Experimental design

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…

Thoughts and emotions can play just as big a role in behavioral outcomes as conditioned learning does. The greatest flaw in B.F. Skinner’s concept 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…

Operant conditioning is a type of learning where behavior is controlled by consequences. The purpose is to strengthen the behavior and make it happen more often. There are different consequences you can use are positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment. If you are trying to teach someone something the best way is to use positive reinforcement. Research shows that rewards are more effective than punishment. When using positive reinforcement, it…

The theory behind Skinner’s empirical study was that individuals is subject to superstitious behavior, an act in which one establishes a conditioned behavioral response to a drive regardless of there being no apparent correlation between the behavior and the drive. To test his hypothesis, Skinner established an experiment with pigeons. The pigeons were famished and then put into a cage which had a food hopper attached to it. The food hopper was controlled by a clock, and would therefore give…

Operant conditioning is one type of learning behaviour theory that developed by B. F. Skinner in 1938. It is a behaviour designed to people in a way that will gain something desired or avoiding something unpleasant. It is also known as Law of Effect. Furthermore, learning behaviour is controlled by the consequences of the behaviour itself which are reinforcement or punishment. Besides, both consequences have their own positive and negative event which will result new behaviour development in…

Rotter was the first person to develop the concept of ‘locus of control’ in 1966 (Carrim, 2006). To define the concept, Rotter (1966) used the empirical law of effect, which mentioned how people were encouraged in seeking for positive motivation, and avoided the negative inspirations. Skinner’s concept of reinforcement helped Rotter (1996) explain the concept, the concept mentioned that in case the results of responses by a person are satisfactory or unsatisfactory, then the possibility of this…

I interviewed my CT, Mrs. P about a time she was challenged by a student’s behavior and her answer presented a challenging behavior indeed. She told me about a student, who I will refer to as student D, she had several years ago who use to interrupt instruction on a daily basis in what she believed to be an attempt to get attention. His disruptive behavior occurred on a daily basis but the intensity varied from day to day. Some days he would stand up in front of the white board while Mrs. P was…

rule, and he proposes that “science could lead to the design of a government that will promote the wellbeing of the governed,” in his book (Stevenson, 204). Somehow, a sort of ruling body or entity will control the reinforcement and practices used, and design the rules which are to be followed. In Lord of the Flies, the boys who clearly have the best intentions for their compatriots are Ralph and Piggy. Using their blueprints of moral design, they would lay out the civil and social laws they…

Behaviourism arose in 1913 by John B. Watson who tried to leave the introspectionist theory behind and put his focus to mainly looking at intelligence and tried to narrow psychology to experimental laboratory methods. B.F Skinner and Ivan Pavlov focused on their concepts of conditioning which we know are Operant and Classical. The main assumptions of the Behaviourist theory is the idea of ‘free will’ is not correct and our behaviours have to be detected by our surrounding world either through…

In this TMA I, will evaluate the usefulness of conditioning for our understanding of human behaviour. To begin with I look at what conditioning is and how the understanding of this phenomenon developed. Furthermore, I perceive how conditioning has been applied to human behaviour and what the benefits consist of when the principle of conditioning is applied to human behaviour. Finally, I identify some of the limits to the usefulness of conditioning for understanding human behaviour. First, I…