The article “Big Day for Evil” from NBC News tells the story of Ruby Franke and the numerous ways she abused her children, found in her own journal. This woman was a mother of six and she even had a YouTube channel called “8 Passengers” documenting this abuse of clout. In one journal entry, she described how she pushed one of her sons into water and covered his nose and mouth with her hand and even claimed he was possessed by a demon. In her mind, she believed that she was helping her son. In another instance of abusing her son, Ruby described how she forced him to stand in the shade and when he would try to stand in the shade, she poked him in the back and neck with a cactus poker. After one of her sons had escaped from her partner, Jodi Hildebrandt’s house, he was …show more content…
Ruby Franke inflicted all this abuse because she was a religious extremist and believed that she was helping her children. However, she and Jodi apologized to the children during their sentencing, saying that they “believed dark was light and right was wrong” and they hoped they could all heal from this. One technique Ruby Franke used to control her children is called operant conditioning, and more specifically punishment. Operant conditioning is a type of associative learning in which people or animals begin associating a behavior to its consequence. This means when someone receives a reward for something, they are more likely to repeat that action again and when someone is punished, they are less likely to repeat that action. Operational conditioning can be used in four different ways. One is positive reinforcement, which means something is added to encourage behavior. Negative reinforcement is when something is removed to encourage behavior. Positive and negative punishment is where something is added or removed, respectively, to decrease the likelihood of a
In January 2002 James Waller released the first edition of the book “Becoming Evil – How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killings.” Dr. James Waller is a professor at Keene State College in New Hampshire and is home to one of the nation’s oldest Holocaust resource centers, the Cohen Center for Genocide and Holocaust Studies. Becoming Evil uncovers the historical and modern day reasons to why people do evil and attempts to debunk common explanations for genocide and mass killings. Some of Waller’s other notable works include “Prejudice across America” and “Face to Face: The Changing State of Racism Across America.” Waller takes and in depth look at the societal, psychopathological and cultural reasons that would make a good person commit such heinous acts of evil. “What culture, society, or nation, what ideology, historical prejudice, or ethnic hatred, what psychological profile or cluster of personality traits, what unusual situation or special circumstance is to be deemed the cause of such aberrant human behavior?” (Browning/Waller) Why do humans commit genocide and mass killings?
Operant conditioning explains that behaviors followed by positive outcomes are more likely to be repeated than behaviors followed by negative outcomes. Punishment, which is a part of operant conditioning, is something received or taken away from an individual decreasing the likihood that a behavior would be repeated. The best example from The Lion King of a punishment is when Nala ran away from Simba after he informed her that he was not returning to Pride Rock. Simba deeply loved Nala and he hoped she would agree with the Hakuna Matata philosopy that he was using to hide from his past. But she did not and ran from Simba after an argument. The fact that his true love did not want to be with him was a punishing blow to Simba, helping him rethink his worldview and preparing him for the meeting with
“Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior” (Cherry). Positive reinforcement which is praising a person for doing something good verses negative reinforcement which is an unpleasant remark a punishment. B.F. Skinner did an experiment on a rat, the rat was taught to push two buttons, one to receive food and the other was a light electric shock. The rat tried both buttons and realized which button was good and which one was bad. This experiment goes to show that upon the rewards and punishment system one can learn their rights from their wrongs through a series of lessons. Kincaid and Hemingway both use operant conditioning to show human behavior under stimulus control.
The Big Bang Theory, is a television show which utilizes many psychological tactics. In this specific scene, Sheldon demonstrated multiple conditioning methods on both Penny and Leonard. All of these techniques are what psychology refers to as operant conditioning. In operant conditioning, the experimenter could use positive and negative reinforcement, as well as positive and negative punishment. Out of these four methods, we see Sheldon apply positive and negative reinforcement, along with positive punishment.
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.
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
In Psychology there are many different learning styles. One of the more famous learning styles is operant conditioning. In operant conditioning there are two major concepts; reinforcement and punishment. By using these two concepts, behaviors can be encouraged or reduce a certain behavior. Next would be the different schedules of reinforcement that effect how often a behavior is likely to continue. Lastly the article goes on to state how behaviors can be shaped using these and other various methods.
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
Behavior modification is based on the principles of operant conditioning, which were developed by American behaviorist B.F. Skinner. In his research, he put a rat in a cage later known as the Skinner Box, in which the rat could receive a food pellet by pressing on a bar. The food reward acted as a reinforcement by strengthening the rat's bar-pressing behavior. Skinner studied how the rat's behavior changed in response to differing patterns of reinforcement. By studying the way the rats operated on their environment, Skinner formulated the concept of operant conditioning, through which behavior could be shaped by reinforcement or lack of it. Skinner considered his discovery applicable to a wide range of both human and animal behaviors(“Behavior,” 2001).
This is a type of learning that was studied and originated by B.F Skinner. He realized that individuals associate their own actions with consequences. Therefore through our own actions and observance of consequences we learn what behaviors are acceptable and which are not. This type of learning was actually built off the theories of Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning. Unlike operant conditioning, this type of learning does not involve behavior. Instead, an organism learns by associating a unconditioned stimulus with a neutral stimulus. An unconditioned stimulus is something that naturally triggers a response. For example making sales at work. The stimuli would be making sales and in return the response would be happiness. The unconditioned stimulus is then paired with a neutral stimulus which is not associated with a response before conditioning. For this example, we can use a rainy day. Therefore, the unconditioned stimulus of making sales is then paired with the neutral stimulus of a rainy day. Now every time it rains you expect to make a lot of sales since a rainy day is now associated with making sales. Making sales becomes a conditioned response when it is
I observed the teacher sitting down with a group of students reading a book. As she would read she would have the children repeat what she would say. “Say goodnight to the bird”. This relates to Albert Bandura’s Social Learning theory. This theory claims people learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling.(Berk 2013) The kids are learning by imitating what the teacher is having them say. Later I observed a kid walk over to a small bookshelf and knocked it over. The teacher came over and was visibly upset. She scolded the kid very sternly for this action. This relates to B.F Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning. This is the idea that behavior is determined by its consequences. Whether it be reinforcement or punishments, which make it more or less likely that behavior will happen again.(Berk 2013) Since the adult was stern and made it clear she was disappointed, it lowers the likeliness this child will knock over the bookshelf
Operant conditioning is a system of learning that transpires through punishment and rewards for behaviors (Kalat, 2011). Through this, a connection linking a behavior and a consequence is made. For instance a kid could be told that she will not get recess privileges if she talks in class. This possibility of being punished leads to decrease in disruptive behaviors from her. The major components of operant condition are punishment and reinforcement (Kalat, 2011).
In operant conditioning, there is an association between an individual’s behavior and its consequence. A consequence can either be reinforcement or punishment (233). Positive and negative reinforcements will increase the behavior. When an individual is reinforced, they will continue to repeat the behavior to receive the reinforcement again. Punishment, on the other hand, will decrease the behavior. If an individual is punished after a particular behavior, they will behave that way less often to avoid the punishment.
In contrast to classical conditioning, operant conditioning, discovered by B.F Skinner, is a learning process that involves either an increase or decrease in some behavior as a result of consequences (Amabile, 1985). Operant conditioning attempts to elicit new behavior through use of reinforcers and punishments.
This is selective reinforcement. Pavlov and his dogs were and excellent example of operant conditioning. Pavlov rang a bell when it was time for the dogs to eat; eventually the dogs associated the bell with food. Each time the bell rang the dogs salivated. On the other hand, N.Chomsky who was a nativist argued that children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD).