Experimental analysis of behavior

Operant conditioning is a type of learning in which a person modifies their behavior through positive and negative consequences, or as a result of positive and negative reinforcement. Unlike classical conditioning where behaviors are reflexive and involuntary, operant conditioning is a voluntary behavior. In 1905, Edward L. Thorndike conducted an experiment where he placed a hungry cat inside a “puzzle box”, and a food dish on the outside. The cat upon pressing a lever could free itself from…

John Broadus Watson was an American psychologist as well as a radical environmental determinist. He believed that humans could be “conditioned” like training animals. Watson promoted a upcoming change in psychology through a behaviourist approach. Based on Pavlov’s observations ,Watson proposed that the process of classical conditioning could explain all aspects of human psychology. Watson whole heartedly denied the existence of the mind and consciousness. According to Watson different…

in need of help in order to lose weight so that he will be able to make the football team, there are ways in which you can help. The principles of operant conditioning will get him started on his weigh loss journey. To begin, one should create a behavior modification program based upon the ideas of operant conditioning. There are two main categories of operant conditioning discovered by B.F. Skinner. The first being reinforcement and the second being punishment. Reinforcement is an outcome that…

Psychology 201 has been a very intriguing course for me so far. I really enjoyed learning about how the brain works and how big of a role it plays in our lives. Some specific areas of psychology I enjoyed studying were Operant Conditioning, the theories of motivation, and Jean-Dominique Bauby. Operant Conditioning was a familiar concept, even though I was not familiar with the specific terminology. I think reinforcement and punishment are very interesting topics that apply to everyone's lives.…

B.F. Skinner began his famous research into the world of Psychology after being heavily influenced by John Watson and Ivan Pavlov. As stated in class, John Watson shifted from the focus of study on the mind and paid closer attention to observable behavior. Watson focused on what people might do rather than what the might experience. Watson, of course, was also influenced by someone and that someone was Ivan Pavlov. As observed in class, Pavlov used his dogs to show that a stimulus (feeding his…

Opening Skinners Box In the world of Phycology and science B.F Skinner is very well known, as he is America’s neo-behaviorist a very well-known phycologist most famous for the Box he had invented. To many it’s a very astonishing box that has changed the way many phycologist view people and are able to learn more it’s opened a door to new studies and their way of thinking. To others it’s a simple infamous box. There are many perspectives and myths of B.F Skinner many that are untrue he was…

philosophy of human behavior. Specifically, Chomsky (1971) declares Skinner’s claims that science will prove humans are controlled by their environment and that autonomy is illusionary dissolve when put under scrutiny and analysis. He accuses Skinner of fitting the science to the belief rather than allowing science to discover the truth, whatever that truth may be. Chomsky also attempts to make clear his critique does not necessarily extend to other behaviorists or behavior science, but rather…

The investigation looked into different patterns of behaviour of a rooster, who had learnt to peck at three different coloured keys on schedules of reinforcement. The left red key related to the fixed interval (FI), the white middle key for the variable interval (VI) and the right green key for the differential reinforcement (DRL) for a total of 270 seconds, 90 seconds per key schedule. The importance of operant conditioning allowed for control over timing and when a positive reinforcement was…

Bullying in the workplace refers to a situation where a targeted employee is subjected to negative acts by superiors and/or colleagues repeatedly over a period of time, and the confronted employee finds it difficult to take a stand against or cope with such negative acts (Hauge, Skogstad, & Einarsen, 2010; Loerbroks et al., 2015). One possible consequence of experiencing workplace bullying is depression. This paper will address depression within the context of bullying and will review types of…

radical behaviorism is his thinking that internal mental processes are irrelevant to behavioral outcomes. Skinner’s concept of behaviorism has the concept of tabula rasa, that a newborn baby’s brain is a blank slate, that the child has no organized behavior. He believed that all brains worked in the same way, that performing psychological experiments on a mouse’s brain would have the same effects as a human brain would. There are huge differences between the environments Skinner performed his…