bf skinner

• Conditioning in behavioral psychology is a theory that the reaction ("response") to an object or event ("stimulus") by a person or animal can be modified by 'learning', or conditioning
• In the 1930s, Skinner rose as one of the most influential psychologists, specifically in the field of Behavioral Psychology
• Skinner's inspiration for Behavioral Psychology came from his family, who instilled in him a fear of God, the police, and societal judgment
• Skinner's father contributed to his moral education by teaching him about the consequences of criminal behavior
• Skinner's grandmother impacted him by emphasizing the punishments of hell, influencing his adult behavior
• Skinner viewed people as "complex systems behaving in lawful ways" and believed that adult behaviors were determined by childhood rewards and punishments
• Skinner conceived personality as a pattern or collection of operant behaviors, with reinforced behaviors strengthening and forming patterns from infancy
• Skinner used rats and pigeons in his research to understand behavioral responses to stimuli, believing that fundamental processes in animal and human behavior are similar
• Skinner's research involved using a rat in a box, known as the Skinner Box, to study operant conditioning through reinforcement
• In the Skinner Box, a rat's behavior of pressing a lever for a food pellet demonstrates operant conditioning, where behavior is reinforced by consequences
• Skinner believed that self-control over external variables can modify behavior, suggesting four self-control techniques: stimulus avoidance, self-administered satiation, aversive stimulation, and self-reinforcement
• In stimulus avoidance, individuals remove themselves from variables negatively affecting their behavior to avoid negative outcomes
• Self-administered satiation involves overdoing a behavior to cure oneself of a bad habit, such as chain-smoking to quit smoking
• Aversive stimulation includes involving unpleasant consequences to deter undesirable behaviors, like publicly declaring intentions to lose weight
• Self-reinforcement is rewarding oneself for displaying good behaviors, such as treating oneself after achieving a desirable result like a perfect test score
• Skinner's approach to behavior is based on the idea that behavior can be controlled by its consequences
• Behavior can be controlled by what follows the behavior, known as consequences
• Whoever controls the reinforcers/stimuli has the power to control human behavior
• Respondent Behavior:

  • Involves a response made to or elicited by a specific stimulus
  • Occurs automatically and involuntarily
  • Example: knee jerk when tapped on the knee
• Operant Behavior:

  • Behavior emitted spontaneously or voluntarily that operates on the environment to change it
  • Example: rat pressing a lever to receive a food pellet
• Shaping:

  • Procedure where rewards are given for gross approximations of behavior, then closer approximations, and finally the desired behavior itself
  • Done through successive approximations to shape the final complex set of behaviors
• Reinforcement:

  • Strengthens a response by adding a reward, increasing the likelihood of the response being repeated
• Positive Reinforcement:

  • Involves adding a stimulus to increase the probability of a beneficial behavior occurring
  • Example: worker completing projects ahead of time receives compliments and a monetary bonus
• Negative Reinforcement:

  • Involves removing an aversive stimulus to decrease the probability of a behavior occurring
  • Example: worker avoids doing ten works by making a business proposal
• Punishment:

  • Presentation of an aversive stimulus or removal of a positive one
  • Does not strengthen a response
  • Example: getting a surprise quiz for being noisy in class
• Extinction:

  • Process of eliminating a behavior by withholding reinforcement
  • Similar to unlearning or forgetting a behavior
  • Example: parents ignoring a child's request for candy until the child stops asking
• Schedules of Reinforcement:

  • Investigated by Skinner to determine their effectiveness in controlling behavior
• Fixed Interval:

  • Reinforcer presented after a fixed time interval has elapsed
  • Example: salary paid once a week
• Variable Interval:

  • Reinforcer appears at random times
  • Example: reinforcement determined by random appearance of fish nibbling at bait
• Variable Ratio:

  • Reinforcement delivered after an average, unpredictable number of responses
  • Leads to more persistent and resistant behavior
• Fixed Ratio:

  • Reinforcers given after a specified number of responses
  • Example: reinforcement after every 10th response
• behaviorism emerged from laboratory studies of animals and humans
• radical behaviorism, a doctrine that avoids all hypothetical constructs, such as ego, traits, drives, needs, hunger,

  and so forth.
• skinner believes behavior is elicited
• In classical conditioning, a neutral (conditioned) stimulus is paired with that is, immediately precedes, an unconditioned stimulus a number of times until it is capable of bringing about a previously unconditioned response, now called the conditioned response
• Skinner believed that most human behaviors are learned through operant conditioning.
• The key to operant conditioning is the immediate reinforcement of a response.
• Skinner’s research used rats and pigeons because his interest was in behavioral responses to stimuli; something that animals did well thana humans
• behavior is controlled and modified by variables that are external to the organism.
• self-control techniques:

  Stimulus avoidance

  Self-administered satiation

  Aversive stimulation

  Self-reinforcement