Ok I am not defending the practice but what about beating your wife? (this is the way I keep hearing it used to explain why the abused stay with the abuser) I always thought and still think it is bullshit. Case in point. Lets don dickle it for a second. Lets say you work a nice and cushy cubicle job you are happy with it and everything. You go home happy because you enjoy your job. Now one day at exactly 8am as you are seated and smack you upside the back of your head as hard as I can. Then I walk and go on my day of mine. Next day same thing. Next day same thing. Lets say this goes on for a month or more. You (not you specifically) are telling me that at exactly 8am your not going to duck to avoid it? Now with my argument how does pavlov's dog apply to battered wife syndrom?

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 4 points 15 hours ago

The person will cringe as soon as they hear the door open, because they know what's next.

Battered spouse is more complex, there are codepency issues, kids, poverty, self-esteem from constant degrading behaviour etc. The spouse may choose to stay for a complex set of reasons

[–] petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I'm not entirely sure what conversation you're wrapping people into. I don't know what they say about battered wife syndrome, you would have to tell us.

That said, I think you're missing the push and pull nature of spousal abuse. It's not just punching your wife, it's creating an unstable environment that the victim believes they can overcome and that it is valuable to overcome it.

The negative reinforcement side, that is the abuse and the removal of it for "good behavior", is often paired with shame. The wife is not just ducking an uppercut, she is made to believe that she deserved it. Would you divorce your husband if you thought you were at fault for all of your marital problems? Abuse victims often think that they are lucky someone is even willing to put up with them.

The positive reinforcement side, that is the honeymoon-like love-bombing that happens between abusive episodes, is what the spouse actually wants. But it's given only intermittently, like a skinner box (another concept you should look up), which creates a dynamic very much like gambling to make an addict of the victim. They spend most of their time trying to figure out how to create those good times without realizing that it's being deliberately withheld from them like a dangling carrot on stick.

Both of these contribute to why the spouse stays.

If your contention has more to do with operant conditioning not being inherently evil, uh, that would be true. It's a normal psychological function. Abusers... abuse it, but there are other reasons why it might be useful to associate a sound with food, for instance.