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Five theoretical perspectives of psychology
Five theoretical perspectives of psychology
Essay on b.f. skinner
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Different psychologists have made tremendous insights into human behaviors. Among them, B.F. Skinner, a behavior psychologist, coined a new principle called operant conditioning. This writing shortly tries to explore how Skinner’s approach, operant conditioning, studies formation of human behavior at first. In the second place, the paper revolves around an example where I find myself victim of operant condition that is how I developed a fearful superstitions from my childhood. In the study of shaping behaviors, Skinner’s idea of operant conditioning makes incredible insights into explaining a wide variety of behavior. According to him surrounding environment where a person grows up influences to shape behaviors (McLeod, 2015, para. 4). It
In Chapter 4, In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing, the author Lauren Slater starts the chapter off telling the true story of how a young woman, Kitty Genovese, was brutally murdered and raped outside of her apartment complex. What was most shocking in the aftermath is there were a total of 38 witnesses and not a single person did anything to help her. This raised many concerns as to why the witnesses did nothing. When they were being interviewed by the cops, they stated that they just did not want to get involved(p.94), thus “diffusing responsibility”, this is a term used by two psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latane, who were very concerned with and wanted to understand why nothing was done to aid young Kitty Genovese as she was being stabbed and raped.
Classical conditioning and operant conditioning play a huge role with the future use of a drug. First, just like in the theory of Pavlov, classical conditioning with the role of substance and addiction can start to form much similar. For example, if an individual sits in traffic after getting off work every day and pulls out marijuana to smoke in the car, the car will then start to become the conditioned stimulus to the substance, the individual will pair sitting in traffic now as its time for the daily joint. Since the car is now the conditioned stimulus to the individual, the person will now start to experience those cravings every time they are sitting in the car. Most of the time, the individual will experience relapse, since the body is now fully conditioned to
Skinner, B.F. A Brief Survey of Operant Behavior. Cambridge, MA: B. F. Skinner Foundation. 1938
At Harvard, B.F. Skinner looked for a more objective and restrained way to study behavior. Most of his theories were based on self-observation, which influenced him to become a enthusiast for behaviorism. Much of his “self-observed” theories stemmed from Thorndike’s Puzzle Box, a direct antecedent to Skinner’s Box. He developed an “operant conditioning apparatus” to do this, which is also known as the Skinner box. The Skinner box also had a device that recorded each response provided by the animal as well as the unique schedule of reinforcement that the animal was assigned. The design of Skinner boxes can vary ...
Skinners studies included the study of pigeons that helped develop the idea of operant conditioning and shaping of behavior. His study entailed making goals for pigeons, if the goal for the pigeon is to turn to the left, a reward is given for any movement to the left, the rewards are supposed to encourage the left turn. Skinner believed complicated tasks could be broken down in this way and taught until mastered. The main belief of Skinner is everything we do is because of punishment and reward (B.F. Skinner).
Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner, an American behavioral psychologist, is best known for his experiments on changing behavior. With behavioral psychologists Pavlov and Watson as his inspiration, Skinner formulated his theory of operational conditioning. His idea of “shaping” behavior is prevalent in the parenting and teaching techniques of children and students.
According to numerous references in the field of Psychology, a cognitive psychologist is an individual that studies topics such as thinking, problem-solving, learning, attention, memory, forgetting, and language acquisition, among several others. Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies mental processes, and its core focus is on how people acquire, process, and store information. While great research has been done within the field of psychology, there are individuals such as B.F. Skinner who criticize its strides, purposes, and research methods.
Various perspectives on behavior have changed the face of psychology over the centuries. Some of the most influential of these theories on behaviorism were made by John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner, and Edward C. Tolman. The manner in which behavior is modified has become a growing debate in the aspect of which technique is more reliable and effective. The theories from these three men have become a foundation for many different schools of thought throughout modern psychology. Through their research, many modern psychologists have grown a better knowledge on why people react and behave during certain situations or in different environments. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the various theories of Watson and Skinner to that of Tolman.
B.F Skinner developed operant conditioning. It’s the theory that one’s behavior is influenced by the actions that follow afterward. If the actions that follow afterward are consequences, then the behavior according to the theory will fade away. If the actions afterward is a positive action like a reward the behavior will continue on.
In order to understand Skinner’s theory, one must first understand the theory of classical conditioning. Classical conditioning, most notably theorized
Many efforts to address emotional eating have emphasized the importance of effective mood regulations skills to enhance one’s ability to tolerate stress or negative mood without using food to cope (Telch, Agras, & Linehan, 2001). Only within the past 20 years has research focused on applying more traditional learning processes to the development and maintenance of emotional eating. The primary difference between these perspectives, as exemplified by the Davidson model, is the de-emphasis of cognitions and motivations for eating (e.g., to escape negative mood) in the learning models, such as the classical conditioning model.
The psychologist B. F Skinner believed that “changes in behavior are the result of an individual’s response to events (stimuli) that occur in the environment” (All About Operant Conditioning, 2006, Para 2). The following paper will discuss a learning situation in which an exercise routine is thought. The paper will evaluate the application of instrumental conditioning to this learning situation. As part of the analysis the learning situation will be described, the paper will compare and contrast the concepts of positive and negative reinforcement as related to learning situation, and explain the role of reward and punishment in learning an exercise routine. Finally, the paper will explain which form of instrumental conditioning would be most effective in teaching someone an exercise routine. Instrumental conditioning is the learning procedure that believes that “the organism must act in a certain way before it is reinforced; that is, reinforcement is contingent on the organism’s behavior” (Hergenhahn & Olson, 2005, pg 23). The major contributors of Instrumental conditioning are B.F Skinner, John Watson, and Edward Thorndike. These three theorists believed that “learning is the result of the application of consequences; that is, learners begin to connect certain responses with certain stimuli” (Huitt & Hummel, 1997, Para 1). In society the behaviors individuals manifest are learned behaviors which are learned through some form of conditioning.
Overall, Behaviorism is an important topic in today’s society. Although the main focus was in the 20th century, Behaviorism is still talked about today by many psychologists. Three important figures like Watson, Pavlov and Skinner were only a few that came up with their own experiments in order to prove that behaviorism all depends on observable behavior. Hence, Behaviorism is known to be behaviors that are acquired through conditioning in the
In my reaction paper I will discuss B.F. Skinners theory operant conditioning and the ways he tested it out on animals, how it relates to humans, and how I can relate operant conditioning to my own personal life.
The first core concept suggested by the web article depicts human development forming from the interplay of an individual’s biology and experience. Early scientists in this particular field created testable hypotheses to understand the dynamic interaction between the nature-nurture phenomenon. Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov’s and North American scientist B.F. Skinner’s research in behaviorism contain principles in classical and operant conditioning which can help further explain this occurrence.