Operant Conditioning: B.F. Skinner Overview

Operant Conditioning: B.F. Skinner

• Operant conditioning is a learning process where behavior is shaped by consequences.
• Skinner viewed personality as a collection of behavioral patterns, not internal traits.
• Behavior can be analyzed solely by environmental factors (causes and effects), not inner mechanisms.

Biographical Background

• Burrhus Frederic Skinner born March 20, 1904, in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania.
• Initially intended to be a writer but shifted to psychology.
• Studied at Hamilton College.
• Received his M.A. in 1930 and Ph.D. in 1931 from Harvard University.
• Became chairman of the psychology department at Indiana University (1945).
• Became a professor at Harvard University.
• Received a Citation for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology (1990).
• Died of leukemia at age 86 in 1990.

Publications

• Behavior of Organisms
• Science and Human Behavior (1938)
• Walden Two (1948)
• Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971)
• Studied under Henry Murray and W.J. Crozier.

Functional Analysis

• Functional analysis examines behavior in terms of cause-and-effect relationships.
• It focuses on controllable environmental factors and excludes internal mechanisms.

Structure of Personality

• Skinner was indifferent to structural variables (mental structures).
• Focused on modifiable behavioral responses.
• Biological variability was considered more important than mental processes.
• Behavior modification is achieved by manipulating environmental variables.

Dynamics of Personality

• Inner states are relevant, but must be analyzed within environmental context.
• Acknowledged the existence of thoughts, emotions, and internal states but saw these as variables to be studied within an environmental context.
• Made no distinction between drives and emotions.

Development of Personality: Classical Conditioning

• Conditioned stimulus: stimulus the person learns to respond to.
• Unconditioned stimulus: naturally occurring stimulus eliciting a response.
• Unconditioned response: natural response to unconditioned stimulus.
• Conditioned response: learned response to conditioned stimulus.
• Extinction: decrease in responding when reinforcement stops.

Development of Personality: Operant Conditioning

• Operant: behavior that changes the environment.
• Law of effect: responses leading to satisfying outcomes are likely to recur, those leading to unsatisfying outcomes are less likely.
• Shaping (operant conditioning): gradually reinforcing successively closer approximations to a desired behavior.
• Punishment: aversive stimulus, decreasing future likelihood of behavior.
• Reinforcement: stimulus increasing the future likelihood of a behavior.
• Negative reinforcement: removing an unpleasant stimulus to increase a behavior.

Development of Personality: Skinner Box

• A research device to study operant conditioning.
• Chamber for animals with a lever or bar, pressing which unlocks food/water as a reward.
• Used to study learning and reinforcement schedules.

Schedules of Reinforcement

• Continuous schedule: reinforcement after every response.

• Interval schedule: reinforcement after a set time interval.

• Fixed interval: time interval is consistent.

• Variable interval: time interval varies.

• Ratio schedule: reinforcement after a set number of responses.

• Fixed ratio: number of responses is consistent.

• Variable ratio: number of responses varies.

• Variables schedules (ratio and interval) are slower to result in conditioning, but are more resistant to extinction.

Superstitious Behavior

• Behaviors associated with reinforcement even without a direct relationship.
• Intermittent reinforcement schedules contribute to superstitious behavior.

Secondary Reinforcer

• Stimuli associated with primary reinforcers (like food, water).
• Skinner emphasized continuous association of secondary reinforcers with primary reinforcers to maintain their conditioning.

Stimulus Generalization and Discrimination

• Stimulus generalization: responding similarly to similar stimuli.
• Stimulus discrimination: differentiation between similar yet distinct stimuli.

Psychopathology and Therapy

• Abnormal behaviors are learned through operant conditioning.

• Can be unlearned using behavioral techniques.

• Flooding: rapid exposure to the conditioned stimulus (only effective when the unconditioned stimulus no longer appears).

• Skinner rejected internal explanations of behavior, emphasizing environmental factors as sole determinants in personality development.