Operant conditioning

Cards (2)

  • one Strenght is that skinner‘s researcher used experimental method. FE Skinner manipulated the consequences of behaviour e.g food and electric shock and he was able to accurately measure effect on rat behaviour.TMB it allowed him to establish a cause and effect relaction ship between consequences of behaviour and reduce extraneous variables.Therefore approach is valid due to skinner being able to measure effect of consequences were having on rats behaviour
  • one weakness of OC is that experiments involved the study of non-human animals rather than humans.FE skinner used rats and pigeons in his operant conditioning experiments:TMB because Skinner’s studies tell us little about human behaviour.Human have complex language and higher order thinking whereas non-human animals do not.Therefore we cannot generalise findings to humans.