We’re all familiar with what learning is. Most of us do it all the time in one particular setting: school. When we think of learning, we think classrooms, assignments, and tests. But, that’s not the only kind of learning we do. The concept of learning comes in many different ways and styles. You’ve probably heard of learning styles such as audio/visual/tactile/etc. While these learning “styles” are helpful for studying or grasping how you might prefer to prepare for an exam, the true learning types in psychology are classical, operant, and observational. Operant conditioning is most commonly associated with a famous experiment: B.F. Skinner’s box.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American behavioral psychologist that was interested in other types of learning, besides classical conditioning, after John B. Watson (another psychologist) had left the scene. Skinner believed classical conditioning was too simple to explain complex human behavior and he would rather study observable behavior instead of internal, mental behavior. His idea was that the best way to comprehend behavior was to look at an action and its consequences. His work was based on Thorndike’s law of effect which stated that behavior followed by good consequences is likely to be repeated whereas behavior followed by unfavorable consequences is less likely to be repeated. His addition to this was that when behavior is strengthened, it is repeated, and when it is not reinforced, it dies out. Eventually, he came to the discovery of operant conditioning which is the occurrence between a stimulus, an operant response (behavior modifiable by consequences), and a reinforcer/reinforcement to change the likelihood of the response occurring.
To study operant conditioning, Skinner designed a box where he placed an animal inside to record its behavior. One such instance was with a hungry rat that was placed in the box and every time it pressed the lever (usually accidentally), food was released into the box. Over time, the rat understood that pressing the lever would give it food and eventually, it became conditioned to this behavior. Skinner repeated this experiment with a pigeon as well, testing every time it pecked a button and determining when it became conditioned to knowing that pressing the button would give it food.
This system of rewards/punishments based on a certain action can be translated to human behavior and psychology. When we perform an action, it can be positively or negatively reinforced, which affects our behavior in the future. We become conditioned to a certain behavior based on what consequence comes out of it. Positive reinforcement is when a behavior is strengthened by rewards, leading to the repetition of that behavior. Negative reinforcement strengthens a behavior by removing an unpleasant experience. Operant conditioning can be useful in teaching other people or teaching ourselves on how to avoid or continue a certain behavior based on how we treat the response.
Sources:
McLeod, Saul. “What Is Operant Conditioning and How Does It Work?” SimplyPsychology, Simply Scholar, https://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html.
“Operant Conditioning.” Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences University of Iowa, https://psychology.uiowa.edu/comparative-cognition-laboratory/glossary/operant-conditioning.
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