Religion and operant conditioning.

(This is a post I started writing back in March, then never quite finished and have only just come back to. But we get there eventually!)

The other day at uni (yes, I’m back at uni! I might blog more about that another time) I was reminded of operant conditioning. For those that aren’t familiar with it, operant conditioning is a part of behavioural theory, notably worked on by Skinner. (You might have heard of his box.) The basic idea is that you can influence and change the behaviour of someone through positive or negative reinforcement and punishment (positive and negative here meaning giving or removing something, not good or bad). A classic example, for instance, is potty training - you want a child (or a pet) to learn how to toilet in a particular way, and so you train for that and reward that.

And we see this sort of thing all over the place, particularly with kids, whether it be in teaching or parenting. And the note was specifically, you know, we need to be careful about how we use this, because this isn’t considering any underlying reasons for a behaviour. And my mind immediately jumped to another example - religion.

Religion does this so much. Don’t do this, it’s a sin. Don’t do that, you’ll make God sad, or angry. Stop doing that or you’ll go to hell. Do this to be saved, do this to go to heaven.

As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t great 😅 the stakes are basically the biggest they can be. And so it kinda removes people’s free will, in a sense - which is a rather big thing! Religion creates this environment where there’s these very clear sets of behaviours that are accepted and encouraged, and others that are very much not. It’s creating - and enforcing - conformity.

That’s not healthy for people. And obviously religions don’t all do this in as strong a sense as others, and it will vary from community to community. But by and large - there’s a strong amount of shaping people into specific behaviours. And particularly when people grow up in this framework - it shapes your brain. In a very real way. Obviously I'm talking from a Christian background and upbringing, so that's the context I know and am more familiar with. But I wonder if it's possible for religion to be free of this way of doing things, or if it's ingrained to how religion functions.

Of course, it's not just religion that does this. Society at large, and communities in various places, do it as well, whether consciously or unconsciously. Fads and crazes often play into this psychology - do this thing, get rewarded for it, it will make you feel good, be accepted by other people, etc. And it's a tricky thing to watch out for, even when it's something that you might have heard of before. Because we like the reward! And we don't like getting punished. And that's okay. Just because there's a reward/punishment system in place for something doesn't mean that it's inherently untrustworthy, malicious, or bad. It's more about how it's used, the messaging around it, and what it's trying to get you to do.

I guess the important point to get out of this is to question things. Am I doing this because I actually want to do it myself, or am I just doing it to get a reward, or avoid a punishment? Being more aware of that happening, questioning that, being okay with stepping outside of that when we don't want to engage with those systems; even if that can make life harder at times.