The Shaping of Human Tools: Part 4: Punishment and Reward

Welcome to part 4 of this series. If you are looking for a way back to the beginning you can go to the Introduction which has a table of contents or just to the the previous section.

Punishment is simply the negative consequence of a response. In that sense it does not necessarily have a purpose or goal; however the most common use of punishment in BDSM is as a component of the training or disciplining of the submissive.

The purpose training is to alter the responses of the submissive so that they more closely match the desires of the dominant. The range of areas where such responses might be controlled is limited only by the scope of the relationship itself. It can include everything from the smallest physical act to the overall philosophical view the submissive applies to moral decisions.

The applicability of punishment in training, and the type of punishment you use will depend largely on whether the change falls into the broad categories of conditioning or discipline.

It is my experience that in cases non-physical responses it is useful for the punishment to emphasize the mental/emotional/moral aspects of the transgression. In this circumstance the punishment should also be accompanied by an expression of disapproval or reprimand. A physical component to this punishment may well be useful to bring home the reprimand or to focus the submissive on the issue at hand but the physical alone will rarely bring about the change you desire.

The flip side of the coin would be a failure on the part of the submissive to exhibit the desired conditioned response. As conditioned responses generally bypass the conscious mind and are rarely affected by things like motivation, dedication or discipline it is not often useful to emphasize reprimand or judgment in association with this type of failure.

In short, when you need to talk to the mind you need more than the physical. When you need to talk to the body the physical is often the most direct method.

Reward is the opposite of punishment and may be used in conjunction with it. A reward is a positive consequence that is earned by the submissive when the proper response is manifested. Reward is often particularly effective at the bonding of responses to stimulus when there was no previous connection at all to that stimulus.

We see the use of reward most clearly in the training of animals. Since it is impossible to explain the responses you want, punishment doesn’t always make sense – especially since most dog training is in the realm of discipline, not conditioning. The mechanism then is to invoke a series of responses and reward the one we desire when it happens.

If you want to teach a dog to give you it’s paw on command how do you do it? You say “paw” and then reward when (and if) the dog hands the paw to you. It would be impossible to train them by saying “paw” and then punishing them when they do anything other than hand you their paw. All that would happen is the association of the word “paw” with punishment. Bad idea. The thing is, it isn’t possible to explain what you want to a dog. Thus, the odds of incorrect responses is very high. With humans it is different. You can explain, so it does become practical to punish a human for non compliance with an order.

Combinations of reward and punishment are even better.

An example of punishment: As a martial arts instructor one of the things I must teach is the proper method of positioning ones body to be able to defend against an incoming blow. Of this, one of the hardest things to instill in adults and children alike is that they must keep their hands up to be effective with our style. If they drop their hands then they will be vulnerable and they will be hit in the face.

• I can explain this to them.
• I can show this to them.
• I can praise them for keeping their hands up (reward)

After all that, a large portion of those people will still drop their hands during a sparring session because they feel faster or more nimble in that position.

• Are these adults immature? No.
• Are they stupid? No.
• Do they lack respect for me as their teacher? No.
• Do they lack respect for our Sensei? No.
• Do they lack dedication? No.

What is the cause of the problem then? Simple; they are dealing with a complex and often unfamiliar situation that is overwhelming their conscious minds ability to process. The result of this is that their mind is “farming out” responsibility for some of their responses to deeper reflexes or instincts to free up conscious attention to handle the problems of defense and response. In other words, they have had to allow some things to go on “auto pilot”.

Sometimes, the problem is different. They may already have reflexes or neural pathways that encode a different response to this problem. Maybe it is a response ingrained by a previous Sensei or style. In this case, under the stress and complexities of combat they may simply not have the available concentration to over-ride the reflex and do everything else needed of them.

In my experience, a large portion of these students will not alter that response until they get hit in the face a few times (punishment) by their opponent. This punishment drastically raises the priority of altering that response or forming a new one and they will assign much more conscious brain power to making that change.

Rewarding them for keeping their hands up does not fix this problem nearly as efficiently as the negative re-enforcement of being hit in the face for keeping their hands down. We are trying to create a reflex in the body so that the hands will stay up even when the mind is staggered, distracted or confused. We want to talk, as it were, to the body so we need to speak the language the body understands.

Alternately, for responses requiring complex rational thought reward is much better. Rewarding a submissive for the correct choice of language in a complex social situation is a good idea. Punishing them for the language choice probably won’t help. Interestingly the closely related area of tone is the inverse. Since tone and body language is rarely consciously controlled it is effective to punish inappropriate tone or body language.

On to part 5, The Importance of Consistency…

Image note: The associated image is used under the Creative Commons license at this link, and was taken by Alex Lines and posted on Flickr.