Skinner's Theories of Behaviorism

906 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Behaviorism

Behaviorism is by far one of the most interesting fields of psychology in my opinion. B.F. Skinner’s view on behaviorism was that a person’s actions are controlled by rewards and punishments. Relating this to a real life situation, a great example of this would be a parent and a child.

Behavioral analysis is how a person’s behaviours are based on the individuals’ personal history and past experiences. This is different then radical behaviorism, which Skinner fell into. Skinner believed that mental events, such as thinking, were not needed to explain behavior.

A parent raising a child deals with a lot of operant conditioning if they know it or not. A parent is always trying to teach a child right and wrong. From operant conditioning they can teach the child how to use reinforcement and punishment.

Positive reinforcement is any stimulus that, when added to a situation increases the probability that a given behavior will occur. If a child is doing well at school and brings home a report card that is all A’s the parent may reward the child. The reward must be something the child will find desirable. If the parent gives the child a snickers bar and the child is allergic to peanuts this will obviously not be a reward for the child. The positive reinforcer is often called the operant reinforcer, which is any event that follows a response and increases its probability of occurring again.

Negative reinforcement is any aversive stimulus that, when removed from the situation, increases the probability that immediately proceeding behavior will occur. Although the word negative is thrown in, this type of reinforcement will still increase the probability of the behavior occurring. For instance, if the parent always watches the news a...

... middle of paper ...

...hores all day and every two hours the parent gives the child lemonade and cookies. Variable-intervals are a variation of fixed intervals. The reinforcement is given for the first correct response made after a varied amount of time. An example of this is if the child has a job that pays under the table. Since it is not an official contracted job the pay may be whenever the boss gets money so there is no consistency to the reward and the amount of time may vary based on how much work is needed.

Reinforcements and punishments are used in everyday situations from raising kids or to training a dog. Intermittent Schedules also seen just about everywhere from how you collect your paycheck to how a casino works. Skinner’s theories of behaviorism are very easy to show from real life situations but are a little trickier to understand when only using psychology terminology.

Show More
Related

  • Discussion Board #2: Behaviorism and Tantrums

    622 Words  | 2 Pages

    Behaviorism, or learning theory is one of three “grand theories” of human development. The focus of behaviorism is observable behavior, with no reference to mental processes. As a learning theory behaviorism, assumes that learning occurs via interactions with the environment, through the process of conditioning.

    Read More

  • B. F. Laurie's Psychoanalytic Theory

    1061 Words  | 3 Pages

    Operant conditioning is changing behavior through the use of reinforcement after the desired action is given; a behavior that is rewarded positively is more likely to continue and a behavior that is rewarded negatively would likely stop occurring (Santrock,2014). In addition to reinforcement, Skinner also talks about punishment. Reinforcement increases the probability an action or behavior will be repeated, while punishment is intended to decrease a behavior (McLeod, 2015). When Laurie was younger, she thought she was being sent to school every day to socialize with her friends and that learning was a secondary, unintentional happenstance. In third grade, compared to the other students in her class, she was falling short in reading and math.

    Read More

  • Classic Behavioristic Principles of Psychology Developed by B.F. Skinner

    1371 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to Gewirtz and Peláez-Nogueras (1992), “B. F. Skinner contributed a great deal to advancing an understanding of basic psychological processes and to the applications of science-based interventions to problems of individual and social importance.” He contributed to “human and nonhuman behavior, including human behavioral development, and to various segments of the life span, including human infancy” (p. 1411). One of Skinner's greatest scientific discoveries was “single reinforcement” which became sufficient for “operant conditioning, the role of extinction in the discovery of intermittent schedules, the development of the method of shaping by successive approximation, and Skinner's break with and rejection of stimulus-response psychology” (Iversen, 1992, p. 1318).

    Read More

  • B. F. Skinner's Avioral Approach To Psychology

    707 Words  | 2 Pages

    B.F. Skinner was considered the father of behavioral approach to psychology and a noticeable spokesperson for behaviorism. According to Corey (2013), he advocated radical behaviorism. In other words it placed a primary importance on the effects of environment on behavior. Skinner was a determinist; he did not consider that humans had free choices. He recognized the existence of feeling and thoughts, but disagreed about them causing humans action. In its place, he underlined the cause-and-effect links between objective, observable environmental conditions and behavior. Skinner claimed that more than enough attention had been given to the internal states of mind and motives, which cannot be observed and changed directly and not enough focus

    Read More

  • Erikson's Phychosocial Roles In The Film Harold And Maude

    1872 Words  | 4 Pages

    Positive reinforcement works by presenting something positive to the person after a desired behavior is exhibited, making the behavior more likely to happen in the future (McAdams, 2009). An example of this could be when a child helps their mother with the dishes and the mothers rewards the child with ice cream. Negative reinforcement, is when a behavior is strengthened by stopping, removing or avoiding a negative outcome or aversive stimulus (McAdams, 2009). An example of this could be when the light goes green at a traffic light, the car in front of a person does not move. The person hates when this happens and from experience knows that honking the car’s horn gets cars that are in front of them to go

    Read More

  • Theories Of Operant Conditioning

    831 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the beginning of the article the author stated that the father of operant conditioning was B.F. Skinner. Skinner introduced the concept of reinforcement. Reinforcement was when something was given or taken to increase the likelihood of a certain

    Read More

  • Positive Exerforcement And The Philosophy Of Operant Conditioning

    988 Words  | 2 Pages

    Operant conditioning is a type of learning where a person is taught that specific actions are related to specific consequences. The main goal of using this type of conditioning is to encourage the individual to change his or her behavior in some way. Specifically, the individual can be encouraged to perform a desired behavior more often through use of positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, and he or she can also be encouraged to perform an undesired behavior less often through use of positive punishment and negative punishment. Positive reinforcement is basically a type of operant conditioning in which an addition or reward is given to the individual when he or she has displayed the desired behavior, and as a result, the behavior

    Read More

  • Examples Of Operant Conditioning

    719 Words  | 2 Pages

    Operant conditioning is a kind of conditioning, which examines how often a behavior will or occur depending on the effects of the behavior (King, 2016, pg. ). The words positive and negative are used to apply more significance to the words reinforcement or punishment. Positive is adding to the stimulus, while negative is removing from the stimulus (King, 2016). For instance, with positive reinforcement, there is the addition of a factor to increase the number of times that the behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of positive reinforcement is when a child is given an allowance for completing their household chores. The positive reinforcement is the allowance which helps to increase the behavior of doing chores at home. In contrast with negative

    Read More

  • Behaviorism Essay

    756 Words  | 2 Pages

    Behaviorism is a branch of psychology that has a theoretical approach that gives emphasis to the study of behavior in place of the subject of the mind or the physiological correlates of one's behavior. Behavior is the externally visible response to a stimulus of an animal or human (Weidman). B.F. Skinner is one of the most prominent psychologists of the study of behaviorism. Skinner was on the advance of behaviorism. B.F. Skinner created a group of theories that set out to prove that subjective impetus is not what behavior in humans and animals is so much based on but that behavior is more based on possible reward received and chastisement applied to the animal or human (Newsmakers). Skinner entered into the branch of behaviorism in the 1920s. Behaviorism was still a fairly new branch to psychology at this time. However, Skinner's experiments in his libratory were broadly consideration to be electrifying and ground-breaking, illuminating an knowledge of human behavior and logistics (Newsmakers). Skinner called such behavior based on possible reward received and chastisement that was followed by the repetition of that behavior operant.

    Read More

  • Importance Of Positive Reinforcement

    748 Words  | 2 Pages

    Positive reinforcement is a method of presenting to children the appropriate behavior from the inappropriate behaviors. This is done by pointing out the correct behavior and giving some form of encouraging reward. The idea is that all behaviors

    Read More

  • Learning and Memory Applied

    1221 Words  | 3 Pages

    First of all, I was highly interested in the concept and various factors that together make up positive reinforcement. I had a premise that I could do some experimental work on the three children for whom I baby-sit during the week after school. They leave school full of energy and it is my job to get them to complete a series of tasks before the end of the evening. I imagined that some positive reinforcement might get them on their way to handling their responsibilities in a timelier manner. My first step was to come up with a specific instrumental response that would produce reinforcement. This took no time at all because by far the most painfully difficult thing for me to do is get the children to sit down and do their homework. I then spoke specifically to each child and asked them what they would rather choose as an after school activity. They named video games, television, and going to play with other neighborhood children. I had expected these types of answers from the children and made them into the positive reinforcers that would be contingent on the children’s performance of the instrumental response; namely completing their homework. I explained to the children that if they behaved and finished their homework, then directly following they could spend an hour doing an activity of their choice.

    Read More

  • Essay On Positive Reinforcement

    849 Words  | 2 Pages

    Reinforcement is a motivation which depends upon a performance and increases the chance of a performance being frequent. Positive reinforcement can increase the chance of not only necessary behavior but also unwanted behavior. For example, if a student complaints in order to get attention and is successful in getting it, the attention helps as positive reinforcement which increases the possibility that the student will remain to complain. Positive reinforcement is one of the important ideas in behavior inquiry and it is something like rewards, or things usually work to get (Fahimafridi, 2016).

    Read More

  • B. F. Skinner Theory Operant Conditioning

    1388 Words  | 3 Pages

    Skinner’s theory operant conditioning is a theory that I feel most can say they agree with or they like the way he thinks. Speaking for myself I think his theory of operant conditioning is right on point. Although as I said in my discussion last week a lot of his theories and experiments were done on animals and not a lot done on humans and I think that plays a big part in his theory of why I agree and disagree with it. I only disagree because of the simple fact that humans are completely different from animals, obviously. What I do agree with in his theory are the positive and negative reinforcements, and the positive and negative punishments because although those were tested on animals as well a lot of that can relate to humans and how we act as far as our behavior. In my own opinion of his theory I feel like his operant conditioning would work rather well on children. I know for instance as positive reinforcement for my son I will give him a snack that he loves if he doesn’t act like a wild monkey in the store. Therefore, I see it working better on children rather than adults. In the video I watched from week 5 of operant conditioning in the first video he talks about how the bird received a reward every time the bird pecked or turned but he also says that this worked very well with the bird because every time he pecked and turn he didn’t get a reward each time only

    Read More

  • Main contributors to behaviorism

    1205 Words  | 3 Pages

    Behaviorism is a learning theory or a developmental theory that measures observable behaviors that are produced by the learner’s response to stimuli. On one end of the spectrum behaviorism is known as an attitude. At the other end, it is known as a doctrine. According to the behavioral views of human development, behaviorists argued that to focus attention on unobservable constructs, such as emotions, thoughts, or the unconscious, was an unscientific approach.(Craig & Dunn, Ex.: 2010)

    Read More

  • Behavioral Theory of Personality: B.F. Skinner

    1529 Words  | 4 Pages

    B.F. Skinner is a major contributor to the Behavioral Theory of personality, a theory that states that our learning is shaped by positive and negative reinforcement, punishment, modeling, and observation. An individual acts in a certain way, a.k.a. gives a response, and then something happens after the response. In order for an action to be repeated in the future, what happens after the response either encourages the response by offering a reward that brings pleasure or allows an escape from a negative situation. The former is known as positive reinforcement, the latter known as negative reinforcement (Sincero, 2012). A teenager who received money for getting an “A” is being positively reinforced, while an individual who skips a class presentation is being negatively reinforced by escaping from the intense fear and anxiety that would have occurred during the presentation.

    Read More

More about Skinner's Theories of Behaviorism

Open Document