Final answer:
The question revolves around the use of positive reinforcement and shaping behavior in psychology to influence human actions, such as children cleaning their room. It also touches on the concept of the prisoner's dilemma in game theory, where cooperative behavior can lead to mutually beneficial outcomes.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question asks us to consider the effectiveness of reinforcement theory and shaping behavior in humans, particularly through positive reinforcement. Behavioral psychology suggests that incremental rewards or consequences can be used to reinforce desired behaviors.
Parents might employ this strategy to encourage their child to clean their room by providing a toy or praise as positive reinforcement after each completed task. Similarly, a negative reinforcement could be the removal of nagging once the room is cleaned. In educational settings, the use of operant conditioning principles can be quite effective, as demonstrated by the Dallas school program that paid second-grade students for reading books, which resulted in improved reading comprehension.
In the case of Becky and Sarah, their cleaning behavior could be analyzed through a prisoner's dilemma framework, which involves game theory to predict choices between cooperative and non-cooperative strategies when faced with mutual interdependence.