uh, you know, uh, of difference, you know, that's tolerant, um, you know, et cetera, et cetera, because, as it is it, you know there's, there's a lot of uh, there's a lot of coercion applied out in society and uh, you know, I don't, I don't, you know, without that it's plugging, you know it's plugging a hole, it's putting a band-aid on the situation because, even if they're rehabilitated, um, they're going to come back out into the real world and, as we know, just they're going to, they're going to bounce back and forth. I don't know what the greater recidivism is, but I know it's pretty high yes, yep, that criminal justice funnel once.
Speaker 1:Once you're in it might spit you out, but it'll put you right back in, unfortunately yeah, yeah, I mean, because there's nothing that's going to maintain those behaviors.
Speaker 2:You're going to go back right to uh, um, yeah, it's, it's man is so, but I mean it, it should be. You know, I do believe that there needs to be something out there that is punishing um, because you know, we all, like you know, hey, I don't, I don't, I try to do the speed limit when the cops looking as much as possible, because I don't. I was thinking about that the other day. Uh, in one of my, my last book, I I break down leadership into leading, training, coaching and managing, like these are these four hats, and the managing hat is about maintenance of uh, learned skills, um, and it involves leveraging existing contingencies and people don't want to talk about punishment. I'm like it's got to be in place. We all, you know, I mean, if I'm driving down the street the other day and I'm thinking, what if there was no speed limit here? And what if there's only, you know, a couple of cops around? But it's enough to keep behavior, you know, within a reasonable limit. So you have to have these things in place.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Of course, as we know, the problem is there's not enough positive reinforcement for value-added behavior. It would be nice if they really wanted to reduce speeding. All insurance companies would tie it right into your bill getting lowered. They would incentivize it. Yeah, they would, but we're not there yet. There's a thought that we should just be this way.
Speaker 1:And if you don't, you get punished. There's a lot of struggle there. Yes, there's this assumption that everyone is going to engage in rural, governed behavior and have the same values, when that is not the case. I actually had a conversation recently with one of my work individuals, an adult, and we were talking about determinism. And she asked me she's like because she has a religious background and I grew up religious but I'm not any longer but she asked me it was this classic free will determinism conversation, right, and I told her I'm like I'm a little determinist, yeah, and I said you know, if you are driving down the road at 3 pm, you're going to stop at every red light, you're going to stop at every stop sign and you're going to remain stopped until that red light turns green.
Speaker 1:Right Now, if you were driving down the road at 3 am with no one around you, you might not wait until that light turns green. You might stop, look around and then go right, because the environment influences our behavior, and I think that that's such a huge piece that we are missing in rehabilitation. People are expected to just you know better, go into the world and act accordingly. That's not always how that works. We have to have contingencies in the environment to help maintain that behavior.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we have to have good values right so that supports us, it creates a want to move in that direction. Values are just a way of being and doing, but we all know that we get behavior drift that moves away from that. I think that's that is really important to support that early on, and uh, and we want society to help to maintain those values. But unfortunately there's just a lot of, you know, there's a lot of challenges that exist that are going to pull people out. You know there's like a I think that this is a pretty harsh thing to say, but it's just an example.
Speaker 2:You know that, where people judge others for doing a crime and listen, you would do a crime too If the right contingencies were in place. Let's say, somebody had God forbid this horrible example if somebody had a gun to your child's head, you say, well, I'd never kill somebody. Well, under those conditions, would you if it meant that your child was going to die as a result? I don't even want to think about something like that. It's so terrible. So we're very quick to judge, but the only way to change this stuff, to make a difference, is rearranging the environment at scale and creating, you know, contingency deposit reinforcement for value-added behavior.
Speaker 2:But then there becomes an issue that you know in society, I think as a whole, is like again what are our values? And the problem is we don't all share values and I think you know through your you know we all have different learning histories, so it makes things different. You know we have different reinforcers. It's like it's why you know there's we like something like communism won't work. It could work on a small scale. People think it's like a bad name, like man, just people coming together to work towards a common goal. But you know, a large scale there's just too many histories to contend with. Yes, so it's not going to work.
Speaker 1:That's why utopia there's no such, we can never have aden too.
Speaker 2:Right, I think you know Skinner found that out pretty, you know, or he made it very clear that that's the deal, which, by the way, I mean I need to. You just brought that up. I want to plug this real quick in here, cause my, my guy, dave, dave, david Roth, sorry, I'm looking at this. I'm looking at this, I'm doing two things at one time. And David Palmer, they just did a foreword on one of Skinner's works and they're going to be having a Q&A later on Behavioral Live, yeah, today. Well, this is going to well, I don't know, I might be able to get this out to air earlier, but it's pretty cool, man, what they did.
Speaker 2:Uh, I love hearing dave talk about, uh, walden too, and pulling different, um, different quotes out from skinner and how, uh, you know, just just talking about how valued he was and how he wants to have a world that is, you know, uses positive reinforcement and that's against punishment. People just so miss the boat when it comes to that. And as I'm speaking, I'm just getting to the name of the book because I forget and he'll kill me for this, and so it's Skinner's Reflections on Behaviorism and Society. So it's been completely edited and you know they've done some forewords and really kind of gotten to the meat of some of the stuff. It was him and Dr David Palmer. So anyways, that book is out and if you're listening to this I'll drop a link in to where you can find it. Sorry to interrupt in the middle of this.
Speaker 1:No, I'll have to grab a copy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's very cool man, it's very cool. All right, I do.
Speaker 1:Oh sorry.
Speaker 2:No, go ahead Go ahead.
Speaker 1:I was going to say I do like how you brought up learning histories, because that is a huge point for me. I also, when I teach, I try to embed that in my students' brains that everyone has a a different learning history, like you say that right, and it's like, well, obviously we're all unique, we all da, da, da. But I don't think anyone really gets to the meat of what that means, that we have all been reinforced for different things. We, something that you have been reinforced for I might have been punished for. I might not have even accessed right, so I might not have been reinforced or punished. Everyone's experiences are different and I think that we need to really look at because ABA right, we typically look at the present, present behavior, um.
Speaker 1:I went to a talk actually at that same comfort conference that I presented on um, dr Linda LeBlanc. She spoke about the behavioral worldview and I loved that because that gets at that idea that behavior we might engage in the same behavior topographically, the function is different. Our reinforcement histories are different. We're really moving towards trauma-informed care and understanding that if I or if someone raises their hand and I flinch, you know, okay, that doesn't mean that I have a punishment history with that person who raised their hand to me Right, it means that I have a punishment history with that act.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you actually gave a really succinct example of that, because I think we're throwing around the term trauma too much and that would be like that's probably a good indicator that something's happened in the past.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, and so that doesn't tell me anything about that relationship with that person, right there. It tells me about the learning history, right? And so I really try to put that into my students' heads. That you know, be nice for one, because everyone has a different journey, everyone has a different struggle, and when you look at someone's behavior and you judge it and you say I would never do that, you have no idea what their contingencies are, you have no idea what their learning history is. Maybe that individual is stealing because they don't have food at home. Mom is working 18 hour shifts and they have to take care of their two young siblings and they don't have food. Yeah, so no one knows everyone's contingencies, and so just be nice.
Speaker 2:I agree with that so much. And when you do judge you're no longer looking, no, no, that you're suffering from behavioral myopia or no longer looking at life through a behavioral analytic lens. This happens a lot in in my world of OBM. People seem to be very compassionate when it comes to like a student, someone with autism. They see, you know, they look at the function of behavior, they try to adjust the environment. But when it comes to like the employees that are working with that, they forget about it and they gauge, blaming and like coercive techniques, et cetera, et cetera. Our field suffers from this massively.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So, as I'm thinking about this schools are a very important place that I support I think about school shooting and I think about they've poured a ton of money, unfortunately, into law enforcement as a preventative measure and I'm like I don't think that's the right direction to go.
Speaker 2:I think that I'm not saying that we shouldn't have security guards around, but like if somebody really wants to shoot, that's the first person they're going to shoot, probably in my thought. But if we had, if we use a behavioral approach and got all this data, we can really, if we really focus on designing the environments in schools, that it would probably drastically reduce the likelihood that we would have school shooting. And unfortunately, in education, the only thing they grade that schools are grading on is their. The school grade right, based on academics, but there needs to be grades that have to do with social validity. I believe, yeah, man, you feel safe, support is secured, and I think you know, I bet the schools that had high reports of that, from the learner to the teacher, to the principal on up, I bet there would be a direct correlation to reduction in you know, violent, you know the crisis incidents, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I have information for you on all of this. So let's see, last June maybe it was June, I want to say June last June here in Fargo, um, we had a shooting. It was not a school shooting, it was a police shooting. Um, an individual was found to have enormous amounts of ammo, um and police believe that he was on his way to the Fargo street fair. And police believe that he was on his way to the Fargo Street Fair to cause a lot of damage. But on his way there he was sidetracked by a. It was just a fender bender, the cops were there. So he pulled in across the street and he opened fire on the cops. He killed one, injured, I believe, two others, and that was huge.
Speaker 1:We don't have that here. I'd say we're relatively safe. You know we had the case of Savannah Graywind, but these cases are out of the norm. We typically don't have um violence like that. And after that shooting and then there was an additional there was a threat called into a middle school that I work at, um, the threat ended up being he was a mentally ill individual, um, but after after that incident, the county sheriff um decided to put together a threat assessment and threat management team. So I emailed him and I said, hey, I'm very interested in helping out with this.
Speaker 1:So I have been volunteering on the Cass County Threat Assessment and Threat Management team. I am the only behavioral specialist on the team. Most of it is law enforcement. We do have some like social services, social workers, but I am the only behavioral specialist and we so I went through a training course with the Department of Homeland Security on threat evaluation and reporting and I'm working with the FBI. They're part of the team and I just had a meeting with the FBI. They wanted to know what can we do better, and so I discussed with her. Here are all of these gaps. I know we can't fill them in all right now, but there are a lot of gaps and we need to do something here and we need to set up some of those contingencies when we can and things like that. So the school shootings and the as well, who is an internationally known war crimes investigator and he teaches school threat assessment. So threat assessment is another one of my areas of interest.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you what. You have a case example right here. I was dropped I was actually working in an alternative school as an assistant principal and they had another school. It was a very high title, one school, high poverty area, high crime area, and they had law enforcement being called out there on average twice a week, being called out there on average twice a week. I got dropped in there in January, right after winter break, and we only had to call cops out there one time and it was for a Baker Act, and I remember the local union president and the state union president came out and declared a miracle. And of course you and I know it was just a science of human behavior, right, it was using some practical application of the science, right, Practical organizational behavior management, changing the behavior of the adults in there to change the behavior of the students, and I mean you know, hey, that you know resulted in law enforcement getting to build relationships with the students and you know, be on the other end of that.
Speaker 2:Now I think that one of the issues with law enforcement I didn't mean for this to go in this direction, but I'm actually happy to talk about it I think there's way too much, and I don't want to overgeneralize this because I don't know. I know that there's good places, I'm certain, but I suspect that there's too much coercion going on in the actual departments themselves. They're very punitive in nature. I know of an area where they got 50% turnover. That's costing a fortune. Now we're blaming officers way too much, right? I don't believe they're not performing to a standard. It's a skill deficit or a motivational deficit, and they lack both. They're not being trained well enough in these preventions. They're not being trained well enough how to communicate well. They're also acting out of fear. Sometimes. I've been fighting my whole life, you know, and I can look at some of these guys. They're not in good shape, you know.
Speaker 2:So when you get under these conditions where people are yelling at you and screaming at you, you know you do things that you shouldn't do and anybody would. They're not super human. But if you are trained well enough and you feel safe because you are extremely-, Right, Well, and also, you were like. You were like I'm a boxer, I'm a mixed martial artist, right, you could scream at me. I do all this stuff. I don't feel threatened because I know I can handle my business. If they feel this way, I think, they can interact more calmly. They won't be so quick to engage in these behaviors that produce issues.
Speaker 2:So when they do engage these behaviors, the result is now that the citizens become fearful of them and they have disdain for them. So now when cops are interacting, you have people that are not following their directions, which I have a problem with, because I think that as citizens, we have a responsibility and this is creating safety issues for them and for other people, right? And so this is also frustrating law enforcement, because now they don't have, like there's no contingency. You can do whatever you want, you know, and I think that we need to start by training them much better. We need to start by positively, like the cameras are used to punish, right, I think we could train them in how to deescalate and let's do random sampling of this stuff and possibly reinforce them. Catch them being good, let's give badges for that, right, Like belt, like belt ranking, like you are a black belt communicator, and let's give them more money for that stuff, and they would save so much money on the back end from turnover, from lawsuits and all this stuff.
Speaker 2:So I think behavior analysis could dig in there. Let's make it so as part of just like you go in there, like you get to go to the gym to train. It's part of your regular curriculum that you got to become at least a purple belt in some specified and you have to maintain that belt as well, which means you also have to maintain your athleticism. But we can't just expect to cram that into their day. That's got to be part of their week where they're allowed to stay in shape and do this stuff, because it's also costing them in mental health, which is costing issues, and it's also hurting society. So I'm up on my box. I can see that we are very aligned with these thoughts, right, but I think we could do a lot to help out in there.
Speaker 1:I think so, and that is actually actually one of when I had that conversation with um, the fbi agent. That was one of the things I recommended was so I I don't know what type of um are you in direct care right now?
Speaker 2:no, no, I'm not at all man. Okay, I'm doing consulting or I do stuff.
Speaker 1:Organizational behavior management, yeah okay, so my, so my specialization. Cool, Okay, so I'm in direct care autism and we have to be trained in nonviolent crisis prevention and intervention.
Speaker 2:Oh, and let me pause you there you should be trained in professional crisis management. It's the only behavior based system in the world that's fluency based, the nonviolent PCM Yep M, yeah, pcma is and just full transparency. I work for them, but I don't get any money on sales or anything. I went to work for them because of the integrity of their program the only fluency-based program in the world ground and ABA from the ground up.
Speaker 1:So it's a plug for them because I believe it's what everybody needs okay, I'm going to write that down and bring that up to my uh company. Right now we do cpi training, so crisis prevention institute I've done it so many times like do it yeah but I I brought to the fbi agent you guys need some of this, you know you.
Speaker 1:I mean, don't just come in hot, you need to observe, be, you know non-threatening, because we know that behavior breeds behavior. So if you're coming in with your body language being threatening, the individual is going to be defensive and then we have that power dynamic that we, we it's kind of hairy, um, and I also. So that is one another passion of mine is is the training we need. We need training on how to um deal with individuals that might be mentally ill. Um, I gave a training earlier in April at the North Dakota Emergency Medical Services Conference on how to interact as first responders with individuals with autism. We've seen all over the country there are these horrible stories of autistic individuals being shot by police officers, security guards, because they are perceived as threatening. So that is one of my areas as well where I like to train. But in general, handling you know mental illness or whether it just be you know just what we would call, you know, uncooperative behavior. How do we handle this to ensure and maintain safety of everyone involved?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I want to. I want to. This is fresh out of my book, the positional authority and leadership. I want to say that this, right, we need. We need four things. I break down, like leadership, into four hats, and so it could be used from anywhere. It's just about improving and maintaining performance. We need a good leading which creates value for this stuff. Right, it's an MO. Right, we've got to have an MO. So somebody engaged in good leading behavior say hey guys, here's what we need to do and here's why it's going to make your job easier. It's going to keep you safe. You're going to get more money. Whatever it is, you know we you're going to, you're going to make a positive difference.
Speaker 2:We got to tap into people's reinforcers, right, their pain points and you know their, their, their, their values. Right, then, once, we create a want for that. But then we got to train fluency-based. Right, we can't just give these one-stop shops. Right, you go in. That's the problem with so many crisis management systems. You go, you get trained, you forget what you learned the next day. I've seen it, I've experienced it. It doesn't work that way. We need to build fluency and key skills. It can't be everything. What are some pivotal behaviors, some behavioral cusps that we can focus on. It will not stick without coaching.
Speaker 2:Coaching is about supporting the generalization of learned skills into the natural environment, which means that we need to be able to help people behave well enough long enough that it produces naturally occurring positive reinforcement for them. So we've got to make sure that's available for them and then we've got to make sure that we engage in managing, and managing is about maintenance of skills, right, and that is just leveraging the system. But the system has to be deliberately developed to possibly reinforce value-added behavior. So those skills that they learn they're coached with, we're going to maintain them. That's why I believe, like saying, the cameras and let's have a catch them being good, let's have them have a belt ranking in, like nonviolent interactions or whatever, and let's have that belt ranking. It could be just that they feel good about it, but I bet, if it was tied into a little bit of increased pay, that it's going to make it even more meaningful or increase access to some other things, and I think that they're going to save a lot of money on the back end. I think that they're going to build relationships with the community, but I think when they do that.
Speaker 2:I think we also need to put some onus back on the community as well. Cops tell you to do things. I believe that you got to do those things, you know, because it's creating an issue where other people like learning like we don't have to follow. You know police rules and I watched like somebody having a DA spend an hour talking a couple people down. Well, they're talking this person down because the person's in their face, telling them to fuck off and do all this stuff, which I don't think is okay. Um, that means those cops aren't out patrolling the community or doing these other things you know.
Speaker 2:So I think that citizens do have responsibility, that they've got to learn to interact with. You know law enforcement better as well, and they need to be trained and have value. And you know there's got to be agreed upon. But I think it's gonna. I think it's gonna start with the cops building their skills and stuff first and then, once we invest in that, then we say, okay, community, now it's on you. You need to now have this responsibility. Here are the key behaviors that you need to engage in when an officer asks you to do A, b and C.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think too, like, like you said, you know, first step, training the cops and then pairing Right. We got to pair with the community because right now the community has only Well, I shouldn't say only has a lot of negative viewpoints towards the cops. But if we can get cops back out there and pairing with the community in positive ways, um, a friend of mine, he he mentioned, bring back beat cops. You know who were part of the community. They were seen as people you can go to and talk to and trust. Um, we need to pair cops with the community to build back up that rapport and so everyone can engage in these behaviors that we want to and need to see.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think that again, another area for behavior analysis we could have a metric for that. Let's have some sociability out there. Let's find out the people that interact most with the cops experience it. Let's find out how they feel about them. But let's tie that in, let's not use that to beat them up. Let's find out a baseline of it and let's say here are the key behaviors you want to engage in. Let's use the coach and positively reinforce.
Speaker 2:I think when we have all this wraparound which you know it's got to start from leadership coming down in these departments and the communities, and the community is like everybody's got to be involved, there's got to be some responsibility, but we can guide it with science. So we've got something that we have some shared values here. Well, listen, it's been fascinating to discuss this. It's very cool to see that you and I think other people agree that are doing something different with the science. I hope that this podcast gets in the hands of some law enforcement somewhere and they want to pick it up and pull you in to do some more, because behavior analysis, we know, can make a big difference anywhere in the world. So, presley, if people want to reach out to you what would be the best way for them to do that?
Speaker 1:So we have. So ABAI, Association for Behavior Analysis International, has special interest groups. I am the sitting chair of the Forensic Behavior Analysis Special Interest Group, so you can find my email address on ABAI's website. We also have a Facebook group Forensic Behavior Analysis. We'll be at ABAI end of May here, so we're having a workshop. You can join the workshop. You can come to our business meeting, chat with us right there. I'll be there. Yeah, lots of ways, and I can send you. Well, you have my email too, Polly, right?
Speaker 2:Send me anything that you want. I don't know if there was something accessible you can send me. If you want something in the show notes, I can certainly send. I usually link your LinkedIn people's LinkedIn. Oh, that'll work too, yeah, but if there's anything else you want in the show notes, drop them to me and I'll make sure that people have access to them. Cool, all right, prezi Thanks.
