Operant Conditioning vs. Classical Conditioning

Operant behavior is different to classical conditioning. They are diifferent because operant behavior operates on the enviornment and is maintained by the consequences and classical conditioning deals with the conditioning of respondent behaviors which are elicited by antecedent conditions.

Problems in Punnishment

Using punnishment may bring many problems to the punnished person. The persons may be damaged mentally or fisically. Punnishment also makes it hard for the people to say the truth because of the fear of being punnished if they say the truth.


Also, punnishment models aggresivity and can be easily abbused.
Punnishment has to be constant so the behavior can be corrected and the punnished person won't act in this behavior again.

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning is the use if consequences to modify the form of behavior through reinforcement. Operant behavior is different to clasical conditioning because operant behavior works on the enviornment and is maintained by its consequences and classical conditioning deals with the conditioning of responding behaviors.

B.F. Skinner

His complete name was Burrhus Frederic Skinner. He was born on March 20, 1904 and died August 18, 1990. He was an American psychologist, inventor, author, advocate for social reform, and a poet.

He is best know for creating the operant conditioning chamber, founding his own school of experimental research psychology, creating his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism, and for being the most influential psychologist of the 2oth century.

The Operant Conditioning Chamber is a laboratory apparatus used for the experimental analyisis of animal behavior. It was composed of one electrified floowr grid, two lights, one loud speaker, one food chamber and one response lever.

Nature vs. Nature

The nature versus nurture debates concern the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities versus personal experiences. in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits.

People may be born with certain gifts from genes from the parents, but most of what they are is because of experiences.

Also, people can be born with certain traits that may facilitate their ability in certain things. For wxample a kid may be born with large hands, so if he takes piano lessons he will eventually become really good.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (September 14, 1849 – February 27, 1936) was a Russian, and later Soviet, physiologist psychologist, and physician.

He discovered that he could train a dog to know when he was about to eat. He figured out that when the dog heard the fottsteps he started drooling because he knew he was going to eat. Then Pavlov inserted tubes at the sides of the dogs mouth so he could observe when the dog started drooling. Then he used other objects to disguise the fottsteps, and the dog would drool.

For example If a bell was sounded in close association with the meal, the dog learnt to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a while, at the mere sound of the bell, the dogresponded by drooling.

John B. Watson And The Little Albert Experiment

John Broadus Watson (January 9, 1878 – September 25, 1958) was an American Psychologist who established the Psychiological school of behaviorism.

He carried out the famous "Little Albert" Experiment. In this experiment, he took a little baby and decided to prove that fears were learned. He took a rat a monkey a dog a mask a burning paper a stuffed animal and started putting them in front o f little albert and he liked them. Then he put the rat in front and the banged a metal tube with a hammer so little albert started to cry. Now everytime he saw the rat or a furry object, he now related it to the loud noise and started crying and tried to get away from the object.

With this, Watson could prove that fears are learned and that we are not born with them.