2.4 million times per month, there are teenage drivers that get behind the wheel and chose to drive while intoxicated (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2012). This is a major threat amongst teenagers in today’s society. Although it may seem as if driving drunk should not be such a prominent issue when taking into consideration all of the detrimental facts and statistics that go against it, B.F. skinner’s operant conditioning theory, Albert Bandura’s social learning theory and Piaget’s theory of cognitive development help show why teenagers may still choose to engage in such risky behavior.
Theory of Operant Conditioning B.F. Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning states that behavior is either more or less likely to occur depending …show more content…
This is very similar to B.F. Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning, however, Bandura continues on to say that individuals do not need to experience reinforcement or punishment, but simply by thinking about potential consequences, they still have the ability to learn a specific behavior (Lester, 2016). Additionally, Bandura states that another part to the social learning theory includes observational learning. With this, the same concept of reinforcement and punishment, along with imitation is one of the ways in which behavior is learned. In the late 1900s, Bandura demonstrated this idea with the BoBo Doll Experiment. Twenty-four preschoolers were assigned to observe one of three conditions, which included adults aggressively playing with plastic dolls, adults non-aggressively playing with plastic dolls, or the control group, which did not observe any play with the dolls. Bandura then tested the preschoolers in order to see the amount of imitative and non-imitative aggression towards the dolls after their observation period. The experiment concluded that the preschoolers who observed the aggressive play, played more aggressively with the doll after the observation period than did the children who observed the non-aggressive play or were in the control group …show more content…
At this point of life, teenagers are still actively exploring the world around them when trying to learn new things, and they are able to process possibilities of the future as well. Teenagers think that drinking while driving will make them stand out and give them a positive image in light of their peers. According to the theory of cognitive development, in order for a teenager to learn that drinking and driving is not a good idea, they would need to experience a negative consequence for themselves. This would explain why many teenagers choose to partake in the risk because humans naturally like to be active in exploring the world and learning new
Theory of Operant Conditioning B.F. Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning states that behavior is either more or less likely to occur depending …show more content…
This is very similar to B.F. Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning, however, Bandura continues on to say that individuals do not need to experience reinforcement or punishment, but simply by thinking about potential consequences, they still have the ability to learn a specific behavior (Lester, 2016). Additionally, Bandura states that another part to the social learning theory includes observational learning. With this, the same concept of reinforcement and punishment, along with imitation is one of the ways in which behavior is learned. In the late 1900s, Bandura demonstrated this idea with the BoBo Doll Experiment. Twenty-four preschoolers were assigned to observe one of three conditions, which included adults aggressively playing with plastic dolls, adults non-aggressively playing with plastic dolls, or the control group, which did not observe any play with the dolls. Bandura then tested the preschoolers in order to see the amount of imitative and non-imitative aggression towards the dolls after their observation period. The experiment concluded that the preschoolers who observed the aggressive play, played more aggressively with the doll after the observation period than did the children who observed the non-aggressive play or were in the control group …show more content…
At this point of life, teenagers are still actively exploring the world around them when trying to learn new things, and they are able to process possibilities of the future as well. Teenagers think that drinking while driving will make them stand out and give them a positive image in light of their peers. According to the theory of cognitive development, in order for a teenager to learn that drinking and driving is not a good idea, they would need to experience a negative consequence for themselves. This would explain why many teenagers choose to partake in the risk because humans naturally like to be active in exploring the world and learning new