Operant Behavior Essay

831 Words2 Pages

Part of the college experience is getting to live in a residence hall with a roommate. My roommate is a friend from my hometown, Tori, who I’ve known since elementary school. I love Tori, but I hate that she leaves her textbooks and notebooks all over our room. The books trip me in the mornings, make our room look dirty, and leave me little room to do my own homework or walk throughout the room. I understand the behavior if she’s working on the homework at the time, however, she leaves her books out even when she’s out of the room. This behavior didn’t start immediately upon us arriving at Iowa, it started about two weeks into the first semester. Tori got busy, and stopped prioritizing keeping the room tidy. Operant behavior is the behavior that leads to consequences of either reinforcement or punishment. The operant behavior in my roommate situation is Tori leaving her books and notebooks all over the room. Operant conditioning is the association between the behavior and the consequences …show more content…

Vicarious conditioning is learning the consequences of an action by seeing someone else complete the action and deal with the consequences. An example would be watching your friend get in trouble by your teacher for swearing in class. Witnessing a classmate get into trouble would teach an individual not to swear at school. There is also observational learning, which is learning by seeing and imitating behavior of other people. An example is learning how to do laundry by watching a parent do laundry. If an individual watches their parent prep the laundry load, load the washer, and then transfer the clothes to the dryer, they could mimic that and learn the behavior. I could utilize observational learning in my own situation, and teach Tori to pick her homework supplies up by constantly picking my own supplies up. She would observe me keeping the room clean and putting things away, and mimic my

Open Document