My topic for the case study is frequent road rage. Road rage manifests as aggressive behavior by motor vehicle drivers and includes verbal insults, rude gestures or physical threats to another driver as a way of releasing frustration or intimidating them. This behavior can lead to assaults, altercations, and collisions whose results could be grave. Supposing a client has come to me because they want to understand and change their behavior, the first step involves identification of the behavior. The client’s undesired behavior is frequent road rage. Notably, the client has struggled with road rage for over three years and feels it is time to change for the better. In most of the instances that the client has been involved, the outcome has been severe with the extreme of violence manifesting. As he admits, the behavior has negatively impacted his life as it causes him to lose face in front of his colleagues when he engages in fighting and it has become a vicious cycle. He also feels extremely stressed especially since his road rage encounters have become more and more frequent. There are three theories that could help explain the development and the persistence of the client's undesired behavior. These are; the social learning theories, classical and operant theories.
Social learning theory
In the social learning theory, all behavior gets learned through the social context. It can occur entirely by direct instruction or through observation regardless of the presence or absence of reinforcement. Observation of the rewards and punishments of the given behavior serves to reinforce or discourage it ( Rosenthal & Zimmerman, 2014) . The social learning theory applies the principle of reciprocal determinism to highlight the influences of the environment on the individual and vice versa. Notably, social learning could help the client in getting rid of their frequent road rage behavior. The behavior model can be generated and the client’s learning experiences while on the road explored. Through the model, the client can understand the influences of the experiences on decision making. As a result, an observable change in behavior can be triggered.
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Classical conditioning theory
Based on classical conditioning theory, the development and the persistence of the client's undesired behavior can be better understood. Classical conditioning theory holds that in every case where one has “learned” to react spontaneously to particular sort of provocation with excitement, fear, joy, or anticipation, they can be said to be classically conditioned ( McSweeney & Murphy 2014) . In this case, the stimulus is unconditioned as the client instinctively elicits the predicted response which is rage after encountering frustrations on the highway. In most of the cases, the stimulus is unconditioned, and hence the response is also unconditioned as highlighted in Pavlov’s experiment.
However, with the continued learning of a particular behavior, the client has faced conditioned stimulus. For instance, he has learned to associate the loud hooting by other drivers to mean hostility. As a result, he gets enraged and responds automatically to the driver who hoots loudly at him. He has also associated other behaviors such as failure to signal when changing lanes, flashing of bright lights and use of cellphones by other drivers while driving with confrontation. Although he often manifests the aggressive behavior unconditionally, the initial process was conditioned. The learned behavior has caused persistence of the client’s behavior where he responds simultaneously to the stimuli, and it has become the main reason for the sustenance of the behavior.
Operant conditioning
Operant conditioning holds that a transformation in behavior is the center focus in concluding that learning has happened and could explain the development and persistence of the client's undesired behavior. One of the aspects of operant conditioning is reinforcements. Reinforcements can be positive or negative, and they predict the probability of reoccurrence of the behavior ( Stein & Belluzzi, 2014) . In positive reinforcements, a positive stimulus gets elicited after the manifestation of the behavior. The client feels strengthened by the positive outcomes of some of his encounters, and thus reoccurrence becomes inevitable.
On the other hand, negative reinforcements influence the recurrence of his behavior as he manages to get rid of the negative stimulus after eliciting the behavior. The client manages to overcome all feelings of guilt with a self-righteous mentality. On the contrary, punishment serves to weaken the behavior. In type one, also known as presentation punishment, the behavior gets weakened through reducing the chances of its reoccurrence ( Stein & Belluzzi, 2014) . In fact, presentation punishment elicits an aversive stimulus directly after the manifestation of the behavior. The aversive stimulus discourages the behavior thus weakening it. Similarly, removal punishment reduces the probability of recurrence of the behavior by eliminating the positive stimulus directly after the behavior manifests.
Through the principle of extinction, the reduction in the frequency of the behavior eventually causes it to cease. Also, when the reinforcers are eliminated, the behavior eventually ceases. The client could employ discrimination and react differently to similar situations thus prompting the stoppage of the undesired behavior. Given the complex nature of his behavior, shaping could also help in eliminating the behavior. Notably, shaping deals with the reduction of seemingly complex behavior into a sequence of simple behaviors ( McSweeney & Murphy 2014) . The sequence helps predict the outcome at the end and thus provides key insights on curbing it before manifestation. The manifestation of every behavior on the sequence could be approximated, and the reinforcement of the approximations could help reduce the progress in the response sequence. The client could utilize the fixed interval schedule to deduce the time taken for the behavior to manifest and thus keep awareness. The second approach could be variable interval schedule with varying the time intervals.
In conclusion, my case study focuses on a client eliciting a frequent road rage behavior. In the discussion, there are three theories that could help explain the development and the persistence of the client's undesired behavior. These are; the social learning theories, classical and operant theories. Much as these theories have differences, they can be applied to helping the client overcome the undesired behavior.
References
McSweeney, F. K., & Murphy, E. S. (2014). The Wiley Blackwell handbook of operant and classical conditioning . John Wiley & Sons.
Rosenthal, T. L., & Zimmerman, B. J. (2014). Social learning and cognition . Academic Press.
Stein, L., & Belluzzi, J. D. (2014). Operant conditioning of individual neurons. Quantitative analyses of behavior , 7 , 249-264.
