Format and Habit Formation: The Law of Parallel Reinforcement

The main array of what is formed inside us is our habits. Any role that you play for a long time becomes your nature: you get used to it, it sticks to you.

“You did an act — you reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; you sow a character, you reap a destiny.”

As a general rule, a habit is formed through positive reinforcement repetitions, and usually within 20 to 40 days. However, there are exceptions to every rule.

Sometimes the habit doesn’t develop. It happens that the repetition of even seemingly quite successful actions does not lead to a habit; moreover, it leads to disgust and intensification of internal protest.

It happens, for example, that you play some roles day after day and feel that this role is not yours, it does not become yours. What is the feature here? Why do some roles stick, and some are rejected? Or: why, after repetition, a habit sometimes quickly arises and what was previously alien becomes habitually native, while the other will do for years and internally feel that this is alien, that he is violating his fragile human psyche.

For example, parents daily remind their children to brush their teeth and do exercises in the morning. In one family, the children quickly mastered this, and in another family, every morning, they scolded: the children reluctantly do it every time, but good habits are not developed — for years!

What is the reason? The reason is precisely that children do every time — reluctantly.

Let’s decipher: they don’t just go to brush their teeth, but do it with a disgruntled face and internal (or even external) grumbling. They do exercises emphatically lazily and displeasedly … What kind of skill do they actually reproduce and strengthen every day? They daily strengthen the habit of dissatisfaction with brushing their teeth and morning exercises, they reinforce the reluctance to do this daily, day after day they form the habit of not wanting to do it.

Thus, let us formulate the law of parallel reinforcement: the effectiveness of the main reinforcement depends on the parallel accompaniment that creates a background for it, in which a person fixes his attitude to what is happening. When a person performs an action, in fact, he performs not one, but two actions: the action itself and the expression of attitude towards it, his emotional action. If the emotional action was positive, it reinforces the main action and helps form the habit; if the emotional action was negative, it prevents the formation of addiction. More precisely, a person gets used to protest against the performance of the main action.

The Law of Parallel Reinforcement determines the formation of performance (or not) of employees. It is not enough to track whether the employee has fulfilled your order or not: just the fact of execution says little about anything. The most important point is the parallel psychological comment that the person inside gave your order, the format (text, breath and face) with which he did all this. If you haven’t tracked this down and haven’t provided a positive format if necessary, then you can give an employee a task a hundred times in a row, and the employee will do it poorly a hundred times. He will get used to doing it badly, get used to doing it and internally protest.

Everything that concerns raising children and accustoming them to good habits is determined by the law of parallel reinforcement to an even greater extent. If at work the format of behavior of employees is still somehow set, then in the family parents rarely follow this. The result is that children seem to obey their parents, but only “seemingly”, in fact, learning to treat the requests and demands of their parents without respect, accompanying them with whining and negative remarks.

Most of the experiences about finding a vocation are resolved at the level of combinational reflexes, these are simply positive or negative habits that we develop in ourselves and in our children about certain activities.

We know that changing habits is hard work. It is always easier to create new habits than to re-educate, re-learn from what is already there. And why? Because for people, as soon as they start doing what they can’t do, the childish habit of expressing dissatisfaction when faced with difficulties works. And then, retraining, he gets used to discontent. If you can’t handle it, then relearning turns into torment. If you decide to retrain yourself or a child / employee, then first of all look: how much power you have, leverage and the ability to track the format. See →