What is behaviorism all

about?
• Behavioral psychology is the
study of external behavior
Behaviorism
• Behavior is objective and
observable, where as what goes on
in one’s mind can never really be
known or measured (the mind is a
“black box”)
• Behavior is the response of an
organism to stimuli

History of Behaviorism “Give me a dozen

healthy infants, well-
formed, and my own
• Pavlov special world to bring
(1927), a them up in and I’ll
Russian guarantee to take any
physiologist one at random and
discovered train him to be any
classical type of specialist I
conditioning in might select – a
dogs. doctor, a lawyer,
artist…”

-Watson 1924

Classical Conditioning Ivan Pavlov's Classical Conditioning

• Explains some learning of involuntary Before

emotional and physiological responses. Conditioning
– Dog drooling when it smells food and later Unconditioned Unconditioned
when it hears a bell Stimulus Response

• It’s important for us as teachers to

understand since school is often the
cause of unintentional learning through
classical conditioning, especially anxiety. Neutral Stimulus No Response
– Test anxiety conditions us to have general
school anxiety
Ivan Pavlov's Classical Conditioning Ivan Pavlov's Classical Conditioning
During Conditioning After Conditioning

Unconditioned
Unconditioned Neutral
Response Conditioned Conditioned
Stimulus Stimulus
Stimulus Response

Examples of Classical
Conditioning
• Kids who often get strep throat, after much
swabbing of their throat, begin to gag as
soon as they see the doctor with the swab.
• Hearing a teacher, roommate,
boyfriend/girlfriend say to you, “We need to
talk”. Upon hearing this phrase your stomach
“flutters”.
• The point is, we learn to associate a
stimulus with a response, and eventually our
body does this automatically in the presence
of the stimulus. Our response is
involuntary.

Classical Conditioning Classical Conditioning

….. in the Classroom
• Classical conditioning can face
“extinction”, where the learning is undone. • Playing soothing music, dimming the
– This can happen naturally (the dog stops lights to calm and relax students
getting meat when music is played) • Unintentional classical conditioning:
– Or can happen through some type of therapy – Test anxiety
in the case of severe anxiety reactions – Math anxiety
• Ex: people who are afraid to fly….
– Public speaking anxiety
• Remember: Classical conditioning is more – General school anxiety
than forming an association – it is an
involuntary, physiological response
 Operant Conditioning
B.F. Skinner (1904 –
(Skinner)
1990)
• American psychologist - influential from the
1930’s - 60’s – developed operant
• This involves conditioning voluntary,
conditioning controllable behaviors, not the
• Skinner was interested in education automatic physiological responses in
– He believed that behavior is sustained by Classical Conditioning
reinforcements or rewards, not by free will. • With Operant Conditioning the
• Famous for the skinner box & the teaching
machine
Response comes before the Stimulus
• Often worked with pigeons
(the opposite of CC)
& rats and applied what he learned R S
with these animals to human learning

Operant Conditioning Skinner’s Operant

Conditioning
• Teachers can deliberately use Positive Presence of
operant conditioning with their Reinforceme Pleasant Behavior
students (training) nt Stimulus
Increases
Negative Absence of
• How someone reacts to our behaviors Reinforceme Unpleasant Stimulus
determines whether or not we nt
continue the behavior
– If we are rewarded for something we will
likely do it again - do you do this as a Presence of Behavior
Punishment Unpleasant
teacher? Decreases
Stimulus

Consequences for Consequences for

Behaviors Behaviors
• Positive Reinforcement – You behave in a certain
way that results in a reward, and as a result, you • Punishment – A consequence that follows
are more likely to repeat that behavior a behavior so that you do the behavior
less often in the future.
• Negative Reinforcement – You behave in a – Punishment can involve adding something
certain way that results in the removal of (paying a fine, staying after school) or
something unpleasant, and as a result you are involve removing something you like
more likely to repeat that behavior (ex: doing a (losing recess time, leaving your friends)
paper early) – In both cases, adding something or removing
– In both cases, something happened that you saw as something, you perceive it as “bad” and as a
“good” and as a result, you exhibited the behavior result, you exhibit the behavior less.
less
more.
more
 Differences Between
Negative Reinforcement & Shaping New Behaviors
Punishment • Shaping is a process of reinforcing a
• Negative reinforcement: Something series of responses that increasingly
unpleasant is removed & as a result you resemble the desired final behavior
are more likely to do it again • When a desired behavior occurs rarely
– Something happened that was “good” or not at all, we use shaping
• Punishment: A consequence happens – First reinforce any response that in some
way resembles the desired behavior, then
that you don’t like and you are less one that is closer etc.
likely to do it again. The punishment can – Think of animal training or the hyper kid
add something or take something away. who can’t sit in his chair in class – do
– Something happened that was “bad” things in small steps

Critiques of
More Critiques …
Behaviorism
• External rewards may diminish intrinsic motivation
• Behaviorism doesn’t account for
–Studies where participants work on an interesting anything that isn’t an observable
task (ex: puzzles) - experimental group is given a
reward when finished while the control group is behavior
not. – There has to be more going on than
– After initial period, during a non-rewarded time what is observable - doesn’t there?
participants are given a choice between • Behaviorism only accounts for
continuing to work on the task or switching to
another activity. Typical result is that participants learning through direct experience
in the experimental group spend less time on the with the environment (not
activity than the control group. This is taken as observational learning)
indicating that reward reduces intrinsic
motivation. Pizza Hut used to give away free pizza
to kids who read a certain number of pages. This
practice was discontinued as it actually eroded
students intrinsic motivation to read!

Check yourself…
• Can you come up with classroom
examples of:
– Classical Conditioning (use all the
right labels)
– Operant Conditioning (again, use all
the right labels)
– Positive and Negative
Reinforcement
– Punishment