Operant Conditioning
By: Matahn Blank
Developing Habits
Why do we shower? Showering is a mundane activity that most people perform habitually. If a majority of people do it often, then there must be a reason. One possible reason is that this habit is learned early on, as parents will yell at their kids if they do not shower. In addition, it is possible that people choose to shower in order to avoid or remove a bad smell. On the other hand, one might actively choose to engage in this behavior because they enjoy warm water or the burst of energy that they have afterward. Although these are a wide variety of reasons that may or may not apply to each individual, they all have one aspect in common: they involve changes in behavior in response to consequences.
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Understanding Operant Conditioning
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Origins and B. F. Skinner
B.F. Skinner was an American psychologist that was known for his theories and experiments relating to behaviorism. He is often regarded as the father of operant conditioning because he was interested in exploring how consequences shape behaviors. Skinner was born on March 20th, 1904, and developed an interest in building as a young boy. Although he was interested in science in high school, he ultimately became a writer. It was not until he started reading about the work of other psychologists such as Pavlov and Watson that he became truly passionate about researching behavior.
Skinner's Experiment
Skinner believed that it was not necessary to look into internal motivation to understand behavior, but that it was more interesting to examine how external consequences could be used to teach behaviors. In order to test his theories, Skinner designed an experiment that is known today as a “Skinner Box”. In the Skinner Box, a rat or pigeon was enclosed with a lever that would dispense food, an electrified floor, and signal lights. If the animal pulled the lever when the signal light was green, then it would receive a food pellet. However, if the animal pulled the lever when the signal light was red then the floor would deliver an electric shock. In this version of the experiment, the food served as positive reinforcement to encourage the animal to pull the lever when the signal was green and the shock served as positive punishment to discourage the animal from pulling the lever when the signal was red.
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This version of the box included both reward and punishment, but there have been many variations on this experiment. Some variations used only positive reinforcement to test the strength of positive stimuli in encouraging behavior. Not only, but these experiments also had varied reinforcement schedules. A reinforcement schedule describes how often a reward is provided in relation to how often the behavior is performed. In a continuous reinforcement schedule, a reward is given every time an action is performed; for this example, this would mean that the animal receives a pellet every time it pulls the lever. In partial reinforcement schedules, a reward is given only in certain cases involving the number of times the behavior is performed or simply a certain amount of time.
Why This Matters
Daily Life
Although Skinner’s Box is a detailed lab experiment, operant conditioning can be found everywhere in daily life. Parents, businesses, and even the larger government as a whole use operant conditioning in order to enforce certain behaviors and discourage others. Even something as simple as taking a shower involves this form of behavior learning: parental scolding is positive punishment, eliminating a bad odor is negative reinforcement, and the enjoyment of warm water in the shower is positive reinforcement. Each of these aspects plays a role in conditioning the simple behavior of showering. Consequences are constantly motivating us to make certain decisions and so, by understanding how operant conditioning works, we can better understand why we make the decisions that we do.
Personal Modification
An understanding of operant conditioning gives us insight into why we make certain decisions in our daily lives. In addition, this understanding allows us to effectively and actively change behaviors in our lives. By simply attaching rewards or punishments to behaviors, we can manage and control how often we perform them. If one wanted to get better grades, they could try rewarding themself when performing good study habits. On the other hand, if one wanted to eat less sugary foods, they could try enforcing punishments on themself that would condition the behavior. Different types of consequences and reinforcement schedules will be more or less effective depending on the behavior and the individual, but one idea is for certain: operant conditioning is present all around us, and consequences most definitely impact behaviors. Ultimately, with an appropriate set-up and thorough understanding, anyone could try and use operant conditioning to control their behaviors!
Addiction and Manipulation
Not only is understanding operant conditioning beneficial to personal modification, but it can be beneficial to realizing more about how certain constructs are rooted in this type of behavior modification. Video games and gambling are two examples used by businesses to attract and maintain consumers. By understanding how rewards affect decision-making, we can learn what causes certain addictions and how to manage behaviors that are being externally controlled. Operant conditioning is being used out in the world, and by understanding the way it can be used to influence behavior, we can better monitor ourselves and be more vigilant when making decisions in the outside world.