Stop Biting Your Nails through Conditioning

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Biting my nails is a great because it relieves stress and helps with boredom. It is unwanted however because it leaves my finger nails in an undesired state.
To try and combat and modify this behaviour I attempted both positive reinforcement and positive punishment. For instance I allowed myself 1 hour extra on the computer if I went the whole day without biting my nails additionally after attempting the positive reinforcement above I attempted positive punishment which consisted of me doing 50 push ups each time I repeated the operant response.
Out of positive reinforcement and punishment only the reinforcement was successful for my behaviour modification. I believe this was the case for a number of reasons but dominantly because the positive punishment had a lack of severity. The reason I came to this conclusion was because I realized in the case of positive reinforcement if I committed the operant response at least once my entire day of hard work would be ruined. When I made the switch to positive punishment I realized in the eventuality I performed the operant response I could just do the 50 push ups and be done with it. Upon comparison of my success and failure I reflected and realized if the punishment was more severe than 50 push ups I would not do it for actual fear and reluctance of doing the positive punishment. For example if the punishment was a 1000 push ups each repeated operant response I would most likely not bite my nails. I did enjoy the modified behaviour as my nails seemed fuller and less scarred but it was not long of an experiment enough so refraining from biting my nails was still a conscious action and took a lot of effort.
In regards to my personality traits I suspect my conscientiousness was the most prevalent through the entire experiment. I believe this is the case because not biting my nails took a lot of control and determination. For example throughout the experiment refraining from carrying out the operant response took effort. Conscientiousness deals with how goal oriented a person is or is not so if I had less conscientiousness my efforts most likely would have ended a lot sooner.
When I succeeded in refraining from biting my nails the first day I was filled with great pride as I knew it was because of my own ability and restraint. This coincides with the idea that I have always had an internal locus of control.

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