My roommate has a bad tendency of “pulling all-nighters” in order to complete assignments at the last minute and cram for exams that are scheduled the next day. This has become a habit that is stressing and tends to lead to negative outcomes, such as a lack of sleep and being unable to learn material effectively. However, there is one way to stop this unhealthy habit. How you may ask? With a little something I like to call, operant conditioning.
What is operant conditioning? Operant conditioning is the type of learning that involves associating a voluntary response and a (good or bad) consequence. With operant conditioning, there are two types of schedules of reinforcement: continuous and partial. Continuous involves always reinforcing the
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My roommate loves to watch Netflix (why do you think she leaves her work for last minute?), especially starting addicting shows. In this case, I would add Netflix as a reward to increase my roommate’s completion of assignments before bed time. I will start a new show with her, rewarding her with an episode (or two) every day after she finishes her assignments and studies for at least an hour each day. Positive reinforcement would be appropriate in this case because adding something she enjoys to do will cause her to willingly start doing her work earlier. Alternatively, I can also use a positive punishment approach, which decreases the probability that the preceding action will be repeated in the future by adding something to change behavior. The positive punishment would decrease the amount of times she “pulls an all-nighter.” One possible positive punishment I can implement would be to make my roommate take out the trash every time she stays up doing homework or studying for an exam. Since taking out the …show more content…
This approach focuses on the social and cultural influences on behavior and mental processes. If it was not for my suggestion to watch Netflix, my roommate would have kept staying up at night to do her work. My social influence on her will make her change her behavior, causing her to associate completing her work with being able to watch an episode of a Netflix show with me. As a result, I hypothesize that if I suggest to watch Netflix every time she finishes her assignments, she will do her work during the day time and will avoid pulling all-nighters. In order to see if my hypothesis is correct, I will have to test it by using an experimental research method. By using this kind of method, I would establish a cause and effect to see if suggesting to watch Netflix every time she completes her work (independent variable) will cause her do complete her work earlier (dependent variable). The independent variable is what is manipulated and the dependent variable is the outcome. Furthermore, for one week I will ask her to watch Netflix after she finishes her assignments to see if that will cause her to finish her work earlier. The following week, I will skip a day of asking her to watch Netflix with me to observe whether she will pull an
... be purchasing snacks to have at home, for his son. Bill could inform Jess that if he does not stop throwing the tantrum, he will not purchases his regular snacks. If Jess does not stop, Bill should put back every item, that jess considers a treat, or really likes. This is another example of negative punishment, because Bill is taking away snacks jess likes. If Jess complies by behaving Bill can begin putting the desired items back in the cart, in which case he would be implementing negative reinforcement, because Jess’s good behavior is stopping the removal of the desired items.
Operant conditioning is changing behavior through the use of reinforcement after the desired action is given; a behavior that is rewarded positively is more likely to continue and a behavior that is rewarded negatively would likely stop occurring (Santrock,2014). In addition to reinforcement, Skinner also talks about punishment. Reinforcement increases the probability an action or behavior will be repeated, while punishment is intended to decrease a behavior (McLeod, 2015). When Laurie was younger, she thought she was being sent to school every day to socialize with her friends and that learning was a secondary, unintentional happenstance. In third grade, compared to the other students in her class, she was falling short in reading and math.
“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.
Experimental research is the one type of research that allows psychologists to make causal statements. It is where the researcher changes one or more variables that may have an effect on some other variables (King, 2016). The hypothesis is a specific expectation about what is going to happen in the experiment (King, 2016). In the research, the hypothesis was that women would perceive fat talk to be more socially acceptable than men (Katrevich et al., 2014). The other elements of experimental method are dependent and independent variables. The independent variable (IV) is the cause of the results, and it is changed by the experimenter to find the effects, but the dependent vari...
In psychology you learn about several things that also apply in every day life that may or may not run your life and you could not even know about it. Here are a few examples about how the small things in my life control my life in good and bad ways. I will be explaining how stress, classical conditioning, anxiety, negative reinforcement, and positive reinforcement can affect your life and the lives of others around you.
Reinforcement is the outcome or influence of a behavior that strengthens the probability of the behavior. Regarding the roommate’s behavioral modification program, there will be a positive and negative reinforcement utilized. Negative reinforcement is the removal of a stimulus that strengthens the probability of behavior, and positive reinforcement is the addition of stimuli that also strengthens the probability of behavior. Because the roommate is trying to lose weight with the removal of unhealthy food and addition of healthy food, the positive reinforcement will be unhealthy food, and the negative reinforcement will be the healthy
Another aspect I employ when using positive reinforcement is called the Premack Principle. The principle states that a more frequent behavior can reinforce a less frequent behavior. In my case, the more frequent behavior would be watching Netflix, which I have been doing for years. The less frequent behavior would be working out for 45 minutes daily, which I have honestly never done before. The reward for completing the behavior I prefer less is the behavior I am interested in the
Operant conditioning is a type of learning where a person is taught that specific actions are related to specific consequences. The main goal of using this type of conditioning is to encourage the individual to change his or her behavior in some way. Specifically, the individual can be encouraged to perform a desired behavior more often through use of positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, and he or she can also be encouraged to perform an undesired behavior less often through use of positive punishment and negative punishment. Positive reinforcement is basically a type of operant conditioning in which an addition or reward is given to the individual when he or she has displayed the desired behavior, and as a result, the behavior
Positive punishment again adds to the factor influencing the behavior, but this time it is meant to decrease the number of times the behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of positive punishment is yelling at a puppy for peeing on the carpet. The positive punishment in this situation is the addition of yelling at the puppy, resulting in a decrease of the puppy’s peeing behavior. Negative punishment is the taking away of a certain aspect from the factor influencing the behavior to decrease how often a behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of negative punishment would be taking away bathroom privileges from students who use the bathroom as an excuse to wander around the school. This shows a privilege is being taken away (negative punishment) to decrease the behavior of skipping
There are many bad habits these days and the most serious one for me is stay up late all the time and not energetic enough in the morning. This behavior is called sleep procrastination. Just as the words from the researchers at Utrecht University, “pre-bed procrastination is the latest diagnosable strain of mismanaged time, stopping us from shutting off when we should and causing us to fritter away valuable snoozing opportunities on unnecessary tasks.” Indeed, such tiny behavior has already spread out the entire campus and wastes energy and time. Therefore, trying to correct this behavior by using psychological ways, I decided to use operant conditioning, the process of associating
In order to develop a fixed negative reinforcement schedule, I divided my cigarettes into groups allowing myself only three cigarettes a day. I placed my daily ration of cigarettes into envelopes and labeled them for each day of the week. I smoked one cigarette after lunch, one after dinner, and one later at night. I would reward myself with a cigarette after attending classes and eating lunch. I would then reward myself with another cigarette after homework and dinner. Through the course of my week, I violated my regimen only twice. On Wednesday and Friday, I “bummed’ a cigarette from one of my friends. After feeling guilty about violating my regimen, I repented for hours, and swore to myself that I was going to beat my addiction. Primary negative reinforcers also helped me stick with the plan such as improved stamina during physical exercise and more money in my pocket.
This is selective reinforcement. Pavlov and his dogs were and excellent example of operant conditioning. Pavlov rang a bell when it was time for the dogs to eat; eventually the dogs associated the bell with food. Each time the bell rang the dogs salivated. On the other hand, N.Chomsky who was a nativist argued that children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD).
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).
2011, p281). Regardless of their differences or similarities however, both have played an important part in the study of learning. With operant conditioning allowing to condition more complex behaviours that can be done with classical conditioning, and with classical conditioning being what helped discover operant conditioning in the first place, it can be argued here that the two are complementary. Indeed, one cannot speak of operant conditioning without mentioning classical conditioning, and vice
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.