Behaviourist Approach | B.F. Skinner | Operant Conditioning | AQA Psychology

you know when we decide to spend five minutes before bed on tick-tock and then the next time we look up an hour and a half has gone by and all we've done is watch videos of dance moves and pranks why do we do that well one part to the answer involves the work of pigeons ping pong and b.f skinner welcome back to bear it in mind on this channel we explore the world of psychology so that we can better understand ourselves and others in this video we are continuing to explore behaviorism focusing this time on operant conditioning and the research of bf skinner this video is part of a series looking at the topic called approaches in psychology each of these approaches explains human behavior from a different perspective in the previous video in the series we introduced the behaviourist approach and explored classical conditioning and the work of ivan pavlov in this video we're going to explore operant conditioning and the research of bf skinner at the end of this video will be some retrieval practice of what we cover so that you can check your understanding let's dive in you thought ivan pavlov was an interesting bloke with his prize-winning research into dog digestion well wait till you meet b.f skinner skinner's pioneering work enabled him to teach pigeons to play ping-pong using the method of operant conditioning that we are about to explore in fact he was even asked by the u.s government to run project pigeon where he tried to develop a pigeon controlled guided bomb as part of the war effort i kid you not skinner's background wasn't in psychology but he had read john b watson's behaviorism and ivan pavlov's conditioned reflexes which both served to influence skinner's research in the 1930s for skinner though the stimulus and response association that we looked at with ivan pavlov's classical conditioning was not enough when it came to understanding human behavior to quote skinner behavior is determined by its consequences not only that skinner said behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences so for skinner it's all about consequences sometimes there are behaviors that we want people to repeat like your teacher wants you to hand your homework in on time the police want you to drive safely and your parents probably want you to keep your room tidy so operant conditioning is learning through consequences for skinner when we want to increase the likelihood of a behavior being repeated we want to reinforce that behavior more on that in a minute but sometimes there are behaviors that we don't want others to repeat so that teacher obviously doesn't want you to repeat the behavior of turning up to their lesson without your homework the police don't want you to drive at 40 miles an hour in a 30 mile an hour zone and your parent doesn't want you to leave your dirty clothes on the bathroom floor again these are all behaviors that your teacher the police and your parents want to make sure don't happen again they want to decrease the likelihood of that behavior happening again and they tend to do this by punishing those behaviors so there we have our first two key terms reinforcement means doing something that increases the likelihood of a particular behavior being repeated so reinforcements strengthen her behavior punishments on the other hand decrease the likelihood of a particular behavior being repeated so punishments weaken a behavior now it's important at this point for me to mention how skinner investigated all of this because it become relevant later on skinner created a highly controlled setting to carefully study the effects of reinforcement and punishment on the behavior of animals particularly on pigeons and rats this became known as the skinner box to consider two examples reinforcement when the rat was placed in the box it moved around and would eventually accidentally press the lever which would release a food pellet the rat learned the behavior of pushing the lever rather quickly because of the reward the positive reinforcement of the food pellet that followed this reward strengthened the behavior of pushing the lever punishment in other experiments if the rat pressed the lever they would receive an electric shock this would decrease the likelihood of pressing the lever again we're now going to explore different types of reinforcement and different types of punishment when somebody wants to reinforce a behavior make sure it's repeated that person has two options they can use positive reinforcement or they can use negative reinforcement and it's exactly the same for punishment if someone wants to punish a behavior and make sure it isn't repeated they can use either positive punishment or negative punishment but what is meant by positive and negative in this context a common misconception students have is that positive always means something nice and negative means something mean something not so nice but actually when we're talking about positive and negative we need to think about it in terms of maths positive means to add something while negative means to subtract something to take something away so let's see how these two terms play out in the example of homework the behavior teachers want to be repeated and i'm speaking from experience here is for students to hand their homework in on time so let's imagine jimmy turns up to his lesson with his homework well done jimmy i might reinforce that behavior by either adding something some praise a positive comment on jimmy's work or maybe even a shiny gold sticker another way i might reinforce this behavior is to take away something such as taking away the threat of a detention i'll say to him you don't need to stay behind at lunch because you've done your homework that's negative reinforcement so well done jimmy but unfortunately not all students are alike jimmy susie turns up to lesson with no homework this is a behavior i don't want to see again i want to weaken that behavior and so i need to apply a kind of punishment i can either add a punishment positive punishment such as giving susie's mum a phone call or giving susie a stern word in front of the class or i can apply some negative punishment by taking something away such as her precious break or lunch times so operant conditioning is learning through consequences operant conditioning applies to voluntary responses now back to a key concept we have mentioned before in discussing behaviorism extinction for operant conditioning extinction is when the behavior that was reinforced now stops being reinforced this makes it less likely that the behavior will be repeated and may eventually cease to continue for example if your teacher suddenly stops giving you those shiny gold stickers then you might be tempted to stop putting so much effort in with your homework and even stop handing it in on time linked to the concept of extinction is what is known as schedules of reinforcement schedules of reinforcement can have an impact on how resistant a behavior is to being extinguished and if you don't think this is relevant to your life just wait we know so far that behavior that is rewarded is more likely to be repeated however if we are unable to predict when that reward is likely to come what will that do to our behavior this brings us to a distinction between continuous reinforcement which is when behavior is reinforced every time it occurs and partial reinforcement which is when behavior is reinforced some of the time the problem with continuous reinforcement is that eventually over time the reinforcement has less of an impact on the other hand partial reinforcement is more resistant to extinction than continuous reinforcement so if we want someone to keep doing the behavior for longer partial reinforcement is the way to go so how does it work well partial reinforcement comes in four different types we're going to consider four schedules of reinforcement two of these refer to ratios when you see the word ratio just think of number the number of responses two of these refer to interval when you see the word interval just think of time you'll also see that two of these refer to fixed which means that they are consistent they stay the same you'll also see that two of these refer to variable which means they vary they do not stay the same so firstly a fixed ratio schedule the reinforcement is given after a fixed number of responses or behaviors has occurred for example the rat must press the lever three times before the food pellet is released into the box secondly a variable ratio schedule the reinforcement is given after a varying number of responses or behaviors has occurred the number required changes after each reward is given this is unpredictable for example the food pellet will be released into the box after the levers pressed three times then next time after six presses then the next time after two presses thirdly a fixed interval schedule reinforcement is given after a fixed amount of time elapses following the behavior being performed this can be predicted for example the rat would receive the food pellet 10 seconds after they press the lever every time and fourthly variable interval schedule reinforcement is given after a varying amount of time elapses following the behavior being performed this is unpredictable for example the rat would receive the food pellet 10 seconds after they press the lever and then food appears 15 seconds after they press the lever then the next time seven seconds after they press the lever now out of all four of these reinforcement schedules which one do you think leads to the most behaviors occurring and is the most resistant to extinction the answer is variable ratio if the reward is unpredictable it will keep you coming back for more if you don't know what is going to happen in terms of a reward and you don't know when it's going to come you will keep performing that behavior let's focus on instagram to see this at work in three ways number one you open up the app and start scrolling through the feed there is unpredictability in whether you will find something you like that excites and interests you and then there's the pull to refresh feature which reminds you an awful lot of slot machines if i refresh now what might pop up maybe i'll find something i like number three and when you post photos you are waiting and checking in to see when the food pellet will be delivered i mean when you get likes and comments your behavior is being manipulated using the ideas and research of bf skinner to keep you using their app to steal your attention so now let's test yourself just to check your understanding i'm going to give you a scenario and then i'll ask you to pause the video so you can decide which type of consequence has been applied in the scenario is it positive reinforcement negative reinforcement positive punishment or negative punishment ready here we go let's imagine a mother is going for a walk to the park with her small child timmy timmy's holding his mum's hand but when he gets to a road he sees a little puppy on the other side of the road he lets goby's mummy's hand and runs across the road to the little puppy thankfully it was a quiet road and there weren't any cars so timmy was safe but of course that might not always be the case timmy's mother wants to make sure that timmy does not run across the road on his own again so she turns to timmy and says timmy you know you're not supposed to cross the road on your own that was very naughty because you have done that we're not going to go to the park now instead we're going to go back home i don't want you to do that again which of the four consequences did timmy's mother apply the correct answer was that she applied negative punishment we know that it was punishment rather than reinforcement because she wanted to weaken the behavior of running across the road and we know that it was negative instead of positive because something was taken away not added he's tripped to the park well done if you answered correctly if you didn't get that right don't worry let's have another go it's another day and timmy's mother is taking timmy to visit the ducks before they set off she reminds timmy not to cross the road on his own so they set off to see the ducks when they get to a road amazingly that same little puppies across the road unlikely i know maybe the puppies lost timmy holds on to his mummy's hand and crosses the road with her once they've safely crossed the road together timmy's mother turns to him and says well done timmy i'm really proud of the way you cross the road we're going to see the ducks now and i'll even get you an ice cream when we arrive which of the four consequences is timmy's mother applied this time answer positive reinforcement we know it's reinforcement because she's wanting timmy to repeat the good behavior of crossing the road safely and we know it must be positive because something has been added praise and the promise of an ice cream so now let's test your understanding of schedules of reinforcement for each of the following examples can you identify which type of reinforcement schedule it is now that you hopefully have a better understanding of operant conditioning and the work of bf skinner bear in mind how much of your behavior and the behavior of those around you may be the result of operant conditioning and especially bear in mind all those ways that reinforcement might be being used to manipulate your behavior online being aware of how your behavior is being shaped and controlled is the first step to doing something about it for more on the other approaches in psychology check out the links to the playlist in the description below i hope you found this video helpful and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Bear it in MIND

Views: 46,845

Keywords: operant conditioning, operant conditioning examples, psychology, negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment, BF Skinner, Behaviourism, Behaviourist approach, Approaches in psychology, schedules of reinforcement, fixed ratio schedule, variable ratio schedule, fixed interval schedule, variable interval schedule, a-level psychology, psychology revision, Skinner box, skinner box operant conditioning, tutor2u psychology, psych boost

Id: ei7AG8hAlCs

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Fri May 06 2022