Psychology in the News - Nichols Resourcesbroncshistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/8/5/18857426/...NEWARK, DE, October 12, 2009. Zachary Christie was so excited about joining the Cub Scouts

NEWARK, DE, October 12, 2009. Zachary Christiewas so excited about joining the Cub Scouts and goingon campouts that he brought his favorite camping uten-sil to school to use at lunch. The utensil is handy be-cause it can serve as a knife, fork, and spoon. Butschool officials have decided that the 6-year-old boy vi-olated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons—whichwould include the “knife” part of the multipurposeutensil—and have suspended him. He now faces45 days in the district’s reform school. “It just seemsunfair,” Zachary said, while practicing writing his lower-case letters at home.

In response to shooting incidents in schools, manydistricts have adopted zero-tolerance policies on thepossession of weapons on school grounds. In Zachary’scase, officials felt they had no choice but to suspend

Psychology in the News

him because the district bans knives regardless of thepossessor’s intent, age, or character.

“Zachary wears a suit and tie some days to schoolby his own choice because he takes school so seriously,”said Debbie Christie, Zachary’s mother. “He is not somesort of threat to his classmates.” But George Evans,president of the school district’s board, defended thedecision. “There is no parent who wants to get a phonecall where they hear that their child no longer has twogood seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and some-one pulls out a knife,” he commented.

Critics argue that zero-tolerance policies like theone that landed Zachary in hot water have led to in-creased suspensions and expulsions, which results inkids spending time in places like the street, where theirbehavior only gets worse. Inflexible policies can alsolead to heavy punishment for minor infractions. Lastyear, a third grader in Delaware was expelled for a yearbecause her grandmother had sent a birthday cake toschool along with a knife to cut it.

Zero-tolerance policies initially gave authorities moreleeway in punishing students, but critics charged that theywere being applied in a discriminatory manner againstAfrican-American children, who were more likely thanwhite children to be suspended or expelled for committingthe same offenses. As a result, many school districts haveremoved discretion in the application of the policies.

Zachary himself is reluctant to go back to school. “Ijust think the other kids may tease me for being in trou-ble,” he said, and added, “but I think the rules are whatis wrong, not me.”Zachary Christie with the camping utensil that got him in trouble.

First Grader Suspended Over Camping Utensil

Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning inReal Life

Operant Conditioning

Principles of OperantConditioning

Operant Conditioning in RealLife

Learning and the Mind

Psychology in the News,Revisited

Taking Psychology with You:Does Media Violence MakeYou Violent?

C H A P T E R

Learning and Conditioning

Are zero-tolerance policies justified? Should children who commit minor

infractions be punished as severely as those who commit serious ones?

If not, how should school administrators treat children who are disrup-

tive or violent? Should schools expel them or are there alternatives? In the home,

how should parents correct their children’s misbehavior? Is “a good spanking” the

best recourse for parents, or should there be “zero tolerance” for parents who use

any kind of corporal punishment?

The debate over how to discipline children has been with us for a long time.

It is part of a larger issue: How can we change unwanted, self-defeating, or dan-

gerous behavior? Many people want to fix their own bad habits, of course, and

they are forever trying to improve or fix other people’s behavior as well. We im-

prison criminals, spank children, shout at spouses, and give the finger to a

driver who cuts us off. On the positive side, we give children gold stars for good

work, give parents bumper stickers that praise their children’s successes, give

bonuses to employees, and give out trophies for top performance. Do any of

these efforts get the results we hope for? Well, yes and no. Once you understand

the laws of learning, you will realize that behavior, whether it’s your own or other

people’s, can change for the better. And you will also understand why often it

does not.

Research on learning has been heavily influenced by behaviorism, the school

of psychology that accounts for behavior in terms of observable acts and events,

without reference to mental entities such as “mind” or “will” (see Chapter 1).

Behaviorists focus on conditioning, which involves associations between environ-

mental stimuli and responses. They have shown that two types of conditioning,

classical conditioning and operant conditioning, can explain a great deal of be-

havior both in animals and in people. But other approaches, including social-

cognitive learning theories, hold that omitting mental processes from

explanations of human learning is like omitting passion from descriptions of sex:

299

unconditioned stimu-lus (US) The classical-conditioning term for astimulus that elicits areflexive response in theabsence of learning.

300 CHAPTER 9 Learning and Conditioning

You may explain the form, but you miss itsessence. To social-cognitive theorists, learning in-cludes not only changes in behavior but alsochanges in thoughts, expectations, and knowledge,which in turn influence behavior in a reciprocal, ortwo-way, process.

As you read about the principles of conditioningand learning in this chapter, ask yourself what theycan teach us about the use of punishment to controlundesirable behavior. What happens when punish-ment is used inappropriately? What is the best wayto modify other people’s behavior—and our own?

YOU are about to learn...• how classical conditioning explains why a dog might

salivate when it sees a lightbulb or hears a buzzer.

• four important features of classical conditioning.

• what is actually learned in classical conditioning.

Classical ConditioningAt the turn of the twentieth century, the greatRussian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) wasstudying salivation in dogs as part of a research pro-gram on digestion. One of his procedures was tomake a surgical opening in a dog’s cheek and inserta tube that conducted saliva away from the animal’ssalivary gland so that the saliva could be measured.To stimulate the reflexive flow of saliva, Pavlovplaced meat powder or other food in the dog’smouth (see Figure 9.1).

Pavlov was a truly dedicated scientific observer.Many years later, as he lay dying, he even dictatedhis sensations for posterity! And he instilled in hisstudents and assistants the same passion for detail.During his salivation studies, one of the assistants

noticed something that most people would haveoverlooked or dismissed as trivial. After a dog hadbeen brought to the laboratory a few times, itwould start to salivate before the food was placed inits mouth. The sight or smell of the food, the dishin which the food was kept, and even the sight ofthe person who delivered the food were enough tostart the dog’s mouth watering. These new salivaryresponses clearly were not inborn, so they musthave been acquired through experience.

At first, Pavlov treated the dog’s drooling asjust an annoying secretion. But he quickly realizedthat his assistant had stumbled onto an importantphenomenon, one that Pavlov came to believe wasthe basis of most learning in human beings andother animals (Pavlov, 1927). He called that phe-nomenon a “conditional” reflex because it de-pended on environmental conditions. Later, anerror in the translation of his writings transformed“conditional” into “conditioned,” the word mostcommonly used today.

Pavlov soon dropped what he had been doingand turned to the study of conditioned reflexes, towhich he devoted the last three decades of his life.Why were his dogs salivating to things other thanfood?

New Reflexes from OldPavlov initially speculated about what his dogsmight be thinking and feeling when they drooledbefore getting their food. Was the doggy equivalentof “Oh boy, this means chow time” going throughtheir minds? He soon decided, however, that suchspeculation was pointless. Instead, he focused onanalyzing the environment in which the condi-tioned reflex arose.

The original salivary reflex, according toPavlov, consisted of an unconditioned stimulus (US),

FIGURE 9.1Pavlov’s MethodThe photo shows IvanPavlov (in the whitebeard), flanked by hisstudents and a caninesubject. The drawingdepicts an apparatussimilar to the one heused; saliva from a dog’scheek flowed down a tubeand was measured by themovement of a needle ona revolving drum.

learning A relatively per-manent change in behavior(or behavioral potential)due to experience.

behaviorism An ap-proach to psychology thatemphasizes the study ofobservable behavior andthe role of the environ-ment as a determinant ofbehavior.

conditioning A basickind of learning thatinvolves associationsbetween environmentalstimuli and theorganism’s responses.

A B

conditioned response(CR) The classical-conditioning term for aresponse that is elicitedby a conditioned stimulus;it occurs after theconditioned stimulus isassociated with an uncon-ditioned stimulus.

conditioned stimulus(CS) The classical-conditioning term for aninitially neutral stimulusthat comes to elicit aconditioned response afterbeing associated with anunconditioned stimulus.

CHAPTER 9 Learning and Conditioning 301

food in the dog’s mouth, and an unconditionedresponse (UR), salivation. By an unconditionedstimulus, Pavlov meant an event or thing that elicitsa response automatically or reflexively. By an un-conditioned response, he meant the response that isautomatically produced:

Learning occurs, said Pavlov, when a neutralstimulus (one that does not yet produce a particularresponse, such as salivation) is regularly paired withan unconditioned stimulus:

The neutral stimulus then becomes aconditioned stimulus (CS), which elicits a learned orconditioned response (CR) that is usually similar orrelated to the original, unlearned one. In Pavlov’slaboratory, the sight of the food dish, which had notpreviously elicited salivation, became a CS forsalivation:

The procedure by which a neutral stimulus be-comes a conditioned stimulus eventually becameknown as classical conditioning, and is sometimesalso called Pavlovian or respondent conditioning.Pavlov and his students went on to show that allsorts of things can become conditioned stimuli forsalivation if they are paired with food: the ticking ofa metronome, the musical tone of a bell, the vibrat-ing sound of a buzzer, a touch on the leg, even apinprick or an electric shock. And since Pavlov’sday, many automatic, involuntary responses besidessalivation have been classically conditioned, includ-ing heartbeat, stomach secretions, blood pressure,reflexive movements, blinking, and muscle contrac-tions. In the laboratory, the optimal interval be-tween the presentation of the neutral stimulus andthe presentation of the US is often quite short,sometimes less than a second.

Principles of ClassicalConditioningClassical conditioning occurs in all species, fromone-celled amoebas to Homo sapiens. Let us lookmore closely at some important features of thisprocess: extinction, higher-order conditioning, andstimulus generalization and discrimination.

Extinction Conditioned responses do not nec-essarily last forever. If, after conditioning, the con-ditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented withoutthe unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned re-sponse eventually disappears and extinction is saidto have occurred (see Figure 9.2 on the next page).Suppose that you train your dog Milo to salivate tothe sound of a bell, but then you ring the bell everyfive minutes and do not follow it with food. Milowill salivate less and less to the bell and will soonstop salivating altogether; salivation will have beenextinguished. Extinction is not the same as unlearn-ing or forgetting, however. If you come back thenext day and ring the bell, Milo may salivate againfor a few trials, although the response will probablybe weaker. The reappearance of the response,called spontaneous recovery, explains why com-pletely eliminating a conditioned response often re-quires more than one extinction session.

Higher-Order Conditioning Sometimes a neu-tral stimulus can become a conditioned stimulus bybeing paired with an already-established CS, a pro-cedure known as higher-order conditioning. SayMilo has learned to salivate to the sight of his fooddish. Now you flash a bright light before presenting

UR

US

Neutralstimulus

US

UR

CS

CR

classical conditioningThe process by which apreviously neutral stimulusacquires the capacity toelicit a response throughassociation with a stimulusthat already elicits a simi-lar or related response.Also called Pavlovian orrespondent conditioning.

extinction The weaken-ing and eventual disap-pearance of a learnedresponse; in classicalconditioning, it occurswhen the conditionedstimulus is no longerpaired with the uncondi-tioned stimulus.

spontaneous recoveryThe reappearance of alearned response after itsapparent extinction.

unconditionedresponse (UR) Theclassical-conditioning termfor a reflexive responseelicited by a stimulus inthe absence of learning.

higher-order condi-tioning In classicalconditioning, a procedurein which a neutral stimu-lus becomes a conditionedstimulus through associa-tion with an already estab-lished conditionedstimulus.


the dish. With repeated pairings of the light andthe dish, Milo may learn to salivate to the light.The procedure for higher-order conditioning is il-lustrated in Figure 9.3.

Higher-order conditioning may explain whysome words trigger emotional responses in us—why they can inflame us to anger or evoke warm,sentimental feelings. When words are paired withobjects or other words that already elicit someemotional response, they too may come to elicitthat response (Staats & Staats, 1957). A child maylearn a positive response to the word birthdaybecause of its association with gifts and attention.Conversely, the child may learn a negative responseto ethnic or national labels if the labels are pairedwith words that the child has already learned aredisagreeable, such as dumb or dirty. Higher-order

conditioning, in other words, may contribute to theformation of prejudices.

Stimulus Generalization and Discrimina-tion After a stimulus becomes a conditioned stim-ulus for some response, other, similar stimuli mayproduce a similar reaction—a phenomenon knownas stimulus generalization. If you condition yourpatient pooch Milo to salivate to middle C on thepiano, Milo may also salivate to D, which is onetone above C, even though you did not pair D withfood. Stimulus generalization is described nicely byan old English proverb: “He who hath been bittenby a snake fears a rope.”

The mirror image of stimulus generalization isstimulus discrimination, in which different responsesare made to stimuli that resemble the conditionedstimulus in some way. Suppose that you have condi-tioned Milo to salivate to middle C on the piano byrepeatedly pairing the sound with food. Now youplay middle C on a guitar, without following it byfood (but you continue to follow C on the piano byfood). Eventually, Milo will learn to salivate to a Con the piano and not to salivate to the same note onthe guitar; that is, he will discriminate between thetwo sounds. If you keep at this long enough, youcould train Milo to be a pretty discriminatingdrooler!

What Is Actually Learnedin Classical Conditioning?For classical conditioning to be most effective, thestimulus to be conditioned should precede the un-conditioned stimulus rather than follow it or occursimultaneously with it. This makes sense because,in classical conditioning, the conditioned stimulusbecomes a signal for the unconditioned stimulus.Classical conditioning is in fact an evolutionary

0 4 8 12 16

(CS presented alone)Extinction trials

Dro

ps

of

saliv

a to

CS

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

(CS paired with US)Acquisition trials

Dro

ps

of

saliv

a to

CS

0

14

12

10

6

4

2

2 4 6 8 10

8

FIGURE 9.2Acquisition and Extinction of a Salivary ResponseA neutral stimulus that is consistently followed by an unconditioned stimulus for salivationwill become a conditioned stimulus for salivation (left). But when this conditioned stimulusis then repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned salivaryresponse will weaken and eventually disappear (right); it has been extinguished.

CR

Neutralstimulus

CS

CR

CS CS

CR

FIGURE 9.3Higher-Order ConditioningIn this illustration of higher-order conditioning, the food dish is a previously conditioned stimu-lus for salivation (left). When the light, a neutral stimulus, is paired with the dish (center), thelight also becomes a conditioned stimulus for salivation (right).

stimulus discrimina-tion The tendency torespond differently to twoor more similar stimuli; inclassical conditioning, itoccurs when a stimulussimilar to the CS fails toevoke the CR.

stimulus generaliza-tion After conditioning,the tendency to respondto a stimulus that resem-bles one involved in theoriginal conditioning; inclassical conditioning, itoccurs when a stimulusthat resembles the CSelicits the CR.


adaptation, one that enables the organism to antici-pate and prepare for a biologically important eventthat is about to happen. In Pavlov’s studies, for in-stance, a bell, buzzer, or other stimulus was a signalthat meat was coming, and the dog’s salivation waspreparation for digesting food. Today, therefore,many psychologists contend that what an animal orperson actually learns in classical conditioning isnot merely an association between two paired stim-uli that occur close together in time, but ratherinformation conveyed by one stimulus about an-other: “If a tone sounds, food is likely to follow.”

This view is supported by the research ofRobert Rescorla (1988), who showed, in a series ofimaginative studies, that the mere pairing of an un-conditioned stimulus and a neutral stimulus is notenough to produce learning. To become a condi-tioned stimulus, the neutral stimulus must reliablysignal, or predict, the unconditioned stimulus. Iffood occurs just as often without a preceding tone aswith it, the tone is unlikely to become a conditionedstimulus for salivation, because the tone does notprovide any information about the probability of

getting food. Think of it this way: If every phonecall you got brought bad news that made your heartrace, your heart might soon start pounding everytime the phone rang—a conditioned response.Ordinarily, though, upsetting calls occur randomlyamong a far greater number of routine ones. Theringtone may sometimes be paired with a racingheart, but it doesn’t always signal disaster, so noconditioned heart-rate response occurs.

Rescorla concluded that “Pavlovian conditioningis not a stupid process by which the organism willy-nilly forms associations between any two stimuli thathappen to co-occur. Rather, the organism is betterseen as an information seeker using logical and per-ceptual relations among events, along with its ownpreconceptions, to form a sophisticated representa-tion of its world.” Not all learning theorists agree; anorthodox behaviorist would say that it is silly to talkabout the preconceptions of a rat. The importantpoint, however, is that concepts such as “informationseeking,” “preconceptions,” and “representations ofthe world” open the door to a more cognitive view ofclassical conditioning. Explore

Get Involved! Conditioning an Eye-Blink Response

Try out your behavioral skills by conditioning an eye-blink response in a willing friend, using classical-conditioning procedures. You will need a drinking straw and something to make a ringing sound; a spoontapped on a water glass works well. Tell your friend that you are going to use the straw to blow air in his orher eye, but do not say why. Immediately before each puff of air, make the ringing sound. Repeat thisprocedure ten times. Then make the ringing sound but don’t puff. Your friend will probably blink anyway,and may continue to do so for one or two more repetitions of the sound before the response extinguishes.Can you identify the US, the UR, the CS, and the CR in this exercise?

A. 1.US�the thunderclap; UR �jumping elicited by the noise; CS �the sight of the lightning; CR �jumping elicited by the light-ning2.US�the taste of lemon; UR �salivation elicited by the taste of lemon; CS �the picture of a glass of lemonade; CR �sali-vation elicited by the pictureB.signal or predict

Classical-conditioning terms can be hard to learn, so be sure to take this quiz before going on.

A. Name the unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus, and conditioned re-sponse in these two situations.

1. Five-year-old Samantha is watching a storm from her window. A huge bolt of lightning is followed by atremendous thunderclap, and Samantha jumps at the noise. This happens several more times. There isa brief lull and then another lightning bolt. Samantha jumps in response to the bolt.

2. Gregory’s mouth waters whenever he eats anything with lemon in it. One day, while reading an ad thatshows a big glass of lemonade, Gregory finds that his mouth has started to water.

B. In the view of many learning theorists, pairing a neutral and unconditioned stimulus is not enough to pro-duce classical conditioning; the neutral stimulus must __________ the unconditioned stimulus.

Answers:

Quick Quiz

Three Stages ofClassical Condi-tioning onmypsychlab.com

Explore

andReview onmypsychlab.com

Study


YOU are about to learn...• why advertisers often include pleasant music and

gorgeous scenery in ads for their products.

• how classical conditioning might explain your irrationalfear of heights or mice.

• how you might be conditioned to like certain tastes andodors and be turned off by others.

• how sitting in a doctor’s office can make you feel sickand placebos can make you feel better.

• how technology is helping researchers study thebiological basis of classical conditioning.

Classical Conditioningin Real LifeIf a dog can learn to salivate to the ringing of a bell,so can you. In fact, you probably have learned tosalivate to the sound of a lunch bell, the phrase hotfudge sundae, and “mouth-watering” pictures offood. But classical conditioning affects us every dayin many other ways.

One of the first psychologists to recognize thereal-life implications of Pavlovian theory was JohnB. Watson, who founded American behaviorismand enthusiastically promoted Pavlov’s ideas. Wat-son believed that the whole rich array of humanemotion and behavior could be accounted for byconditioning principles. He even suggested that welearn to love another person when that person is

paired with stroking and cuddling. Wat-son was wrong about love, which is a lotmore complicated than he thought (seeChapter 14). But he was right about thepower of classical conditioning to affectour emotions, preferences, and tastes.

Learning to LikeClassical conditioning plays a big role inour emotional responses to objects,people, symbols, events, and places. Itcan explain why sentimental feelingssweep over us when we see a schoolmascot, a national flag, or the logo ofthe Olympic games. These objects havebeen associated in the past with positivefeelings.

Many advertising techniques takeadvantage of classical conditioning’srole in emotional responses. When yousee ads, notice how many of them pair aproduct with music the advertiser

thinks you’ll like, with good-looking people, withidyllic scenery, or with celebrities you admire orthink are funny. In classical-conditioning terms, themusic, attractive person, or celebrity is an uncondi-tioned stimulus for internal responses associatedwith pleasure, and the advertiser hopes that theproduct in the ad will become a conditioned stimu-lus, evoking similar responses in you.

Learning to FearPositive emotions are not the only ones that can beclassically conditioned; so can dislikes and fears. Aperson can learn to fear just about anything if it ispaired with something that elicits pain, surprise, orembarrassment. Human beings, however, are bio-logically primed to acquire some kinds of fearsmore readily than others. It is far easier to establisha conditioned fear of spiders, snakes, and heightsthan of butterflies, flowers, and toasters. The for-mer can be dangerous to your health, so in theprocess of evolution, human beings acquired a ten-dency to learn quickly to be wary of them and to re-tain this fear (LoBue & DeLoache, 2008; Öhman& Mineka, 2001). Some theorists believe that evo-lution has also instilled in humans a readiness tolearn to fear unfamiliar members of ethnic groupsother than their own, and that this tendency too re-sists extinction and may contribute to the emo-tional underpinnings of prejudice (Navarrete et al.,2009; Olsson et al., 2005).

The Birth of a Phobia When fear of an objector situation becomes irrational and interferes withnormal activities, it qualifies as a phobia (seeChapter 11). To demonstrate how a phobia mightbe learned, John Watson and Rosalie Rayner(1920/2000) deliberately established a rat phobia inan 11-month-old boy named Albert. Their goal wasto demonstrate how an inborn reaction of fearcould transfer to a wide range of stimuli; today wecall this stimulus generalization. They also wantedto demonstrate that adult emotional responses,such as specific fears, could originate in early child-hood. The research procedures that Watson andRayner used had some flaws, and for ethical rea-sons, no psychologist today would attempt to dosuch a thing to a child. Nevertheless, the study’smain conclusion, that fears can be conditioned, isstill well accepted.

“Little Albert” was a placid child who rarelycried. (Watson and Rayner deliberately chose sucha child because they thought their demonstrationwould do him relatively little harm.) When Watsonand Rayner gave Albert a live, furry rat to play with,

Why do most people fear snakes, andwhy do some even develop a snakephobia?


he showed no fear; in fact, he was delighted. Thesame was true when they showed him a variety ofother objects, including a rabbit and some cottonwool. However, like most children, Albert wasinnately afraid of loud noises. When the re-searchers made a loud noise behind his head bystriking a steel bar with a hammer, he would jumpand fall sideways onto the mattress where he wassitting. The noise made by the hammer was anunconditioned stimulus for the unconditionedresponse of fear.

Having established that Albert liked rats, Wat-son and Rayner set about teaching him to fearthem. Again they offered him a rat, but this time, ashe reached for it, one of the researchers struck thesteel bar. Startled, Albert fell onto the mattress. Aweek later, the researchers repeated this procedureseveral times. Albert began to whimper and trem-ble. Finally, they held out the rat to him withoutmaking the noise. Albert fell over, cried, andcrawled away so quickly that he almost reached theedge of the table he was sitting on before an adultcaught him; the rat had become a conditioned

stimulus for fear (see Figure 9.4). Tests done a fewdays later showed that Albert’s fear had generalizedto other hairy or furry objects, including a whiterabbit, cotton wool, a Santa Claus mask, and evenJohn Watson’s hair.

Unfortunately, Watson and Rayner lost accessto Little Albert, so we do not know how long thechild’s fears lasted. Further, because the study endedearly, Watson and Rayner had no opportunity toreverse the conditioning. However, Watson andMary Cover Jones did reverse another child’s condi-tioned fear—one that was, as Watson put it, “home-grown” rather than psychologist-induced ( Jones,1924). A 3-year-old named Peter was deathly afraidof rabbits. Watson and Jones eliminated his fearwith a method called counterconditioning, in whicha conditioned stimulus is paired with some otherstimulus that elicits a response incompatible withthe unwanted response (see Figure 9.5).

At first, the researchers kept the rabbit somedistance from Peter, so that his fear would remainat a low level. Otherwise, Peter might have learnedto fear milk and crackers! Then gradually, over

Explore

Neutralstimulus

CS

CR

US

UR

US

UR

FIGURE 9.4The Creation of a FearIn the Little Albert study, noise from a hammer striking a steel bar was an unconditionedstimulus for fear (left). When a white rat, a neutral stimulus, was paired with the noise (center),the rat then became a conditioned stimulus for fear (right).

US

UR

CS

CR

CS US

UR

CS

New CR

FIGURE 9.5The Counterconditioning of a FearThree-year-old Peter had acquired a conditioned response of fear of rabbits. To countercondition this fear, the researchers paired arabbit (the CS) with a snack of milk and crackers (a US), which produced pleasant feelings that were incompatible with the condi-tioned response of fear. Eventually, Peter felt as comfortable with the rabbit as with the crackers.

counterconditioningIn classical conditioning,the process of pairing aconditioned stimulus witha stimulus that elicits aresponse that is incompat-ible with an unwantedconditioned response.

Classical Condi-tioning of LittleAlbert onmypsychlab.com

Explore


several days, they brought the rabbit closer andcloser. Eventually Peter learned to like rabbits andPeter was even able to sit with the rabbit in his lap,playing with it with one hand while he ate with theother. A variation of this procedure, calledsystematic desensitization, was later devised for treat-ing phobias in adults (see Chapter 12).

Biology and Conditioned Fears Researcherstoday are exploring the biological basis of fear con-ditioning and fear extinction. The acquisition of aconditioned fear appears to involve a receptor in theamygdala for the neurotransmitter glutamate. Giv-ing rats a drug that blocks this receptor prevents ex-tinction of a conditioned fear, whereas giving a drugthat enhances the receptor’s activity speeds up ex-tinction (Walker et al., 2002). Inspired by these re-sults, researchers set out to learn whether thereceptor-enhancing drug (which is safe in humans)could help people with a phobic fear of heights(Davis et al., 2005). Using a double-blind proce-dure, they gave the drug to 15 such people and aplacebo to 15 others. The participants then under-went two therapy sessions in which they donned vir-tual reality goggles and “rode” a glass elevator toprogressively higher floors in a virtual hotel—an in-credibly scary thing to do if you’re terrified ofheights! They could also “walk” out on a bridge andlook down on a fountain in the hotel lobby. Duringeach session, and again at one-week and three-month follow-up sessions, the participants ratedtheir discomfort at each “floor.” Combining thetherapy with the drug reduced symptoms far morethan combining it with the placebo. Further, in theireveryday lives, people who got the drug were lesslikely than the control subjects to avoid heights.

Genetic differences might explain why somepeople are more likely than others to become anx-ious and fearful. In a study done in Sweden, re-searchers conditioned university students to startlein response to pictures of faces. Only those studentswho had a particular gene associated with reactivityin the amygdala acquired the conditioned startle re-sponse. And those students who carried a gene as-sociated with impaired cognitive control in theprefrontal cortex showed resistance to extinction ofthe response (Lonsdorf et al., 2009). Such researchhelps us to understand the biological mechanismsthat underlie our innate and conditioned fears.

Accounting for TasteClassical conditioning can also explain learned re-actions to many foods and odors. In the laboratory,researchers have taught animals to dislike foods or

odors by pairing them with drugs that cause nauseaor other unpleasant symptoms. One research teamtrained slugs to associate the smell of carrots, whichslugs normally like, with a bitter-tasting chemicalthey detest. Soon the slugs were avoiding the smellof carrots. The researchers then demonstratedhigher-order conditioning by pairing the smell ofcarrots with the smell of potato. Sure enough, theslugs began to avoid the smell of potato as well(Sahley, Rudy, & Gelperin, 1981).

Many people have learned to dislike a foodafter eating it and then falling ill, even when thetwo events were unrelated. The food, previously aneutral stimulus, becomes a conditioned stimulusfor nausea or other symptoms produced by the ill-ness. Psychologist Martin Seligman once told howhe himself was conditioned to hate béarnaise sauce.One night, shortly after he and his wife ate a deli-cious filet mignon with béarnaise sauce, he camedown with the flu. Naturally, he felt wretched. Hismisery had nothing to do with the béarnaise sauce,of course, yet the next time he tried it, he found tohis annoyance that he disliked the taste (Seligman& Hager, 1972).

Notice that, unlike conditioning in the labora-tory, Seligman’s aversion to the sauce occurred afteronly one pairing of the sauce with illness and with aconsiderable delay between the conditioned andunconditioned stimuli. Moreover, Seligman’s wifedid not become a conditioned stimulus for nausea,and neither did his dinner plate or the waiter, eventhough they also had been paired with illness.Why? In earlier work with rats, John Garcia andRobert Koelling (1966) had provided the answer:the existence of a greater biological readiness to

Whether we say “yuck” or “yum” to a food may dependon a past experience involving classical conditioning.


associate sickness with taste than with sights orsounds. Like the tendency to acquire certain fears,this biological tendency probably evolved becauseit enhanced survival. Eating bad food, after all, ismore likely to be followed by illness than are sightsor sounds.

Psychologists have taken advantage of this phe-nomenon to develop humane ways of discouragingpredators from preying on livestock, using condi-tioned taste aversions instead of traps and poisons.In one classic study, researchers laced sheep meatwith a nausea-inducing chemical. Coyotes andwolves fell for the bait, and as a result they devel-oped a conditioned aversion to sheep (Gustavson etal., 1974). Similar techniques have been used todeter raccoons from killing chickens, and ravensand crows from eating crane eggs (Garcia & Gus-tavson, 1997).

Reacting to Medical TreatmentsBecause of classical conditioning, medical treat-ments can create unexpected misery, because reac-tions to treatment may generalize to stimuli thatare entirely unrelated to the treatment itself. A par-ticular problem for cancer patients is that the nau-sea and vomiting resulting from chemotherapyoften generalize to the place where the therapytakes place, the waiting room, the sound of a nurse’svoice, or the smell of rubbing alcohol. The drugtreatment is an unconditioned stimulus for nauseaand vomiting, and through association, the otherpreviously neutral stimuli become conditionedstimuli for these responses. Even mental images ofthe sights and smells of the clinic can become con-ditioned stimuli for nausea (Dadds et al., 1997;Redd et al., 1993).

Some cancer patients also acquire a classicallyconditioned anxiety response to anything associ-ated with their chemotherapy. In one study, pa-tients who drank lemon-lime Kool-Aid before theirtherapy sessions developed an anxiety response tothe drink—an example of higher-order condition-ing. They continued to feel anxious even when thedrink was offered in their homes rather than at theclinic ( Jacobsen et al., 1995).

Conversely, patients may have reduced pain andanxiety when they receive placebos, pills and injec-tions that have no active ingredients or treatmentsthat have no direct physical effect on the problem.Placebos can be amazingly powerful, especiallywhen they take the form of an injection, a large pill,or a pill with a brand name (Benedetti & Levi-Montalcini, 2001). Why do they work? Biologicalpsychologists have shown that placebos can actually

affect the brain in much the same way as real treat-ments do (see Chapter 6). Cognitive psychologistsemphasize the role of expectations of getting better,which may reduce anxiety and thus boost the im-mune system, or simply encourage people to copebetter with their symptoms. But behaviorists arguethat the doctor’s white coat, the doctor’s office, andpills or injections all become conditioned stimulifor relief from symptoms because these stimulihave been associated in the past with real drugs(Ader, 2000). The real drugs are the unconditionedstimuli, and the relief they bring is the uncondi-tioned response. Placebos acquire the ability toelicit similar reactions, thereby becoming condi-tioned stimuli.

The expectancy explanation of placebo effectsand the classical-conditioning explanation are notmutually exclusive (Kirsch, 2004; Stewart-Williams& Podd, 2004). As we saw earlier, many researchersnow accept the view that classical conditioning it-self involves the expectation that the conditionedstimulus will be followed by the unconditionedstimulus. Thus, at least some classically condi-tioned placebo effects may involve the patient’sexpectations. In fact, the patient’s previous condi-tioning history may be what created those expecta-tions to begin with.

The anxiety that many people feel about having blooddrawn can generalize to the nurse, the room, the sight ofneedles . . . .


YOU are about to learn...• how the consequences of your actions affect your

future behavior.

• what praising a child and quitting your nagging have incommon.

Operant ConditioningAt the end of the nineteenth century, in the firstknown scientific study of anger, G. Stanley Hall(1899) asked people to describe angry episodes theyhad experienced or observed. One person told of a3-year-old girl who broke out in seemingly uncon-trollable sobs when she was kept home from a ride.In the middle of her outburst, the child suddenlystopped and asked her nanny in a perfectly calmvoice if her father was in. Told no, and realizingthat he was not around to put a stop to her tantrum,she immediately resumed her sobbing.

Children, of course, cry for many valid rea-sons—pain, discomfort, fear, illness, fatigue—andthese cries deserve an adult’s sympathy and atten-tion. The child in Hall’s study, however, was cryingbecause she had learned from prior experience thatan outburst of sobbing would pay off by bringingher attention and possibly the ride she wanted. Hertantrum illustrates one of the most basic laws oflearning: Behavior becomes more likely or less likely de-pending on its consequences.

This principle is at the heart of operant condi-tioning (also called instrumental conditioning), thesecond type of conditioning studied by behaviorists.

In classical conditioning, it does not matter whetheran animal’s or person’s behavior has consequences.In Pavlov’s procedure, the dog learned an associa-tion between two events that were not under itscontrol (e.g., a tone and the delivery of food), andthe animal got food whether or not it salivated. Butin operant conditioning, the organism’s response(such as the little girl’s sobbing) operates or produceseffects on the environment. These effects, in turn,influence whether the response will occur again.

Classical conditioning and operant condition-ing also tend to differ in the types of responses they

A. 1.stimulus generalization2.counterconditioning3.extinctionB.The sight and smells of the waiting room have become aconditioned stimulus for the anxiety and discomfort provoked by the shots.

We hope you have not acquired a classically conditioned fear of quizzes.

A. See whether you can supply the correct term to describe the outcome in each of these situations.

1. After a child learns to fear spiders, he also responds with fear to ants, beetles, and other crawling bugs.

2. A toddler is afraid of the bath, so her father puts just a little water in the tub and gives the child a lol-lipop to suck on while she is being washed. Soon the little girl loses her fear of the bath.

3. A factory worker’s mouth waters whenever a noontime bell signals the beginning of his lunch break. Oneday, the bell goes haywire and rings every half hour. By the end of the day, the worker has stopped sali-vating to the bell.

B. A boy who gets weekly allergy shots starts to feel anxious as soon as he enters the doctor’s waiting room.What is the behavioral explanation?

Answers:

Quick Quiz

operantconditioning Theprocess by which a re-sponse becomes morelikely to occur or less so,depending on its conse-quences.


Study


involve. In classical conditioning, the response istypically reflexive, an automatic reaction to some-thing happening in the environment, such as thesight of food or the sound of a bell. Generally, re-sponses in operant conditioning are complex andare not reflexive—for instance, riding a bicycle,writing a letter, climbing a mountain, . . . or throw-ing a tantrum.

The Birth of RadicalBehaviorismOperant conditioning has been studied since thestart of the twentieth century, although it was notcalled that until later. Edward Thorndike (1898),then a young doctoral candidate, set the stage byobserving cats as they tried to escape from a com-plex “puzzle box” to reach a scrap of fish locatedjust outside the box. At first, the cat would scratch,bite, or swat at parts of the box in an unorganizedway. Then, after a few minutes, it would chance onthe successful response (loosening a bolt, pulling astring, or hitting a button) and rush out to get thereward. Placed in the box again, the cat now took alittle less time to escape, and after several trials, theanimal immediately made the correct response. Ac-cording to Thorndike, this response had been“stamped in” by the satisfying result of getting thefood. In contrast, annoying or unsatisfying results“stamped out” behavior. Behavior, said Thorndike,is controlled by its consequences.

This general principle was elaborated andextended to more complex forms of behavior by B.F. (Burrhus Frederic) Skinner (1904–1990). Skin-ner called his approach “radical behaviorism” todistinguish it from the behaviorism of John Wat-son, who emphasized classical conditioning. Skin-ner argued that to understand behavior we shouldfocus on the external causes of an action and the ac-tion’s consequences. He avoided terms thatThorndike used, such as “satisfying” and “annoy-ing,” which reflect assumptions about what anorganism feels and wants. To explain behavior,he said, we should look outside the individual, notinside.

The Consequences of BehaviorIn Skinner’s analysis, which has inspired animmense body of research, a response (“operant”)can be influenced by two types of consequences:

1Reinforcement strengthens the response ormakes it more likely to recur. When your dog

begs for food at the table, and you give her the lamb

Reinforcers are roughly equivalent to rewards,and many psychologists use reward and reinforcer asapproximate synonyms. However, strict behavior-ists avoid the word reward because it implies thatsomething has been earned that results in happinessor satisfaction. To a behaviorist, a stimulus is a rein-forcer if it strengthens the preceding behavior,whether or not the organism experiences pleasureor a positive emotion. Conversely, no matter howpleasurable a reward is, it is not a reinforcer if itdoes not increase the likelihood of a response. It’sgreat to get a paycheck, but if you get paid regard-less of the effort you put into your work, the moneywill not reinforce “hard-work behavior.”

2Punishment weakens the response or makesit less likely to recur. Any aversive (unpleasant)

stimulus or event may be a punisher. If your dogbegs for a lamb chop off your plate, and you lightlyswat her nose and shout “No,” her begging is likelyto decrease—as long as you don’t feel guilty andthen give her the lamb chop anyway:

Responsebecomes

more likely

Responsebecomesless likely

“No!”

Parents, employers, and governments resort toreinforcers and punishers all the time—to get kidsto behave well, employees to work hard, and con-stituents to pay taxes—but they do not always usethem effectively. Often, they wait too long to de-liver the reinforcer or punisher. In general, thesooner a consequence follows a response, thegreater its effect; you are likely to respond more re-liably when you do not have to wait ages for agrade, a smile, or a compliment. When there is adelay, other responses occur in the interval, and theconnection between the desired or undesiredresponse and the consequence may not be made.

chop off your plate, her begging is likely to in-crease:

reinforcement Theprocess by which a stimu-lus or event strengthens orincreases the probabilityof the response that itfollows.

punishment Theprocess by which a stimu-lus or event weakens orreduces the probability ofthe response that itfollows.

secondary punisher Astimulus that has acquiredpunishing propertiesthrough association withother punishers.

primary punisher Astimulus that is inherentlypunishing; an example iselectric shock.

primary reinforcer Astimulus that is inherentlyreinforcing, typically satis-fying a physiological need;an example is food.


Primary and Secondary Reinforcers andPunishers Food, water, light stroking of the skin,and a comfortable air temperature are naturally re-inforcing because they satisfy biological needs.They are therefore known as primary reinforcers.Similarly, pain and extreme heat or cold are inher-ently punishing and are therefore known as primarypunishers. Primary reinforcers and punishers canbe powerful, but they have some drawbacks, both inreal life and in research. For one thing, a primaryreinforcer may be ineffective if an animal or personis not in a deprived state; a glass of water is notmuch of a reward if you just drank three glasses.Also, for obvious ethical reasons, psychologistscannot go around using primary punishers (say,by hitting the people in their study) or takingaway primary reinforcers (say, by starving theirvolunteers).

Fortunately, behavior can be controlled just aseffectively by secondary reinforcers and secondarypunishers, which are learned. Money, praise, ap-plause, good grades, awards, and gold stars arecommon secondary reinforcers. Criticism, demer-its, scolding, fines, and bad grades are common sec-ondary punishers. Most behaviorists believe thatsecondary reinforcers and punishers acquire theirability to influence behavior by being paired withprimary reinforcers and punishers. (If that remindsyou of classical conditioning, reinforce your excel-lent thinking with a pat on the head! Indeed, sec-ondary reinforcers and punishers are often calledconditioned reinforcers and punishers.) As a second-ary reinforcer, money has considerable power overmost people’s behavior because it can be exchangedfor primary reinforcers such as food and shelter. Itis also associated with other secondary reinforcers,such as praise and respect.

Positive and Negative Reinforcers andPunishers In our example of the begging dog,something pleasant (getting the lamb chop)followed the dog’s begging response, so the re-sponse increased. Similarly, if you get a good gradeafter studying, your efforts to study are likely tocontinue or increase. This kind of process, inwhich a pleasant consequence makes a responsemore likely, is known as positive reinforcement. Butthere is another type of reinforcement, negativereinforcement, which involves the removal ofsomething unpleasant. Negative reinforcement oc-curs when you escape from something aversive oravoid it by preventing it from ever occurring. Forexample, if someone nags you to study but stopsnagging when you comply, your studying is likelyto increase because you will then avoid thenagging:

Likewise, negative reinforcement occurs whentaking a pill eliminates your pain or when you take acertain route across campus to avoid a rude person.

The positive–negative distinction can also beapplied to punishment: Something unpleasant mayoccur following some behavior (positive punish-ment), or something pleasant may be removed (nega-tive punishment). For example, if your friends teaseyou for being an egghead (positive punishment) orif studying makes you lose time with your friends(negative punishment), you may stop studying:

A+A+A+Positive

reinforcer:Good grade

Negativereinforcer:

Naggingceases

Result:Studyingincreases

Behavior:Studying

Positivepunishment:Ridicule by

friends

Result:Studying

decreases

Behavior:Studying

Negativepunishment:Loss of timewith friends

secondary reinforcerA stimulus that hasacquired reinforcing prop-erties through associationwith other reinforcers.

The distinction between positive and negativereinforcement and punishment has been a source ofconfusion for generations of students, turningmany strong minds to mush. You will master theseterms more quickly if you understand that “posi-tive” and “negative” have nothing to do with“good” or “bad.” They refer to whether somethingis given or taken away. In the case of reinforcement,think of a positive reinforcer as something thatis added or obtained (imagine a plus sign) and a

negative reinforce-ment A reinforcementprocedure in which aresponse is followed bythe removal, delay, ordecrease in intensity of anunpleasant stimulus; asa result, the responsebecomes stronger or morelikely to occur.

positive reinforce-ment A reinforcementprocedure in which aresponse is followed bythe presentation of, orincrease in intensity of, areinforcing stimulus; asa result, the responsebecomes stronger or morelikely to occur.


negative reinforcer as avoidance of, or escape from,something unpleasant (imagine a minus sign). In ei-ther case, a response becomes more likely. Do you recallwhat happened when Little Albert learned to fearrats through a process of classical conditioning?After he acquired this fear, crawling away was nega-tively reinforced by escape from the now-fearsomerodent. The negative reinforcement that resultsfrom escaping or avoiding something unpleasantexplains why so many fears are long-lasting. Whenyou avoid a feared object or situation, you also cutoff all opportunities to extinguish your fear.

Understandably, people often confuse negativereinforcement with positive punishment, becauseboth involve an unpleasant stimulus. With punish-ment, you are subjected to the unpleasant stimulus;

with negative reinforcement, you escape from it oravoid it. To keep these terms straight, rememberthat punishment, whether positive or negative,decreases the likelihood of a response; and reinforce-ment, whether positive or negative, increases it. Inreal life, punishment and negative reinforcementoften go hand in hand. If you use a chain collar toteach your dog to heel, a brief tug on the collar pun-ishes the act of walking; release of the collar nega-tively reinforces the act of standing by your side.

You can positively reinforce your studying ofthis material by taking a short break. As you masterthe material, a decrease in your anxiety will nega-tively reinforce studying. But we hope you won’tpunish your efforts by telling yourself “I’ll neverget it” or “It’s too hard”! Listen

1.negative reinforcer; positive reinforcer2.punisher—or more precisely, a negative punisher (because something desirable was takenaway)3.All but the candy are secondary reinforcers.4.One possible answer: The reduced prices, free appetizers, and cheerful at-mosphere all reinforce heavy alcohol consumption just before rush hour, thus possibly contributing to binge drinking and drunk driving.

Quick QuizWhat kind of consequence will follow if you can’t answer these questions?

1. A child nags her father for a cookie; he keeps refusing. Finally, unable to stand the nagging any longer, hehands over the cookie. For him, the ending of the child’s pleading is a . For the child, thecookie is a .

2. An able-bodied driver is careful not to park in a handicapped space anymore after paying a large fine fordoing so. The loss of money is a .

3. Identify which of the following are commonly used as secondary reinforcers: quarters spilling from a slotmachine, a winner’s blue ribbon, a piece of candy, an A on an exam, frequent-flyer miles.

4. During late afternoon “happy hours,” bars and restaurants sell drinks at a reduced price and appetizers areoften free. What undesirable behavior may be rewarded by this practice?

Answers:

YOU are about to learn...• four important features of operant conditioning.

• why it’s not always a good idea to reinforce a responseevery time it occurs.

• how operant principles help explain superstitiousbehavior.

• what it means to “shape” behavior.

• some biological limits on operant conditioning.

Principles of OperantConditioningThousands of operant conditioning studies havebeen done, many using animals. A favorite experi-mental tool is the Skinner box, a chamber equipped

with a device that delivers a reinforcer, usually food,when an animal makes a desired response, or a pun-isher, such as a brief shock, when the animal makesan undesired response (see Figure 9.6). In modernversions, a computer records responses and chartsthe rate of responding and cumulative responsesacross time.

Early in his career, Skinner (1938) used theSkinner box for a classic demonstration of operantconditioning. A rat that had previously learned toeat from the pellet-releasing device was placed inthe box. The animal proceeded to scurry about thebox, sniffing here and there, and randomly touch-ing parts of the floor and walls. Quite by accident, ithappened to press a lever mounted on one wall, andimmediately a pellet of tasty rat food fell into thefood dish. The rat continued its movements andagain happened to press the bar, causing another


Study

Listen tothe Podcast onPunishment andReinforcementonmypsychlab.com


pellet to fall into the dish. With additional repeti-tions of bar pressing followed by food, the animalbegan to behave less randomly and to press the barmore consistently. Eventually, Skinner had the ratpressing the bar as fast as it could.

Extinction In operant conditioning, as in classi-cal, extinction is a procedure that causes a previ-ously learned response to stop. In operantconditioning, extinction takes place when the rein-forcer that maintained the response is withheld oris no longer available. At first, there may be a spurtof responding, but then the responses graduallytaper off and eventually cease. Suppose you put acoin in a vending machine and get nothing back.You may throw in another coin, or perhaps eventwo, but then you will probably stop trying. Thenext day, you may put in yet another coin, an exam-ple of spontaneous recovery. Eventually, however, youwill give up on that machine. Your response willhave been extinguished.

Stimulus Generalization and Discrimina-tion In operant conditioning, as in classical,stimulus generalization may occur. That is, re-sponses may generalize to stimuli that were notpresent during the original learning situation butresemble the original stimuli in some way; a pigeonthat has been trained to peck at a picture of a circlemay also peck at a slightly oval figure. But if youwanted to train the bird to discriminate betweenthe two shapes, you would present both the circleand the oval, giving reinforcers whenever the birdpecked at the circle and withholding reinforcerswhen it pecked at the oval. Eventually, stimulus dis-crimination would occur. Pigeons, in fact, have

learned to make some extraordinary discrimina-tions. They even learned to discriminate betweentwo paintings by different artists, such as VincentVan Gogh and Marc Chagall (Watanabe, 2001).And then, when presented with a new pair of paint-ings by those same two artists, they were able to tellthe difference between them!

Sometimes an animal or person learns to re-spond to a stimulus only when some other stimulus,called a discriminative stimulus, is present. The dis-criminative stimulus signals whether a response, ifmade, will pay off. In a Skinner box containing a pi-geon, a light may serve as a discriminative stimulusfor pecking at a circle. When the light is on, peck-ing brings a reward; when it is off, pecking is futile.Human behavior is controlled by many discrimina-tive stimuli, both verbal (“Store hours are 9 to 5”)and nonverbal (traffic lights, doorbells, the ring ofyour cell phone, other people’s facial expressions).Learning to respond correctly when such stimuliare present allows us to get through the day effi-ciently and to get along with others.

Learning on Schedule When a response isfirst acquired, learning is usually most rapid if theresponse is reinforced each time it occurs; this pro-cedure is called continuous reinforcement. How-ever, once a response has become reliable, it will bemore resistant to extinction if it is rewarded on anintermittent (partial) schedule of reinforcement,which involves reinforcing only some responses,not all of them. Skinner (1956) happened on thisfact when he ran short of food pellets for his ratsand was forced to deliver reinforcers less often.(Not all scientific discoveries are planned!) On in-termittent schedules, a reinforcer is delivered only

Light

Bar

Food tray

Water

FIGURE 9.6The Skinner BoxWhen a rat in a Skinnerbox presses a bar, a foodpellet or drop of water isautomatically released.The photo shows Skinnerat work on one of theboxes.

discriminative stimu-lus A stimulus that sig-nals when a particularresponse is likely to befollowed by a certain typeof consequence.

stimulus discrimina-tion In operant condition-ing, the tendency of aresponse to occur in thepresence of one stimulusbut not in the presence ofother, similar stimuli thatdiffer from it on somedimension.

continuous reinforce-ment A reinforcementschedule in which a par-ticular response is alwaysreinforced.

stimulus generaliza-tion In operant condition-ing, the tendency for aresponse that has beenreinforced (or punished) inthe presence of one stim-ulus to occur (or be sup-pressed) in the presenceof other similar stimuli.

extinction The weaken-ing and eventual disap-pearance of a learnedresponse; in operant con-ditioning, it occurs whena response is no longerfollowed by a reinforcer.


after a certain number of responses occur or after acertain amount of time has passed since a responsewas last reinforced; these patterns affect the rate,form, and timing of behavior. (The details are be-yond the scope of this book.)

Intermittent reinforcement helps explain whypeople often get attached to “lucky” hats, charms,and rituals. A batter pulls his earlobe, gets a home

run, and from then onalways pulls his earlobebefore each pitch. A stu-dent takes an exam witha purple pen and gets an

A, and from then on will not take an exam withouta purple pen. Such rituals persist because some-times they are followed purely coincidentally by areinforcer—a home run, a good grade—and so theybecome resistant to extinction.

Skinner (1948/1976) once demonstrated thisphenomenon by creating eight “superstitious” pi-geons in his laboratory. He rigged the pigeons’ cagesso that food was delivered every 15 seconds, even ifthe birds didn’t lift a feather. Pigeons are often inmotion, so when the food came, each animal waslikely to be doing something. That something wasthen reinforced by delivery of the food. The behav-ior, of course, was reinforced entirely by chance, butit still became more likely to occur and thus to be re-inforced again. Within a short time, six of the pi-geons were practicing some sort of consistent ritual:turning in counterclockwise circles, bobbing theirheads up and down, or swinging their heads to andfro. None of these activities had the least effect onthe delivery of the reinforcer; the birds were behav-ing “superstitiously,” as if they thought their move-ments were responsible for bringing the food.

Now listen up, because here comes one of themost useful things to know about operant condi-tioning: If you want a response to persist after it hasbeen learned, you should reinforce it intermittently,not continuously. If you are giving Harry, yourhamster, a treat every time he pushes a ball with hisnose, and then you suddenly stop the reinforce-ment, Harry will soon stop pushing that ball. Be-cause the change in reinforcement is large, fromcontinuous to none at all, Harry will easily discernthe change. But if you have been reinforcingHarry’s behavior only every so often, the changewill not be so dramatic, and your hungry hamsterwill keep responding for quite a while. Pigeons,rats, and people on intermittent schedules of rein-forcement have responded in the laboratory thou-sands of times without reinforcement beforethrowing in the towel, especially when the timingof the reinforcer varies. Animals will sometimes

work so hard for an unpredictable, infrequent bit offood that the energy they expend is greater thanthat gained from the reward; theoretically, theycould actually work themselves to death.

It follows that if you want to get rid of a re-sponse, whether it’s your own or someone else’s, youshould be careful not to reinforce it intermittently. Ifyou are going to extinguish undesirable behavior byignoring it—a child’s tantrums, a friend’s midnightphone calls, a parent’s unwanted advice—you mustbe absolutely consistent in withholding reinforce-ment (your attention). Otherwise, the other personwill learn that if he or she keeps up the screaming,calling, or advice giving long enough, it will eventu-ally be rewarded. One of the most common errorspeople make is to reward intermittently the very re-sponses that they would like to eliminate.

Shaping For a response to be reinforced, it mustfirst occur. But suppose you want to train Harry thehamster to pick up a marble, a child to use a knifeand fork properly, or a friend to play terrific tennis.Such behaviors, and most others in everyday life,have almost no probability of appearing sponta-neously. You could grow old and gray waiting forthem to occur so that you could reinforce them.The operant solution is a procedure called shaping.

In shaping, you start by reinforcing a tendencyin the right direction, and then you gradually re-quire responses that are more and more similar tothe final desired response. The responses that youreinforce on the way to the final one are calledsuccessive approximations. In the case of Harry andthe marble, you might deliver a food pellet if thehamster merely turned toward the marble. Oncethis response was established, you might then re-ward the hamster for taking a step toward the mar-ble. After that, you could reward him forapproaching the marble, then for touching themarble, then for putting both paws on the marble,

intermittent (partial)schedule of reinforce-ment A reinforcementschedule in which aparticular response issometimes but not alwaysreinforced.

Thinking Criticallyabout Superstitions

© 2

00

1 C

harl

es B

arso

tti f

rom

car

toon

bank

.com

. A

ll ri

ghts

res

erve

d.

successive approxima-tions In the operant-conditioning procedure ofshaping, behaviors thatare ordered in terms ofincreasing similarity orcloseness to the desiredresponse.

shaping An operant-conditioning procedure inwhich successive approxi-mations of a desiredresponse are reinforced.

SimulateShaping onmypsychlab.com


and finally for holding it. With the achievement ofeach approximation, the next one would becomemore likely, making it available for reinforcement.

Using shaping and other techniques, Skinnerwas able to train pigeons to play Ping-Pong withtheir beaks and to “bowl” in a miniature alley, com-plete with a wooden ball and tiny bowling pins.(Skinner had a great sense of humor.) Animal train-ers routinely use shaping to teach animals to act asthe “eyes” of the blind and to act as the “limbs” ofpeople with spinal cord injuries; these talentedcompanions learn to turn on light switches, openrefrigerator doors, and reach for boxes on shelves.

Biological Limits on Learning All principlesof operant conditioning, like those of classical con-ditioning, are limited by an animal’s genetic dispo-sitions and physical characteristics; if you try toteach a fish to dance the samba, you’re going to getpretty frustrated (and wear out the fish). Operantconditioning procedures always work best whenthey capitalize on inborn tendencies.

Years ago, two psychologists who became ani-mal trainers, Keller and Marian Breland (1961),learned what happens when you ignore biologicalconstraints on learning. They found that their ani-mals were having trouble learning tasks that shouldhave been easy. One animal, a pig, was supposed todrop large wooden coins in a box. Instead, the ani-mal would drop the coin, push at it with its snout,throw it in the air, and push at it some more. Thisodd behavior actually delayed delivery of the rein-forcer (food, which is very reinforcing to a pig), so itwas hard to explain in terms of operant principles.The Brelands finally realized that the pig’s rootinginstinct—using its snout to uncover and dig upedible roots—was keeping it from learning the task.They called such a reversion to instinctive behaviorinstinctive drift.

In human beings, too, operant learning is af-fected by genetics, biology, and the evolutionary his-tory of our species. As we saw in Chapter 3, humanchildren are biologically disposed to learn languagewithout much effort, and even young infants appearto have a rudimentary understanding of number(Izard et al., 2009). Further, temperaments andother inborn dispositions may affect how a personresponds to reinforcers and punishments. It will beeasier to shape belly-dancing behavior if a person istemperamentally disposed to be outgoing and extro-verted than if the person is by nature shy.

Skinner: The Man and the MythBecause of his groundbreaking work on operantconditioning, B. F. Skinner is one of the best knownof American psychologists. He is also one of themost misunderstood. Many people (even some psy-chologists) think that Skinner denied the existenceof human consciousness and the value of studyingit. In reality, Skinner (1972, 1990) maintained that

Behavioral techniquessuch as shaping havemany useful applications.Monkeys have beentrained to assist theirparalyzed owners byopening doors, helpingwith feeding, and turningthe pages of books.Miniature guide horseshelp blind people navigatecity streets and subways.Note the horse’s coolprotective sneakers!

instinctive drift Duringoperant learning, thetendency for an organismto revert to instinctivebehavior.

"Why? You cross the road because it’s in the script—that’s why!”

© T

he N

ew Y

orke

r C

olle

ctio

n 1

98

8 B

erna

rd S

choe

nbau

m f

rom

cart

oonb

ank.

com

. A

ll ri

ghts

res

erve

d.


private internal events—what we call perceptions,emotions, and thoughts—are as real as any others,and we can study them by examining our own sen-sory responses, the verbal reports of others, and theconditions under which such events occur. But heinsisted that thoughts and feelings cannot explainbehavior. These components of consciousness, hesaid, are themselves simply behaviors that occurbecause of reinforcement and punishment.

Skinner aroused strong passions in both hissupporters and his detractors. Perhaps the issuethat most provoked and angered people was hisinsistence that free will is an illusion. In contrast tohumanist and some religious doctrines that humanbeings have the power to shape their own destinies,his philosophy promoted the determinist view thatour actions are determined by our environmentsand our genetic heritage.

Because Skinner thought the environmentshould be manipulated to alter behavior, some crit-ics have portrayed him as cold-blooded. One fa-mous controversy regarding Skinner occurred whenhe invented an enclosed living space, the Air Crib,for his younger daughter Deborah when she was aninfant. This “baby box,” as it came to be known, had

temperature and humidity controls to eliminate theusual discomforts that babies suffer: heat, cold, wet-ness, and confinement by blankets and clothing.Skinner believed that to reduce a baby’s cries of dis-comfort and make infant care easier for the parents,you should fix the environment. But people imag-ined, incorrectly, that the Skinners were leavingtheir child in the baby box all the time without cud-dling and holding her, and rumors circulated foryears (and still do from time to time) that she hadsued her father, gone insane, or killed herself. Actu-ally, both of Skinner’s daughters were cuddled anddoted on, loved their parents deeply, and turned outto be successful, perfectly well adjusted adults.

Skinner, who was a kind and mild-manneredman, felt that it would be unethical not to try to im-prove human behavior by applying behavioral prin-ciples. And he practiced what he preached,proposing many ways to improve society and reducehuman suffering. At the height of public criticism ofSkinner’s supposedly cold and inhumane approachto understanding behavior, the American HumanistAssociation recognized his efforts on behalf of hu-manity by honoring him with its Humanist of theYear Award. Watch

Get Involved! Shape Up!

Would you like to improve your study habits? Start exercising? Learn to play a musical instrument? Hereare a few guidelines for shaping your own behavior: (1) Set goals that are achievable and specific. “I amgoing to jog ten minutes and increase the time by five minutes each day” will be far more effective thanthe vague goal to “get in shape.” (2) Track your progress on a graph or in a diary; evidence of progressserves as a secondary reinforcer. (3) Avoid punishing yourself with self-defeating thoughts such as “I’llnever be a good student” or “I’m a food addict.” (4) Reinforce small improvements (successive approxi-mations) instead of expecting perfection. By the way, a reinforcer does not have to be a thing; it can besomething you like to do, like watching a movie. Above all, be patient. New habits are not built in a day.

1.You should reinforce “wa-wa,” an approximation of water,because complex behaviors need to be shaped.2.From a behavioral view,you should ignore her completely because intermittent reinforcement (attention) could cause her interruptions to persist.3.If you wantto encourage communication, you should reply quickly because immediate reinforcement is more effective than delayed reinforcement.

We hope you won’t think we’re cold or inhumane if we advise you to take this quiz.

In each of the following situations, choose the best alternative and give your reason for choosing it.

1. You want your 2-year-old to ask for water with a word instead of a grunt. Should you give him water whenhe says “wa-wa” or wait until his pronunciation improves?

2. Your roommate keeps interrupting your studying even though you have asked her to stop. Should you ignoreher completely or occasionally respond for the sake of good manners?

3. Your father, who rarely calls you, has finally left a voice-mail message. Should you reply quickly, or wait awhile so he will know how it feels to be ignored?

Answers:

Quick Quizand

Review onmypsychlab.com

Study

B. F.SkinnerBiography onmypsychlab.com

Watch


YOU are about to learn...• how the use of operant principles through behavior

modification is being applied to many real-world problems.

• when punishment works in real life and why it oftendoes not.

• some effective alternatives to punishment.

• how reinforcement can be misused.

• why paying children for good grades sometimesbackfires.

Operant Conditioning in Real LifeOperant principles can clear up many mysteriesabout why people behave as they do. They can alsoexplain why people have trouble changing whenthey want to, in spite of all the motivational semi-nars they attend or resolutions they make. If life re-mains full of the same old reinforcers, punishers,and discriminative stimuli (a grumpy boss, an unre-sponsive roommate, a refrigerator stocked withhigh-fat goodies), any new responses that havebeen acquired may fail to generalize.

To help people change unwanted, dangerous,or self-defeating habits, behaviorists have carriedoperant principles out of the laboratory and intothe wider world of the classroom, athletic field,prison, mental hospital, nursing home, rehabilita-tion ward, child care center, factory, and office. Theuse of operant techniques in such real-world set-tings is called behavior modification (also known asapplied behavior analysis).

Behavior modification has had some enormoussuccesses (Kazdin, 2001; Martin & Pear, 2007). Be-haviorists have taught parents how to toilet traintheir children in only a few sessions. They havetrained disturbed and intellectually impaired adultsto communicate, dress themselves, mingle sociallywith others, and earn a living. They have taughtbrain-damaged patients to control inappropriate be-havior, focus their attention, and improve their lan-guage abilities. They have helped autistic childrenimprove their social and language skills. And theyhave helped ordinary folk get rid of unwanted habits,such as smoking and nail biting, or acquire desiredones, such as practicing the piano or studying.

Yet when nonpsychologists try to apply theprinciples of conditioning to commonplace prob-lems without thoroughly understanding those prin-ciples, their efforts sometimes miss the mark, as weare about to see.

The Pros and Cons of PunishmentIn a novel called Walden Two (1948/1976), Skinnerimagined a utopia in which reinforcers were used sowisely that undesirable behavior was rare. Unfortu-nately, we do not live in a utopia; bad habits andantisocial acts abound.

Punishment might seem to be an obvious solu-tion. Almost all Western countries have banned thephysical punishment of schoolchildren by princi-pals and teachers, but many American states stillpermit it for disruptiveness, vandalism, and othermisbehavior. The United States is also far morelikely than any other developed country to jail itscitizens for nonviolent crimes such as drug use, andto enact the ultimate punishment—the deathpenalty—for violent crimes. And, of course, in theirrelationships, people punish one another frequentlyby yelling, scolding, and sulking. Does all this pun-ishment work?

When Punishment Works Sometimes punish-ment is unquestionably effective. For example,punishment can deter some young criminals fromrepeating their offenses. A study of the criminalrecords of all Danish men born between 1944 and1947 (nearly 29,000 men) examined repeat arrests(recidivism) through age 26 (Brennan & Mednick,1994). After any given arrest, punishment reducedrates of subsequent arrests for both minor and seri-ous crimes, though recidivism still remained fairlyhigh. Contrary to the researchers’ expectations,however, the severityof punishment madeno difference: Finesand probation wereabout as effective as jailtime. What mattered most was the consistency of thepunishment. This is understandable in behavioralterms: When lawbreakers sometimes get away withtheir crimes, their behavior is intermittentlyreinforced and therefore becomes resistant toextinction.

Unfortunately, that is often the situation in theUnited States. Young offenders are punished lessconsistently than in Denmark, in part because pros-ecutors, juries, and judges do not want to condemnthem to mandatory prison terms. This helps to ex-plain why harsh sentencing laws and simplistic ef-forts to crack down on wrongdoers often fail oreven backfire. Because many things influence crimerates—the proportion of young versus older peoplein the population, poverty levels, drug policies,discriminatory arrest patterns—the relationship

behavior modificationThe application of operantconditioning techniques toteach new responses or toreduce or eliminate mal-adaptive or problematicbehavior; also calledapplied behavior analysis.

Thinking Criticallyabout Punishment


between incarceration rates and crime rates in theUnited States varies considerably from state to state(King, Maurer, & Young, 2005). But internationalsurveys find that, overall, the United States has ahigh rate of violent crime compared to many otherindustrialized countries, in spite of its extremelyhigh incarceration rates.

When Punishment Fails What about punish-ment that occurs every day in families, schools, andworkplaces? Laboratory and field studies find thatit, too, often fails, for several reasons:

1People often administer punishment inappro-priately or mindlessly. They swing in a blind

rage or shout things they don’t mean, use harshmethods with toddlers, apply punishment sobroadly that it covers all sorts of irrelevant behav-iors, or misunderstand the proper application ofpunishment. One student told us his parents usedto punish their children before leaving them alonefor the evening because of all the naughty thingsthey were going to do. Naturally, the children didnot bother to behave like angels.

2The recipient of harsh or frequent punishmentoften responds with anxiety, fear, or rage.

Through a process of classical conditioning, theseemotional side effects may then generalize to theentire situation in which the punishment occurs—the place, the person delivering the punishment,and the circumstances. These negative emotionalreactions can create more problems than the pun-ishment solves. A teenager who has been severelypunished may strike back or run away. A spousewho is constantly insulted, belittled, and criticizedwill feel bitter and resentful and is likely to retaliatewith small acts of hostility. And extreme punish-ment—physical abuse—is a risk factor, especially inchildren, for the development of depression, lowself-esteem, violent behavior, and many otherproblems (Gershoff, 2002; Widom, DuMont, &Czaja, 2007).

3The effectiveness of punishment is often tem-porary, depending heavily on the presence of

the punishing person or circumstances. All of uscan probably remember some transgressions ofchildhood that we never dared commit when ourparents were around but that we promptly resumedas soon as they were gone and reinforcers wereonce again available. All we learned was not to getcaught.

4Most misbehavior is hard to punish immedi-ately. Punishment, like reward, works best if it

quickly follows a response. But outside the laboratory,

rapid punishment is often hard to achieve, andduring the delay, the behavior may be reinforcedmany times. If you punish your dog when you gethome for getting into the doggie biscuits and eat-ing them all up, the punishment will not do anygood because you are too late: Your pet’s misbe-havior has already been reinforced by all thosedelicious treats.

5Punishment conveys little information. It maytell the recipient what not to do, but it does not

communicate what the person (or animal) shoulddo. Spanking a toddler for messing in her pants willnot teach her to use the potty chair, and scolding astudent for learning slowly will not teach him tolearn more quickly.

6An action intended to punish may instead bereinforcing because it brings attention. In-

deed, in some cases, angry attention may be justwhat the offender is after. If a mother yells at a childwho is throwing a tantrum, the very act of yellingmay give him what he wants: a reaction from her. Inthe schoolroom, teachers who scold children infront of other students, thus putting them in thelimelight, may unwittingly reward the very misbe-havior they are trying to eliminate.

Because of these drawbacks, most psycholo-gists believe that punishment, especially when it’ssevere, is a poor way to eliminate unwanted behav-ior. In special cases, as when mentally disabled chil-dren are in immediate danger of seriously injuringthemselves or a school bully is about to beat up aclassmate, temporary physical restraint may be nec-essary. But even then, alternatives are often avail-able. School programs have successfully reducedschool violence by teaching kids problem-solvingskills, emotional control, and conflict resolution,and by rewarding good behavior (Hahn et al., 2008;Wilson & Lipsey, 2007). And in some cases, the

As we all know, peopleoften do things they’re notsupposed to. Have youever wondered why somany people ignorewarnings and threats ofpunishment?


best way to discour-age a behavior—achild’s nagging for acookie before dinner,a roommate’s inter-ruptions when you’restudying—is to extin-guish it by ignoring it.

Of course, ignor-ing a behavior re-quires patience and isnot always feasible. Adog owner who ig-nores Fido’s backyard

barking may soon hear “barking” of another sortfrom the neighbors. A parent whose child is a video-game addict cannot ignore the behavior becauseplaying video games is rewarding to the child. Onesolution: Combine extinction of undesirable actswith reinforcement of alternative ones. The parentof a video-game addict might ignore the child’s pleasfor “just one more game” and at the same time praisethe child for doing something else that is incompati-ble with video-game playing, such as reading orplaying basketball.

Finally, when punishment must be applied,these guidelines should be kept in mind: (1) Itshould not involve physical abuse; instead, parentscan use time-outs and loss of privileges (negativepunishers); (2) it should be consistent; (3) it shouldbe accompanied by information about the kind ofbehavior that would be appropriate; and (4) itshould be followed, whenever possible, by the rein-forcement of desirable behavior.

The Problems with RewardSo far, we have been praising the virtues of praiseand other reinforcers. But like punishers, rewards donot always work as expected. Let’s look at two com-plications that arise when people try to use them.

Misuse of Rewards Suppose you are a fourthgrade teacher, and a student has just turned in apaper full of grammatical and punctuation errors.This child has little self-confidence and is easily dis-couraged. What should you do? Many people thinkyou should give the paper a high mark anyway, tobolster the child’s self-esteem. Teachers everywhereare handing out lavish praise, happy-face stickers,and high grades in hopes that students’ performancewill improve as they learn to “feel good about them-selves.” Scientifically speaking, however, there aretwo things wrong with this approach. First, studyafter study finds that high self-esteem does not im-prove academic performance (Baumeister et al.,

2003). Second, genuine self-esteem emerges fromeffort, persistence, and the gradual acquisition ofskills. It is nurtured bya teacher’s honest ap-preciation of the con-tent of a student’s workcombined with con-structive feedback on how to correct mistakes or fixweaknesses (Damon, 1995).

One obvious result of the misuse of rewards inschools has been grade inflation at all levels of educa-tion. In many colleges and universities, Cs, whichonce meant average or satisfactory, are nearly extinct.One study found that a third of college students ex-pected Bs just for showing up to class, and 40 percentfelt they were entitled to a B merely for doing the re-quired reading (Greenberger et al., 2008). We havetalked to students who feel that hard work should evenbe enough for an A. If you yourself have benefitedfrom grade inflation, you may feel it’s a good thing—but remember that critical thinking requires us to sep-arate feelings from facts! The problem is that rewards,including grades, serve as effective reinforcers onlywhen they are tied to the behavior one is trying to in-crease, not when they are dispensed indiscriminately.Getting a good grade for “showing-up-in-class be-havior” reinforces going to class, but not necessarilyfor learning much once you are there. Would youwant to be treated by a doctor, represented by alawyer, or have your taxes done by an accountant whogot through school just by showing up for class?

Why Rewards Can Backfire Most of our exam-ples of operant conditioning have involved extrinsicreinforcers, which come from an outside source andare not inherently related to the activity being rein-forced. Money, praise, gold stars, applause, hugs,and thumbs-up signs are all extrinsic reinforcers.But people (and probably some other animals aswell) also work for intrinsic reinforcers, such as en-joyment of the task and the satisfaction of accom-plishment. As psychologists have applied operantconditioning in real-world settings, they havefound that extrinsic reinforcement sometimes be-comes too much of a good thing: If you focus on itexclusively, it can kill the pleasure of doing some-thing for its own sake.

Consider what happened in a classic study ofhow praise affects children’s intrinsic motivation(Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973). Researchersgave nursery school children the chance to drawwith felt-tipped pens during free play and recordedhow long each child spontaneously played with thepens. The children clearly enjoyed this activity.Then the researchers told some of the children that

Many harried parentshabitually resort tophysical punishmentwithout being aware ofits many negative conse-quences. Based on yourreading of this chapter,what alternatives does thisparent have?

Thinking Criticallyabout Rewards

extrinsic reinforcersReinforcers that are notinherently related to theactivity being reinforced.

intrinsic reinforcersReinforcers that are inher-ently related to the activ-ity being reinforced.


if they would draw with felt-tipped pens they wouldget a “Good Player Award,” complete with gold sealand red ribbon. After drawing for six minutes, eachchild got the award as promised. Other children didnot expect an award and were not given one. A weeklater, the researchers again observed the children’sfree play. Those children who had expected and re-ceived an award spent much less time with the pensthan they had before the start of the experiment. Incontrast, children who had neither expected nor re-ceived an award continued to show as much interestin playing with the pens as they had initially, as youcan see in Figure 9.7. Similar results have occurredin other studies when children have been offered areward for doing something they already enjoy.

Why should extrinsic rewards undermine thepleasure of doing something for its own sake? Theresearchers who did the felt-tipped pen study sug-gested that when we are paid for an activity, we in-terpret it as work. We see our actions as the result ofexternal factors instead of our own interests, skills,and efforts. It is as if we say to ourselves, “Since I’mbeing paid, it must be something I wouldn’t do if Ididn’t have to.” Then, when the reward is with-drawn, we refuse to “work” any longer. Anotherpossibility is that we tend to regard extrinsic rewardsas controlling, so they make us feel pressured andreduce our sense of autonomy and choice (“I guess Ihave to do what I’m told to do, but only what I’m told to do”) (Deci et al., 1999). A third, more

behavioral explanation is that extrinsic reinforce-ment sometimes raises the rate of responding abovesome optimal, enjoyable level, such as by causingthe children in the felt-tipped-pen study to playwith the pens longer than they would have on their

1st

PRIZE

1st

PRIZE

Per

cent

age

of

tim

e sp

ent

wit

h fe

lt-t

ipp

edp

ens

in c

lass

roo

m (i

ntri

nsic

inte

rest

)

Beforeexperiment

Afterexperiment

20

16

12

8

4

0

= No rewardexpected

= Expectedreward

FIGURE 9.7Turning Play into WorkExtrinsic rewards can sometimes reduce the intrinsic pleasure ofan activity. When preschoolers were promised a prize for drawingwith felt-tipped pens, the behavior temporarily increased. Butafter they got their prizes, they spent less time with the pens thanthey had before the study began.

Get Involved! What’s Reinforcing Your Behavior?

For each activity that you do, indicate whether the reinforcers controlling your behavior are primarily extrinsic or intrinsic.

Studying

Housework

Worship

Grooming

Job

Dating

Attending class

Reading unrelated to school

Sports

Cooking

ActivityReinforcers mostly

extrinsicReinforcers mostly

intrinsicReinforcers about equally

extrinsic and intrinsic

Is there an area of your life in which you would like intrinsic reinforcement to play a larger role? What canyou do to make that happen?


own. Then the activ-ity really does be-come work.

Findings on ex-trinsic versus intrin-sic reinforcementshave wide-rangingimplications. Econo-mists have shownthat financial re-wards can under-mine ethical andmoral norms likehonesty, hard work,and fairness towardothers, and can de-crease people’s will-ingness to contributeto the common good(e.g., by paying taxesand giving to char-ity). In other words,an emphasis solely

on money encourages selfishness (Bowles, 2008).We must be careful, however, not to oversim-

plify this issue. The effects of extrinsic rewards de-pend on many factors, including a person’s initialmotivation, the context in which rewards areachieved, and in the case of praise, the sincerity of

the praiser (Henderlong & Lepper, 2002). Ifyou get praise, money, a high grade, or a trophyfor doing a task well, for achieving a certain levelof performance, or for improving your perform-ance rather than for just doing the task, yourintrinsic motivation is not likely to decline. In fact,it may increase (Cameron, Banko, & Pierce, 2001;Pierce et al., 2003). Such rewards are apt to makeyou feel competent rather than controlled. Andif you have always been crazy about reading orabout playing the banjo, you will keep reading orplaying even when you do not happen to be gettinga grade or applause for doing so. In such cases,you will probably attribute your continued in-volvement in the activity to your own intrinsic in-terests and motivation rather than to the reward.

So what is the take-home message about ex-trinsic rewards? First, they are often useful or nec-essary: Few people would trudge off to work everymorning if they never got paid; and in the class-room, teachers may need to offer incentives to un-motivated students. But extrinsic rewards should beused carefully and should not be overdone, so thatintrinsic pleasure in an activity can blossom. Educa-tors, employers, and policy makers can avoid thetrap of either–or thinking by recognizing that mostpeople do their best when they get tangible rewardsfor real achievement and when they have interest-ing, challenging, and varied kinds of work to do.

A. 1. The physical punishment was painful, and through a process of classical conditioning, the situation in which it occurred also be-came unpleasant. Because escape from an unpleasant stimulus is negatively reinforcing, the boy ran away.2. Extrinsic reinforcers areno longer available, and room-cleaning behavior has been extinguished. Also, extrinsic rewards may have displaced the intrinsic satis-faction of having a tidy room.3.Punishment has failed, possibly because it rewards thumb sucking with attention or because thumbsucking still brings the child pleasure whenever the parents are not around.B.The rewards may improve attendance (they have in some schools), and students who attend more regularly may become more inter-ested in their studies and do better in school. But extrinsic rewards can also decrease intrinsic motivation, and when they are withdrawn(e.g., when the student goes to another school or to college), attendance may plummet (“If there’s no reward, why should I attend?”).Further, students may come to expect bigger and bigger rewards, upping the ante. In some schools, especially those that have de-emphasized penalties for poorattendance, the rewards have backfired and attendance has actually fallen.

Is the art of mastering quizzes intrinsically reinforcing yet?

A. According to behavioral principles, what is happening here?

1. An adolescent whose parents have hit him for minor transgressions since he was small runs away fromhome.

2. A young woman whose parents paid her to clean her room while she was growing up is a slob when shemoves to her own apartment.

3. Two parents scold their young daughter every time they catch her sucking her thumb. The thumb suck-ing continues anyway.

B. In cities across America, public school systems are rewarding students for perfect attendance by givingthem money, shopping sprees, laptops, and video games. What are the pros and cons of such practices?

Answers:

Quick Quizand

Review onmypsychlab.com

Study

"That is the correct answer, Billy, but I'm afraid you don't win anything for it."

© T

he N

ew Y

orke

r C

olle

ctio

n 1

98

6 L

ee L

oren

z fr

om c

arto

onba

nk.c

om. A

ll ri

ghts

rese

rved

.


YOU are about to learn...• how you can learn something without any obvious

reinforcement.

• why two people can learn different lessons from exactlythe same experience.

• how we often learn not by doing but by watching.

Learning and the MindFor half a century, most American learning theoriesheld that learning could be explained by specifyingthe behavioral ABCs: antecedents (events precedingbehavior), behaviors, and consequences. Behavioristsliked to compare the mind to an engineer’s hypo-thetical “black box,” a device whose workings mustbe inferred because they cannot be observeddirectly. To them, the box contained irrelevantwiring; it was enough to know that pushing a but-ton on the box would produce a predictableresponse. But even as early as the 1930s, a fewbehaviorists could not resist peeking into that blackbox.

Latent LearningBehaviorist Edward Tolman (1938) committed vir-tual heresy at the time by noting that his rats, whenpausing at turning points in a maze, seemed to bedeciding which way to go. Moreover, the animalssometimes seemed to be learning even without anyreinforcement. What, he wondered, was going onin their little rat brains that might account for thispuzzle?

In a classic experiment, Tolman and C. H.Honzik (1930) placed three groups of rats in mazesand observed their behavior daily for more thantwo weeks. The rats in Group 1 always found foodat the end of the maze and quickly learned to find itwithout going down blind alleys. The rats in Group2 never found food and, as you would expect, theyfollowed no particular route. Group 3 was the in-teresting group. These rats found no food for tendays and seemed to wander aimlessly, but on theeleventh day they received food, and then theyquickly learned to run to the end of the maze. Bythe following day, they were doing as well as Group1, which had been rewarded from the beginning(see Figure 9.8).

Group 3 had demonstrated latent learning,learning that is not immediately expressed in per-formance. A great deal of human learning alsoremains latent until circumstances allow or requireit to be expressed. A driver gets out of a traffic jam

and finds her way to Fourth and Kumquat Streetsusing a route she has never used before (withoutGPS!). A little boy observes a parent setting thetable or tightening a screw but does not act on thislearning for years; then he finds he knows how todo these things.

Latent learning raises questions about what,exactly, is learned during operant learning. In theTolman and Honzik study, the rats that did not getany food until the eleventh day seemed to have ac-quired a mental representation of the maze. Theyhad been learning the whole time; they simply hadno reason to act on that learning until they began tofind food. Similarly, the driver taking a new routecan do so because she already knows how the city islaid out. What seems to be acquired in latent learn-ing, therefore, is not a specific response, butknowledge about responses and their consequences.We learn how the world is organized, which pathslead to which places, and which actions can pro-duce which payoffs. This knowledge permits us tobe creative and flexible in reaching our goals.

Social-Cognitive LearningTheoriesDuring the 1960s and 1970s, many learning theo-rists concluded that human behavior could not beunderstood without taking into account the human

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

4

8

12

16

20

24

28

32

Days

Ave

rage

err

ors

x 3

Learning becomesevident

Never reinforced

Reinforced after day 10

Always reinforced

FIGURE 9.8Latent LearningIn a classic experiment, rats that always found food in amaze made fewer and fewer errors in reaching the food(green curve). In contrast, rats that received no foodshowed little improvement (blue curve). But rats that gotno food for ten days and then found food on the eleventhday showed rapid improvement from then on (red curve).This result suggests that learning involves cognitivechanges that can occur in the absence of reinforcementand that may not be acted on until a reinforcer becomesavailable (Tolman & Honzik, 1930).

latent learning A formof learning that is notimmediately expressed inan overt response; itoccurs without obviousreinforcement.


capacity for higher-level cognitive processes. Theyagreed with behaviorists that human beings, alongwith the rat and the rabbit, are subject to the laws ofoperant and classical conditioning. But they addedthat human beings, unlike the rat or the rabbit, arefull of attitudes, beliefs, and expectations that affectthe way they acquire information, make decisions,reason, and solve problems. This view became veryinfluential.

We will use the term social-cognitive theoriesfor all theories that combine behavioral principleswith cognitive ones to explain behavior (Bandura,1986; Mischel, 1973; Mischel & Shoda, 1995).These theories share an emphasis on the impor-tance of beliefs, perceptions, and observations ofother peoples’ behavior in determining what welearn, what we do at any given moment, and thepersonality traits we develop (see Chapter 2). To asocial-cognitive theorist, differences in beliefs andperceptions help explain why two people who livethrough the same event may come away with en-tirely different lessons from it (Bandura, 2001). Allsiblings know this. One sibling may regard beinggrounded by their father as evidence of his all-around meanness, whereas another may see thesame behavior as evidence of his care and concernfor his children. For these siblings, being groundedis likely to affect their behavior very differently.

Learning by Observing Late one night, afriend living in a rural area was awakened by a loudclattering noise. A raccoon had knocked over a“raccoon-proof” garbage can and seemed to bedemonstrating to an assembly of other raccoonshow to open it: If you jump up and down on the

can’s side, the lid will pop off. According to ourfriend, the observing raccoons learned from thisepisode how to open stubborn garbage cans, andthe observing humans learned how smart rac-coons can be. In short, they all benefited fromobservational learning: learning by watching whatothers do and what happens to them for doing it.

The behavior learned by the raccoons throughobservation was an operant one, but observationallearning also plays an important role in the acquisi-tion of automatic, reflexive responses, such as fearsand phobias (Mineka & Zinbarg, 2006; Olsson &Phelps, 2004). Thus, in addition to learning to befrightened of rats directly through classical condi-tioning, as Little Albert did, you might also learn tofear rats by observing the emotional expressions ofother people when they see or touch one. The per-ception of someone else’s reaction serves as an un-conditioned stimulus for your own fear, and thelearning that results may be as strong as it would beif you had had a direct encounter with the rat your-self. Children often learn to fear things in this way,for example, by observing a parent’s fearful reactionwhenever a dog approaches. Adults can acquirefears even by watching suspenseful movies. Afterseeing the classic horror film Psycho, in which acharacter is knifed to death in a shower, some view-ers became nervous about taking a shower. Simi-larly, after seeing Jaws, with its horrific scenes ofshark attacks and its gripping music, some peoplebecame afraid to swim in the ocean.

social-cognitivetheories Theories thatemphasize how behavior islearned and maintainedthrough observation andimitation of others, posi-tive consequences, andcognitive processes suchas plans, expectations,and beliefs.

Social-cognitive theorists emphasize the influence of thoughts andperceptions on behavior (at least in humans).

©Th

e N

ew Y

orke

r C

olle

ctio

n 1

99

1 J

ack

Zeig

ler

from

car

toon

bank

.com

.A

ll R

ight

s R

eser

ved

Like father, like daughter. Observationallearning starts early.

observationallearning A process inwhich an individual learnsnew responses by observ-ing the behavior of an-other (a model) ratherthan through direct experi-ence; sometimes calledvicarious conditioning.


Behaviorists refer to observational learning asvicarious conditioning, and believe it can be explainedin stimulus–response terms. But social-cognitivetheorists believe that observational learning inhuman beings cannot be fully understood withouttaking into account the thought processes of thelearner (Meltzoff & Gopnik, 1993). They emphasizethe knowledge that results when a person sees amodel—another person—behaving in certain waysand experiencing the consequences (Bandura, 1977).

None of us would last long without observa-tional learning. Learning would be both inefficientand dangerous. We would have to learn to avoidoncoming cars by walking into traffic and sufferingthe consequences, or learn to swim by jumping intoa deep pool and flailing around. Parents and teach-ers would be busy 24 hours a day shaping children’sbehavior. Bosses would have to stand over their em-ployees’ desks, rewarding every little link in thecomplex behavioral chains we call typing, reportwriting, and accounting. But observational learninghas its dark side as well. People often imitate anti-social or unethical actions (they observe a friendcheating and decide they can get away with it too)or self-defeating and harmful ones (they watch afilm star smoking and take up the habit in an effortto look just as cool).

Many years ago, Albert Bandura and his col-leagues showed just how important observationallearning is for children who are learning the rulesof social behavior (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963).The researchers had nursery school children watcha short film of two men, Rocky and Johnny, playingwith toys. (Apparently the children did not thinkthis behavior was the least bit odd.) In the film,Johnny refuses to share his toys, and Rockyresponds by clobbering him. Rocky’s aggressive

actions are rewarded because he winds up with allthe toys. Poor Johnny sits dejectedly in the corner,while Rocky marches off with a sack full of loot anda hobbyhorse under his arm.

After viewing the film, each child was left alonefor 20 minutes in a playroom full of toys, includingsome of the items shown in the film. Watchingthrough a one-way mirror, the researchers foundthat the children were much more aggressivein their play than a control group that had not seenthe film. Some children imitated Rocky almostexactly. At the end of the session, one little girl evenasked the experimenter for a sack!

Of course, people imitate positive activitiesthat they observe, too. Matt Groening, the creatorof the cartoon show The Simpsons, decided it wouldbe funny if the Simpsons’ 8-year-old daughter Lisaplayed the baritone sax. Sure enough, little girlsacross the country began imitating her. CynthiaSikes, a saxophone teacher in New York, told TheNew York Times, “When the show started, I got aninflux of girls coming up to me saying, ‘I want toplay the saxophone because Lisa Simpson plays thesaxophone.’”

Findings on latent learning, observationallearning, and the role of cognition in learning canhelp us evaluate arguments in the passionate debateabout the effects of media violence. Children andteenagers in America and many other countries seecountless acts of violence on television, in films,and in video games. Does all this mayhem of bloodand guts affect them? Do you think it has affectedyou? In “Taking Psychology with You,” we offer ev-idence that bears on these questions, and suggestways of resolving them without oversimplifying theissues.

Explore

1.latent2.knowledge about responses and their consequences3.observational learning

Does your perception of quizzes make you eager to answer them?

1. A friend asks you to meet her at a new restaurant across town. You have never been to this specificaddress, but you find your way there anyway because you have experienced learning.

2. To a social-cognitive theorist, the fact that we can learn without being reinforced for any obvious responsesshows that we do not learn specific responses but rather .

3. After watching her teenage sister put on lipstick, a little girl takes a lipstick and applies it to her own lips.She has acquired this behavior through a process of .

Answers:

Quick Quiz

Bandura’s Studyon ObservationalLearning onmypsychlab.com

Explore


Study and


R E V I S I T E D

How can the behavioral and social-cognitivelearning principles covered in this chapterhelp us think about our opening story, in

which Zachary Christie was expelled for carrying acamping utensil to school?

As we’ve seen, findings on learning do not rule outall use of punishment when children misbehave. Cer-tainly, when children or teenagers bring weapons toschool, authorities cannot simply ignore the behavior inhopes of extinguishing it; they have an obligation toprotect the other students. But when severe penaltiesare imposed inappropriately for minor infractions, as inZachary’s case, punishment can make the recipientfeel betrayed and angry at the injustice of it. AsZachary said, “It just seems unfair.” Social-cognitivetheorists remind us that human beings, including chil-dren, bring their minds to their experiences, and if theyperceive a punishment for breaking a rule as being un-deserved or overly harsh, they may continue to breakthat rule as an act of defiance. Undeserved severe pun-ishment may also bring attention from peers, with thesame result—defiance and persistence.

Fortunately, in Zachary’s case, school district offi-cials realized the inappropriateness of their rigid zero-tolerance policy, and reversed themselves the very nextday. Recognizing the importance of taking age into ac-count, the school board voted to reduce the punishmentfor kindergartners and first graders to a suspensionranging from three to five days, and 6-year-old Zacharygot a reprieve. Zachary’s mother thanked the board, butnoted that it was only the first step toward making nec-essary changes in the district’s code of conduct.

What about punishment of children at home?Some psychologists believe that occasional, moderatepunishment, even spanking, has no long-term detri-mental outcomes for most middle-class children, solong as it occurs in an otherwise loving context or as alast resort (Baumrind, Larzelere, & Cowan, 2002). But,as we saw, punishment does not teach the child goodbehavior, and has all the drawbacks listed in this chap-ter. And when parents insult, humiliate, or ridicule a

child, the results areoften devastating. Hu-miliation and shame canlast for years.

What, then, shouldparents and teachers dowhen a child’s behavior is seriously disruptive or dan-gerous? First, from a learning perspective, other pun-ishments (time-outs, loss of privileges, and so forth) arepreferable to physical punishment, as long as the adultis consistent (no intermittent reinforcement of bad be-havior!), applies the punishment as soon as possibleafter the behavior occurs, and, most important, remem-bers to reinforce successive approximations toward de-sirable behavior. It is also important to know why achild is misbehaving: Is the child angry, worried, orfrightened? Parents and teachers can help childrenidentify their feelings while teaching them how to con-trol their emotions and find nonaggressive, constructiveways to resolve conflicts. In this way, they can learnthat they are being punished not for feeling bad, but foracting inappropriately or harming others: “It is all rightto be upset but not to hit or bite.”

Finally, a learning theorist would emphasize therole of the environment in causing or maintaining achild’s misbehavior. Is the child bored? Does the childhave trouble keeping still in the controlled environmentof a classroom? From a learning perspective, it may bemore effective to change the child’s environment thanthe child, for example by instituting more breaks forphysical activities.

Skinner himself never wavered in his determinationto apply learning principles to fashion better, healthierenvironments for everyone. In 1990, just a week beforehis death, ailing and frail, he addressed an overflowcrowd at the annual meeting of the American Psycho-logical Association, making the case one last time forthe approach he was convinced could create a better so-ciety. When you see the world as the learning theoristviews it, Skinner was saying, you see the folly of humanbehavior, but you also see the possibility of improving it.

Psychology in the News NEWARK, DE, OCTOBER 12, 2009. Zachary Christiewas so excited about joining the Cub Scouts and goingon campouts that he brought his favorite camping uten-sil to school to use at lunch. The utensil is handy be-cause it can serve as a knife, fork, and spoon. Butschool officials have decided that the 6-year-old boy vi-olated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons—whichwould include the “knife” part of the multipurposeutensil—and have suspended him. He now faces45 days in the district’s reform school. “It just seemsunfair,” Zachary said, while practicing writing his lower-case letters at home.

In response to shooting incidents in schools, manydistricts have adopted zero-tolerance policies on thepossession of weapons on school grounds. In Zachary’scase, officials felt they had no choice but to suspend

Psychology in the News

him because the district bans knives regardless of thepossessor’s intent, age, or character.

“Zachary wears a suit and tie some days to schoolby his own choice because he takes school so seriously,”said Debbie Christie, Zachary’s mother. “He is not somesort of threat to his classmates.” But George Evans,president of the school district’s board, defended thedecision. “There is no parent who wants to get a phonecall where they hear that their child no longer has twogood seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and some-one pulls out a knife,” he commented.

Critics argue that zero-tolerance policies like theone that landed Zachary in hot water have led to in-creased suspensions and expulsions, which results inkids spending time in places like the street, where theirbehavior only gets worse. Inflexible policies can alsolead to heavy punishment for minor infractions. Lastyear, a third grader in Delaware was expelled for a yearbecause her grandmother had sent a birthday cake toschool along with a knife to cut it.

Zero-tolerance policies initially gave authorities moreleeway in punishing students, but critics charged that theywere being applied in a discriminatory manner againstAfrican-American children, who were more likely thanwhite children to be suspended or expelled for committingthe same offenses. As a result, many school districts haveremoved discretion in the application of the policies.

Zachary himself is reluctant to go back to school. “Ijust think the other kids may tease me for being in trou-ble,” he said, and added, “but I think the rules are whatis wrong, not me.”Zachary Christie with the camping utensil that got him in trouble.

First Grader Suspended Over Camping Utensil

325

Taking Psychology with YouDoes Media Violence Make You Violent?

In a $5 billion lawsuit against video-game man-ufacturers, the families of victims shot by twofellow students at a high school claimed thatthe tragedy would never have happened had thekillers not played video games that were full ofviolence and bloodshed. When another gunmanwent on a murderous rampage at a university,several commentators immediately assumedthat video games must have spurred him to kill.How should we evaluate such claims? Does vio-lence depicted in films, on TV, and in videogames lead to violent crime?

Psychologists are strongly divided in theiranswers to this question. As one group of re-searchers concluded, “Research on violenttelevision and films, video games, and musicreveals unequivocal evidence that media vio-lence increases the likelihood of aggressiveand violent behavior,” both in the short termand long term (Anderson et al., 2003). Theirmeta-analyses find that the greater the expo-sure to violence in movies and on television,the stronger the likelihood of a person’s be-having aggressively, and this correlation holdsfor both sexes and across cultures, fromJapan to England (Anderson et al., 2010).Video games that directly reward violence, asby awarding points or moving the player to the

next level after a “kill,” increase feelings ofhostility, aggressive thinking, and aggressivebehavior (Carnagey & Anderson, 2005). More-over, when grade school children cut back ontime spent watching TV or playing violentvideo games, the children’s aggressivenessdeclines (Robinson et al., 2001).

Violent media may also desensitize peopleto the pain or distress of others. In a fieldstudy, people who had just seen a violentmovie took longer to come to the aid of awoman struggling to pick up her crutchesthan did people who had seen a nonviolentmovie or people still waiting to see one of thetwo movies (Bushman & Anderson, 2009).

However, an opposing group of psycholo-gists believes that the effects of video gameshave been exaggerated and sensationalized(Ferguson & Kilburn, 2010). The correlationbetween playing violent video games andbehaving aggressively is, they maintain, toosmall to worry about (Ferguson, 2007; Sherry,2001). Other factors that are correlated withviolent criminality are far more powerful; theyinclude genetic influences (.75), perceptionsof criminal opportunity (.58), owning a gun(.35), poverty (.25), and childhood physicalabuse (.22). In these researchers’ calcula-tions, watching violent video games has thelowest correlation, only .04 (Ferguson, 2009;Ferguson & Kilburn, 2010). Besides, they ob-serve, rates of teenage violence declined sig-nificantly throughout the 1990s, a period inwhich the number of violent video games wasincreasing astronomically.

In the social-cognitive view, both conclu-sions about the relationship of media violenceto violent behavior have merit. Repeated actsof aggression in the media do model behaviorand responses to conflict that a few peoplemay imitate, just as media ads influence whatmany people buy and what many people thinkthe ideal male or female body should looklike. However, children and teens watch manydifferent programs and movies and have manymodels to observe besides those they see inthe media, including parents and peers. Forevery teenager who is obsessed with playingResident Evil and who entertains grim fan-tasies of blowing up the world, hundreds morethink the game is just plain fun and then gooff to do their homework.

Moreover, perceptions and interpretationsof events, personality dispositions such as ag-gressiveness and sociability, and the socialcontext in which the violence is viewed can allaffect how a person responds (Feshbach &Tangney, 2008). One person may learn fromseeing people being blown away in a film thatviolence is cool and masculine; another maydecide that the violent images are ugly andstupid; a third may conclude that they don’tmean anything at all, that they are just part ofthe story.

What should be done, if anything, aboutmedia violence? Even if only a small percent-age of viewers learn to be aggressive fromobserving all that violence, the social conse-quences can be serious, because the total au-diences for TV, movies, and video games areimmense. But censorship, which some peoplethink is the answer, brings its own set of prob-lems, quite apart from constitutional issues offree speech: Should we ban Hamlet? Bloodygraphic comics? Funny martial arts films? Spe-cial-effects action films where the bad guys getblown to bits? Films that truthfully depict therealities of war, murder, and torture?

Consider, too, that it’s not just video gamesand other visual media that can increaseaggression. In two studies, students read aviolent passage from the Bible, with two sen-tences inserted in which God sanctions theviolence. Later, in what they thought was adifferent study, they played a competitivereaction-time game with a partner. In thegame, they were more willing to blast theircompetitor with a loud noise than were stu-dents who had been told the violent passagewas from an ancient scroll or students whohad read a passage that did not mention God(Bushman et al., 2007). Participants who be-lieved in God were most affected by the pas-sage in which God condones the violence, but many nonbelievers were affected too.Although the general message of the scrip-tures is one of peace and reconciliation, theBible is also full of violence, some of it sanc-tioned by God. Yet few people would be willingto ban the Bible or censure its violent parts.

As you can see, determining a fair and eq-uitable policy regarding media violence willnot be easy. It will demand good evidence—and good thinking.

Does playing violent video games make childrenand teenagers more aggressive? The answer ismore complicated than “yes” or “no.”

• Research on learning has been heavily influenced bybehaviorism, which accounts for behavior in terms ofobservable events without reference to mental entitiessuch as “mind” or “will.” Behaviorists have focused ontwo types of conditioning: classical and operant.

Classical Conditioning• Classical conditioning was first studied by Russianphysiologist Ivan Pavlov. In this type of learning, whena neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditionedstimulus (US) that elicits some reflexive unconditionedresponse (UR), the neutral stimulus comes to elicit asimilar or related response. The neutral stimulus thenbecomes a conditioned stimulus (CS), and the re-sponse it elicits is a conditioned response (CR). Nearlyany kind of involuntary response can become a CR.

• In extinction, the conditioned stimulus is repeatedlypresented without the unconditioned stimulus, and theconditioned response eventually disappears, althoughlater it may reappear (spontaneous recovery). In higher-order conditioning, a neutral stimulus becomes aconditioned stimulus by being paired with an already-established conditioned stimulus. In stimulus general-ization, after a stimulus becomes a conditionedstimulus for some response, other similar stimuli mayproduce the same reaction. In stimulus discrimination,different responses are made to stimuli that resemblethe conditioned stimulus in some way.

• Many theorists believe that what an animal or per-son learns in classical conditioning is not just an asso-ciation between the unconditioned and conditionedstimulus, but also information conveyed by one stimu-lus about another. Indeed, classical conditioning ap-pears to be an evolutionary adaptation that allows anorganism to prepare for a biologically important event.Considerable evidence exists to show that a neutralstimulus does not become a CS unless it reliably sig-nals or predicts the US.

Classical Conditioning in Real Life• Classical conditioning helps account for positive emo-tional responses to particular objects and events, fearsand phobias, reactions to particular foods and odors, andreactions to medical treatments and placebos. John Wat-son showed how fears may be learned and then may beunlearned through a process of counterconditioning. Be-cause of evolutionary adaptations, human beings (andmany other species) are biologically primed to acquiresome classically conditioned responses easily, such asconditioned taste aversions and certain fears.

Operant Conditioning• In operant conditioning, behavior becomes morelikely to occur or less so depending on its conse-

quences. Responses in operant conditioning are gener-ally not reflexive and are more complex than in classi-cal conditioning. Research in this area is closelyassociated with B. F. Skinner, who called his approach“radical behaviorism.”

• In the Skinnerian analysis, reinforcement strengthensor increases the probability of a response, and punishmentweakens or decreases the probability of a response.Immediate consequences usually have a greater effecton a response than do delayed consequences.

• Reinforcers are called primary when they are natu-rally reinforcing because they satisfy a biological need.They are called secondary when they have acquiredtheir ability to strengthen a response through associa-tion with other reinforcers. A similar distinction is madefor punishers.

• Reinforcement and punishment may be either posi-tive or negative, depending on whether the conse-quence involves a stimulus that is presented or one thatis removed or avoided. In positive reinforcement, some-thing pleasant follows a response; in negative reinforce-ment, something unpleasant is removed. In positivepunishment, something unpleasant follows the re-sponse; in negative punishment, something pleasant isremoved.

• Using the Skinner box and similar devices, behavior-ists have shown that extinction, stimulus generalization,and stimulus discrimination occur in operant condition-ing as well as in classical conditioning. A discriminativestimulus signals that a response is likely to be followedby a certain type of consequence.

• Continuous reinforcement leads to the most rapidlearning. However, intermittent (partial) reinforcementmakes a response resistant to extinction (and, there-fore, helps account for the persistence of superstitiousrituals). One of the most common errors people make isto reward intermittently the responses they would liketo eliminate.

• Shaping is used to train behaviors with a low proba-bility of occurring spontaneously. Reinforcers are givenfor successive approximations to the desired responseuntil the desired response is achieved.

• Biology places limits on what an animal or personcan learn through operant conditioning or how easily abehavior is learned. Animals may have trouble learninga task because of instinctive drift.

Operant Conditioning in Real Life• Behavior modification, the application of operantconditioning principles, has been used successfully inmany settings, but when used inappropriately or incor-rectly, reinforcement and punishment both have theirpitfalls.

Summary


Listen to an audio file of your chapter on mypsychlab.com

• Punishment, when used properly, can discourage un-desirable behavior, including criminal behavior. But it isfrequently misused and can have unintended conse-quences. It is often administered inappropriately becauseof the emotion of the moment; it may produce rage andfear; its effects are often only temporary; it is hard to ad-minister immediately; it conveys little information aboutthe kind of behavior that is desired; and it may provideattention that is rewarding. Extinction of undesirablebehavior, combined with reinforcement of desired behav-ior, is generally preferable to the use of punishment.

• Reinforcers can also be misused. Rewards that aregiven out indiscriminately, as in efforts to raise chil-dren’s self-esteem, do not reinforce desirable behavior.And an exclusive reliance on extrinsic reinforcementcan sometimes undermine the power of intrinsic rein-forcement. But money and praise do not usually inter-fere with intrinsic pleasure when a person is rewardedfor succeeding or making progress rather than formerely participating in an activity, or when a person isalready highly interested in the activity.

Learning and the Mind• Even during behaviorism’s heyday, some researcherswere probing the “black box” of the mind. In the1930s, Edward Tolman studied latent learning, inwhich no obvious reinforcer is present during learningand a response is not expressed until later on, whenreinforcement does become available. What appearsto be acquired in latent learning is not a specific re-sponse but rather knowledge about responses and theirconsequences.

• The 1960s and 1970s saw the increased influenceof social-cognitive theories of learning, which focus onobservational learning and the role played by beliefs,interpretations of events, and other cognitions in deter-mining behavior. Social-cognitive theorists argue that, inboth observational learning and latent learning, what isacquired is knowledge rather than a specific response.Perceptions, personality traits, and the social context allinfluence how people respond to what they see and thedifferent lessons they take from any experience.

Psychology in the News,Revisited• Behavioral and social-cognitive learning theorieshelp us understand when punishment might be con-structive and appropriate, and also when it backfires,causing resentment and other undesirable results. Thelearning perspective also offers good alternatives tophysical punishment, and helps us appreciate the roleof the environment in promoting “bad” behavior. Learn-ing techniques can be enormously helpful for individu-als and institutions, so long as they are applied wiselyand carefully.

Taking Psychology with You• Because people differ in their perceptions and be-liefs, some people become more aggressive after expo-sure to violent images in the media, but most peopledo not.

learning 299

behaviorism 299

conditioning 299

unconditioned stimulus (US) 300

unconditioned response (UR) 301

conditioned stimulus (CS) 301

conditioned response (CR) 301

classical conditioning 301

extinction (in classicalconditioning) 301

spontaneous recovery 301

higher-order conditioning 301

stimulus generalization (in classical conditioning) 302

stimulus discrimination (in classical conditioning) 302

phobia 304

counterconditioning 305

operant conditioning 308

reinforcement/reinforcers 309

punishment/punishers 309

primary reinforcers andpunishers 310

secondary reinforcers andpunishers 310

positive and negativereinforcement andpunishment 310

Skinner box 311

extinction (in operantconditioning) 312

stimulus generalization (in operant conditioning) 312

stimulus discrimination (in operant conditioning) 312

discriminative stimulus 312

continuousreinforcement 312

intermittent (partial)reinforcement 312

Key Terms


shaping 313

successiveapproximations 313

instinctive drift 314

determinist view 315

behavior modification (applied behavior analysis) 316

extrinsic reinforcers 318

intrinsic reinforcers 318

behavioral ABCs 321

latent learning 321

social-cognitivetheories 322

observational (vicarious)learning 322

CO

NC

EP

TM

AP

CH

AP

TER

9LE

AR

NIN

G A

ND

CO

ND

ITIO

NIN

G

• Learning is any relatively permanent change in behavior resulting from experience.• Behaviorism explains learning as the result of observable acts and events without

reference to mental entities, such as “mind” or “will.”• Conditioning involves associations between environmental stimuli and responses.

Classical conditioning is the processby which a previously neutral stimulusacquires the capacity to elicita response through association with astimulus that already elicits a similaror related response (first studiedby Ivan Pavlov).• Unconditioned stimulus (US): stimu-

lus that elicits a reflexive response inthe absence of learning

• Unconditioned response (UR):reflexive response elicited by a stimulusin the absence of learning

• Conditioned stimulus (CS): initiallyneutral stimulus that comes to elicit aconditioned response after being asso-ciated with an unconditioned stimulus

• Conditioned response (CR): responsethat is elicited by a conditionedstimulus

• Reinforcement strengthens a response or makes itmore likely to recur.

The Consequences of Behavior

Responsebecomes

more likely

Responsebecomesless likely

“No!”

New Reflexes from Old

• Punishment weakens a response or makes it lesslikely to recur.

• A primary reinforcer strengthens responses becauseit satisfies a biological need.

• A secondary reinforcer strengthens a response becauseof its association with another reinforcer.

• A primary punisher is a stimulus that producesdiscomfort.

• A secondary punisher is a stimulus that has acquiredpunishing properties through association with aanother reinforcer.

Primary and SecondaryReinforcers and Punishers

• Positive reinforcement: response is followed by thepresentation of, or increase in intensity of, a reinforcingstimulus.

• Negative reinforcement: response is followed bythe removal, delay, or decrease in intensity of an un-pleasant stimulus.

• In positive punishment, something unpleasantfollows the response; in negative punishment, some-thing pleasant is removed.

Positive and Negative Reinforcers and Punishers

• Extinction: gradual disappearance of CR after CS is repeatedly presented without US.• Counterconditioning: gradual disappearance of a CR produced by pairing a CS with

another stimulus that elicits an incompatible response.• Higher-order conditioning: a neutral stimulus becomes a CS after being associated

with another CS.

• Stimulus generalization: a CR occurs upon presentation of a stimulus similarto the CS.

• Stimulus discrimination: stimuli similar to the CS produce different responses.

What is Learned in Classical Conditioning?• Many psychologists argue that classical conditioning involves information conveyed by

one stimulus about another, that the CS becomes a signal for the US.• Classical conditioning appears to be an evolutionary adaptation that allows an

organism to prepare for a biologically important event.

Principles of Classical Conditioning

CS

CR

Neutralstimulus

CS

CR

CS

CR

Classical Conditioning in Real LifeClassical conditioning plays an impor-tant role in:• Positive emotional responses to partic-

ular objects and events• Learned fears and phobias (as demon-

strated in the Little Albert study)

• Acquired tastes: likes and dislikes forparticular foods and odors

• Unpleasant reactions to stimuli associ-ated with medical treatments andreduced pain or anxiety in responseto placebos

US

UR

Neutralstimulus

US

UR

CS

CR

Classical Conditioning

CO

NC

EP

TM

AP

CH

AP

TER

9LE

AR

NIN

G A

ND

CO

ND

ITION

ING

• Extinction: occurs when the be-havior is no longer followed by theconsequence that reinforced it.

• Stimulus generalization:responses occur to stimuli that re-semble those present during origi-nal learning.

• Stimulus discrimination: re-sponses occur in the presence ofone stimulus but not to stimulithat resemble the ones originallypresent but differ from them onsome dimension.

• Schedules of reinforcement:— Continuous reinforcement

leads to fastest learning.— Intermittent (partial) schedule

of reinforcement makes a re-sponse resistant to extinction.

• Shaping: used to train behaviorsthrough reinforcement of succes-sive approximations until thedesired behavior occurs.

• Instinctive drift: the tendency foran organism to revert to instinc-tive behavior.

• Latent learning is not immediately ex-pressed in performance.

• It can occur without obvious reinforcers.• It involves acquiring knowledge about

responses and their consequences, whichpermits flexibility in reaching goals.

Latent Learning• Social-cognitive theories focus on observational

learning and the role played by beliefs, interpreta-tions of events, and other cognitions.

• Social-cognitive theorists argue that because peoplediffer in their perceptions and beliefs, they maylearn different lessons from the same situations, asin the case of media violence.

Social-Cognitive Learning Theories

Operant conditioning is the process by which a response becomes more likely or less likely tooccur, depending on its consequences; associated with the work of B. F. Skinner.

Principles of Operant ConditioningBehavior modification (also known as applied behavioranalysis): the application of conditioning techniques toteach new responses or eliminate behavior problems.

Operant Conditioning in Real Life

Punishment can effectively discourage un-desirable behavior. However, as a methodof correcting behavior, it often fails, forthese reasons:• It is often administered inappropriately

or mindlessly.• Recipients often respond with anxiety,

fear, or anger.• Effectiveness is only temporary, depend-

ing on presence of punishing person.• Because most misbehavior is hard to

punish immediately, punishment is oftentoo delayed to be effective.

• Punishment does not convey what theperson or animal should do that is cor-rect or appropriate.

• Punishment sometimes inadvertently re-wards the unwanted behavior because itbrings attention.

The Pros and Consof Punishment

• Rewards are often misused by being given indiscrimi-nately, unrelated to desired behavior.

• Exclusive reliance on extrinsic reinforcement cansometimes undermine the power of intrinsic reinforce-ment, such as enjoyment of the task. However, the ef-fects of extrinsic reinforcers depend on many factors,such as a person’s initial motivation, the context, andwhether improvement at a task is reinforced.

The Problems with Reward

Operant Conditioning

Learning and the Mind

Documents

Psychology in the News - Nichols Resourcesbroncshistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/8/5/18857426/...NEWARK, DE, October 12, 2009. Zachary Christie was so excited about joining the Cub Scouts