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ethical decision making and behavior
Operant Conditioning Contingency
merit and demerit of operant conditioning
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Operant Conditioning is a type of learning that reflects behavior through a system of reward and punishment. Through the consequence, a person will learn to see if the behavior is good or bad. An example of operant conditioning regarding my behavior as a college student was during my second year of college. I had a teacher assistant that gave us a stamp card, so she can stamp every time we went to discussion. Each discussion section we were to get three stamps. By the end of the quarter we would need thirty stamps to get full credit. If we got all thirty stamps for attending and participating in discussion sections for the entire ten weeks we would get an extra five points of extra credit. For every discussion section we did not show up, my …show more content…
It reflects behavior through observations of watching others’ behaviors and their consequences. During college, I experienced observational learning in class. One of my friends was caught cheating during a test. I watched the teacher assistant come by his seat and take his test away from him. He was brought outside and had to talk to the professor. He ended up getting an F on the midterm and ended up failing the class. Through the experience of seeing the consequences that he had for cheating on a midterm, I learned that I should work hard and study. I always knew that cheating was unacceptable, but because I observed his behavior and know the consequences now, I am afraid to look around the classroom when I am taking a test. I keep my eyes on my own paper and focus on only my …show more content…
It is the values that we internalize and feel like we must follow in order to be well behaved in society. Behavioral perspective accounts for the development of conscience because within the behavioral perspective we learn that the consequent of punishment is for “bad” things we do and rewards are given for the “good” things we do. The positive and negative reinforcements given after a particular behavior reflects our decision making later on and affects our conscience. We develop our conscience based on the behaviors we learned to be “good” or “bad”. We internalize what we learn and the consequences associated with the learning. When we do something bad like steal something, we think about the punishment associated with that behavior and the guilt that comes after the behavior. Since we internalized the conditions of the behavior, we are less likely to perform the action because our conscience tells us that it is a “wrong”
Joshua Klein was at a cocktail party with his friends when one was complaining about the crows in their yard. Joshua mentioned that they should train them to do something useful, and the friend responded that it was impossible. This is what brought Klein to his idea of making a vending machine for crows. Klein studied crows and found that they adapt a lot to live in our world. He figured he would make something useful and beneficial for both the birds and us. After spending years reading about crows, Klein made his vending machine.
“Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior” (Cherry). Positive reinforcement which is praising a person for doing something good verses negative reinforcement which is an unpleasant remark a punishment. B.F. Skinner did an experiment on a rat, the rat was taught to push two buttons, one to receive food and the other was a light electric shock. The rat tried both buttons and realized which button was good and which one was bad. This experiment goes to show that upon the rewards and punishment system one can learn their rights from their wrongs through a series of lessons. Kincaid and Hemingway both use operant conditioning to show human behavior under stimulus control.
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.
Operant conditioning is a kind of conditioning, which examines how often a behavior will or occur depending on the effects of the behavior (King, 2016, pg. ). The words positive and negative are used to apply more significance to the words reinforcement or punishment. Positive is adding to the stimulus, while negative is removing from the stimulus (King, 2016). For instance, with positive reinforcement, there is the addition of a factor to increase the number of times that the behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of positive reinforcement is when a child is given an allowance for completing their household chores. The positive reinforcement is the allowance which helps to increase the behavior of doing chores at home. In contrast with negative
Operant conditioning is when your behavior is based on consequences. If Zane has never been praised for playing his oboe well, then he might not be as confident as if he had been complimented. If he has gotten compliments from playing before then he is expected to do better during his evaluation.
Since the arrival of our twins undesirable behavior has manifested in one of our 11 yr. old. While initially very conscienscious in helping attend to the infants & her ordinary duties, she has become accustomed to playing with them mostly now. This play in itself is great, except they no longer get the changing & feeding expected. Furthermore she uses them as an excuse now to put off doing the minimal domestic maintenance formerly performed. She is generally unresponsive to negative reinforcement options. Past experience shows she responds best to tactile & humanistic behaviorist techniques, backed up by specific instruction from our sacred texts observed in our household.
Overall Operant conditioning can be used to describe the process as modifying behaviour through positive (rewards for behaviour) and negative (punishment for behaviour) reinforcement. Burrhus Skinner was someone who investigated operant conditioning, he believed to really understand behaviour that you need to look at actions and consequences of behaviour. Burrhus skinner investigated his theory of operant conditioning with a rat. Skinner created a box in which the box contained a lever which released a food pellet when pressing down on the lever, which makes it a positive reinforcement as food isn’t a punishment its shown as a good thing when receiving food especially for animals. The Rat would be left in the box to figure out for itself that the lever would release food when pressed. To begin with the rat would accidentally press the lever and after a few times the rat quickly figured out that every time the lever is pressed they will receive food. After the rat realised the lever would release food it would result in the rat repeatedly pressing the lever. Skinner also investigated negative reinforcement, he did this by running a low electrical current through the box, then placing a rat within the box. When the lever was to be pressed the electric current would be switched off. When the rat would be placed in the box it would accidentally press the lever. Eventually the rats would learn to press down the lever to ensure they wouldn’t receive an electrical
The first systematic study regarding operant conditioning was taken place in the 1800’s by the Psychologist, Thorndike. Thorndike formally defined operant conditioning as a type of learning that is controlled by the consequences of an organism’s behavior. However according to lecture, operant conditioning can be simply thought as performing an action in order to receive a reward. Operant conditioning can be useful when trying to deal with procrastination, increase efficacy of teaching, or to improve motivation. Therefore, operant conditioning can be used as a behavioral modification program to devise a more specific weight loss program to increase the roommate’s chances of making it on the football team. The program will include the following
Learning can happen in numerous ways, but all fall under the category of being either classical conditioning or operant conditioning when we are dealing with Psychology terms. These two habituation methods are very comparable in nature, but do possess very specific distinctions in their differences. The major difference between classical and operant conditioning is the type of behaviors being conditioned. Classical is focused more on reflex and automatic actions whereas operant deals more with voluntary actions. Classical and operant conditioning are also different in the way they are taught. Classical conditioning involves introducing the subject to a neutral signal before reaction. Classical conditioning has four basic principles associated with it: Unconditioned Stimulus, Unconditioned Response, Conditioned Stimulus, and Conditioned Response. In operant conditioning, the reaction of the subject is responded with either a reinforcement, where the behavior is increased or a punishment, where the behavior is decreased.
Operant conditioning can be attributed with behaviorist Edward Thorndike and his Law of Effect, which states that behaviors associated with good consequences are more likely to occur again in the future, while behaviors associate with bad consequences are less likely to occur (EdPsych Modules, p. 161). Behaviorist B.F. Skinner expanded on these ideas to form a three phase model of operant conditioning known as The ABC’s
Operant conditioning, which is called instrumental conditioning; similar to ontogenetic selection (B.F. Skinner), is a type of learning to obtain an achieved behavior as goal-oriented; strengthens behavior through rewards or punishments. These rewards and punishments that control behaviors are antecedents (discriminative stimuli) signaling those consequences. All life forms strive for goal-oriented conditioning The bacterium finds its way, somewhat inefficiently, up a chemical gradient; the dog begs for a bone; the politician reads the polls to guide his campaign (Wikipedia). The examples given are known as ontogenetic selection that is guided by consequences through a lifeform 's life.
I observed the teacher sitting down with a group of students reading a book. As she would read she would have the children repeat what she would say. “Say goodnight to the bird”. This relates to Albert Bandura’s Social Learning theory. This theory claims people learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling.(Berk 2013) The kids are learning by imitating what the teacher is having them say. Later I observed a kid walk over to a small bookshelf and knocked it over. The teacher came over and was visibly upset. She scolded the kid very sternly for this action. This relates to B.F Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning. This is the idea that behavior is determined by its consequences. Whether it be reinforcement or punishments, which make it more or less likely that behavior will happen again.(Berk 2013) Since the adult was stern and made it clear she was disappointed, it lowers the likeliness this child will knock over the bookshelf
Operant conditioning is a system of learning that transpires through punishment and rewards for behaviors (Kalat, 2011). Through this, a connection linking a behavior and a consequence is made. For instance a kid could be told that she will not get recess privileges if she talks in class. This possibility of being punished leads to decrease in disruptive behaviors from her. The major components of operant condition are punishment and reinforcement (Kalat, 2011).
In operant conditioning, there is an association between an individual’s behavior and its consequence. A consequence can either be reinforcement or punishment (233). Positive and negative reinforcements will increase the behavior. When an individual is reinforced, they will continue to repeat the behavior to receive the reinforcement again. Punishment, on the other hand, will decrease the behavior. If an individual is punished after a particular behavior, they will behave that way less often to avoid the punishment.
In contrast to classical conditioning, operant conditioning, discovered by B.F Skinner, is a learning process that involves either an increase or decrease in some behavior as a result of consequences (Amabile, 1985). Operant conditioning attempts to elicit new behavior through use of reinforcers and punishments.