Psychology 2020 - Operant Conditioning

OPERANT CONDITIONING

Operant Conditioning

Jiapeng Xu

Melissa Shyan-Norwalt, PhD

PSYC 2020

Operant conditioning is a learning technique that is designed through giving rewards and punishment for behavior. The learner is made to create an association between behavior and its consequence (Martin & Pear 2015). Operant conditioning looks at external observable causes of man’s behavior as opposed to internal motivations. It is concerned with how the consequences of a person’s action influence their behavior.

For this task, I placed the set the keys at the corner of the room. Without telling my friends what the objective of the exercise was, I let them walk into the room. The first task object is Yu. I did not talk or tell him what he was supposed to do. When he made an effort to look or move in the direction of the keys, I would say “Good!” Whenever he would look or move away from the set of keys, I would say “Nope!” Any good move towards picking up the keys was rewarded while any bad move was punished. After this round finished, I repeat this task by set the object with my girlfriend, and another boy who called Rui.

Some of the problems I experienced was my friends kept giggling and laughing and not taking the exercise seriously. They also kept taking large pauses and doing nothing in the middle of the exercise. Yu always ran out of patience and threatened to leave. Some of the errors I made was smiling when he moved towards the keys. This gave the guy a hint about the objective of the exercise which should not happen during operant conditioning.

This exercise is an example of operant conditioning. The objective of the exercise was to get the guy to walk up to the keys and pick them up. Each compliment and punishment shaped the guy’s behavior by encouraging them to walk to the keys and pick them up. The exercise