Example Of Operant Conditioning

Operant Conditioning is a type of learning that reflects behavior through a system of reward and punishment. Through the consequence, a person will learn to see if the behavior is good or bad. An example of operant conditioning regarding my behavior as a college student was during my second year of college. I had a teacher assistant that gave us a stamp card, so she can stamp every time we went to discussion. Each discussion section we were to get three stamps. By the end of the quarter we would need thirty stamps to get full credit. If we got all thirty stamps for attending and participating in discussion sections for the entire ten weeks we would get an extra five points of extra credit. For every discussion section we did not show up, my

It reflects behavior through observations of watching others’ behaviors and their consequences. During college, I experienced observational learning in class. One of my friends was caught cheating during a test. I watched the teacher assistant come by his seat and take his test away from him. He was brought outside and had to talk to the professor. He ended up getting an F on the midterm and ended up failing the class. Through the experience of seeing the consequences that he had for cheating on a midterm, I learned that I should work hard and study. I always knew that cheating was unacceptable, but because I observed his behavior and know the consequences now, I am afraid to look around the classroom when I am taking a test. I keep my eyes on my own paper and focus on only my

It is the values that we internalize and feel like we must follow in order to be well behaved in society. Behavioral perspective accounts for the development of conscience because within the behavioral perspective we learn that the consequent of punishment is for “bad” things we do and rewards are given for the “good” things we do. The positive and negative reinforcements given after a particular behavior reflects our decision making later on and affects our conscience. We develop our conscience based on the behaviors we learned to be “good” or “bad”. We internalize what we learn and the consequences associated with the learning. When we do something bad like steal something, we think about the punishment associated with that behavior and the guilt that comes after the behavior. Since we internalized the conditions of the behavior, we are less likely to perform the action because our conscience tells us that it is a “wrong”