Did you know that every day of your life on earth is touched by some form of operant conditioning ? It’s doubtful that the concept even passes through your mind, though indeed it forms part of every waking moment in the course of a lifetime.
Human behavior has been studied, analyzed, theorized, and over the course of human history placed into neat little boxes that title each aspect of the manner in which humans relate not only to each other but to stimuli that is introduced by a passing moment that goes unnoticed. Why do we say the words “Thank you” and “please” ? Why do we walk instead of running ? Why do we respond to any given stimuli in the way that we do ?
Studies throughout history have proven time and again that we live our lives almost like puppets, responding to reactions of those around us. For example, from early childhood, we learn the lessons that life teaches us about the way in which we approach every area of our lives, and the consequence of those actions. Taking examples of animal behavior for example, what studies showed was that negative impact would stop behavior of a certain style, whereas reward in fact encouraged that behavior.
It’s quite a simple theory to understand, and just as rats and other animals in experimentation responded to different stimuli, so do human beings. If you put your finger into the steam that comes from a boiling kettle, what happens is that this produces a negative reaction. No-one told us that we would burn ourselves, though we, as the operator of our own responses, learned that putting our finger into hot steam wasn’t a very clever idea.
Similarly from very early childhood, the learning experience doesn’t depend solely upon those influences around us, but more upon the learning skills of experimentation. Take a small child that wants to play with a lighter. Of course, the natural response of a parent is not to let that child experience danger. Although a child may be obedient and not play with lighters, the operational conditioning doesn’t come into play until they learn by experience why lighters are not really suitable for children. This is not a suggestion that parents should let their children learn this particular lesson, but merely a demonstration of the difference between parental control and operate conditioning.
Over the years, psychologists conducted research which reinforced the notion that response to actions was indeed to key to operative conditioning. For example, if the consequence was a negative force, then the behavior would be to avoid it. If a positive response was given, then a human being sees it as reward and will learn patterns of behavior that have negative or positive response. Taking this a step further, examinations were undertaken of situations where no response was present and here it was found that human beings actually need either negative or positive response to stimulate habits and behavior patterns, and that neutral response actually deterred actions of both a positive and negative nature.
If a child for example screams every time they want a parent’s attention, some parents respond with love and attention. This encourages the behavior because the reward is that the child receives the nurturing desired. Take another instance where a child excels at school and gets negative response from parents. They then give up trying, since the negativity does nothing to validate their actions. A child trying new things to gain approval given no response at all desists and stops trying, since the lack of response means a lack of stimulation of interest in trying something new.
By understanding operant conditioning, psychologists were able to define areas of strength and weakness in parent practice, and to understand why values differ between individuals, also recognizing that standard behavior was not as standard as one might imagine, and instead of being standard, was simply a reaction by mankind to operant conditioning. Humans try different things, and receive different levels of acceptance or rejection, and those behavior patterns as simple as saying Please and Thank you take on a new significance when you consider that these are conditioned by the response received by other human beings.
Why do we smile ? Why do we laugh ? The answers all lie in our own history of learning and the positive and negative effects that stem from those very first steps into a world of trying new things. Of course we smile. Smiles receive positive reaction, so we learn that smiling is a good thing. Why do we stop at the side of the road to look for traffic ? Experience tells us that the danger that faces those that do not look are too great to take the risk. Every aspect of life reinforces ideas though with operant conditioning, unbeknown to ourselves, the consequences of actions teach us methods of behavior that follow us within the path of our lives.
By applying logical conclusions to experimentation with rats, Burrhus Frederic Skinner provided psychologists with the possibility of reinforcement stimuli to attain set results and patterns of behavior, and indeed proved that those little behavioral foibles we consider normal behavior stem from conditioning of either a negative, positive or neutral response, and that rather than learning from our peers, the human learned conditioning through reaction to their own behavior.
Next time you cross a road and stop to look left and right, or take a hot cake out of the oven with your oven mitt, each one of these responses to life shows how operant conditioning applies to every human being on earth and is a phenomenon shared by animal and human alike in the process of learning.
