B. F. Skinner - Behavioral Analysis

I'm not actually in the mood to learn or basically do anything at all today, but I had to, so yeah here am I. Skinner..his name is pretty straightforward so I could recognize him easily, but not so much about his theory. I mean "behavioral analysis" is such a dull name for a theory, but whatever, can't complain, because I can't even make a single theory. :")

Q: Who is Skinner?

A: Skinner was born on March 20, 1904, in Pennsylvania. Long story short, Skinner's life wasn't difficult financially, because he's still really dependent financially with his parents, even after he had his own family (which I guess consider a rare case for an American/western culture that is really independent). But even he was financially okay, he had two life crises throughout his life. The first crisis happened after he finished getting a bachelor's degree. He had a gap year (actually 18 months) to pursue his passion for writing, but he wasn't so fortunate in it. In this Dark Year, he developed his interest in psychology, especially behaviorism after reading some of the works of Watson and Pavlov. Then he took straight to graduate degree of Psychology at Harvard (life seems so easy for him dang it). Then he began his second life crisis because of his kinda-failed inventions, "the pigeon-guided missile" and "the baby-tender" (I'm too lazy to explain it plus it doesn't have any relation to psychology). 

So where actually his golden phase at? It's actually after he retired from teaching as a professor in psychology at Harvard. He wrote several important books on human behavior that helped him attain the status of America’s best-known living psychologist. In addition to Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), he published About Behaviorism (1974), Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978), and Upon Further Reflection (1987a). During this period, he also wrote a three-volume autobiography, Particulars of My Life (1976a), The Shaping of a Behaviorist (1979), and A Matter of Consequences (1983).

Q: What is the difference between Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning?

A: According to Skinner, classical conditioning (also called Pavlovian conditioning, which Skinner called respondent conditioning), a response is drawn out of the organism by a specific, identifiable stimulus. With operant conditioning

(also called Skinnerian conditioning), a behavior is made more likely to recur when it is immediately reinforced.

One distinction between classical and operant conditioning is that, in classical conditioning, behavior is elicited from the organism, whereas in operant conditioning, behavior is emitted. An elicited response is drawn from the organism, whereas an emitted response is one that simply appears. Because responses do not exist inside the organism and thus cannot be drawn out, Skinner preferred the term “emitted.” Emitted responses do not previously exist inside the organism; they simply appear because of the organism’s individual history of reinforcement or the species’

evolutionary history.

Q: What are the examples of Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning?

A: 

• The examples of Classical Conditioning: 
• Reflexive behavior (light shined in the eye stimulates the pupil to contract; food placed on the tongue brings about salivation and pepper in the nostrils results in the sneezing reflex) 
• "Little Albert" experiment
• Pavlov's dog experiment
• The examples of Operant Conditioning
• Most human behavior (get a good grade, do a pleasurable thing, etc)
• "Skinner Box" experiment

Q: What are the processes in Operant Conditioning?

A: According to Skinner, behavior in operant conditioning comes from processes

1. Shaping: a procedure in which the experimenter or the environment first rewards gross approximations of the behavior, then closer approximations, and finally the desired behavior itself. The behavior doesn't have to appear yet.
2. Reinforcement: has two effects: It strengthens the behavior and it rewards the person.
3. Punishment: the presentation of an aversive stimulus

Q: What are 3 conditions in Shaping?

A: The conditions are:

• A (the antecedent): refers to the environment or setting in which the behavior takes place.
• B (the behavior): the behavior of the subject
• C (the consequence): the reward

Q: What's the difference between Positive and Negative Reinforcement?
A: It actually not that hard to understand. Because I'm too lazy so the point is: positive reinforcement gives a reward, meanwhile negative reinforcement takes the unpleasurable stimulus. That's it.

Q: What's the difference between Positive and Negative Punishment?

A: Shortly, positive punishment gives real punishment, meanwhile negative punishment takes the pleasurable stimulus.

Q: What is the schedule of reinforcement?

A: Any behavior followed immediately by the presentation of a positive reinforcer or the removal of an aversive stimulus tends thereafter to occur more frequently. The frequency of that behavior, however, is subject to the conditions under which training occurred, more specifically, to the various schedules of reinforcement.

Reinforcement can follow behavior on either a continuous schedule or an intermittent one. With a continuous schedule, the organism is reinforced for every response. This type of schedule increases the frequency of a response but is an inefficient use of the reinforcer. Skinner preferred intermittent schedules not only because they make more efficient use of the reinforcer but because they produce responses that are more resistant to extinction.

Q: What are the 4 basic intermittent schedules?

A: Ferster and Skinner (1957) recognized a large number of reinforcement schedules, but the four basic intermittent schedules are:

1. Fixed-ratio: the organism is reinforced intermittently according to the number of responses it makes. Example: Mom gives a kid a reward every time they get 100 in 3 exams. 3 exams are the ratio and the number is fixed, so every 3 exams, not 2, not 4, etc.
2. Variable-ratio: reinforced after the n-th response on the average. Example: Mom gives a kid a reward every time they get 100 in 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 exams, so the ratio is varied but mostly increased because, for example, the kid got 100 in two exams, but in the next semester he must get better right? So the reward was given after three exams (increase), and so on, with the intention of he gets more 100 in exams throughout the semester. Another example is the slot machines. The machine is set to pay off at a certain rate, but the ratio must be flexible, that is, variable, to prevent players from predicting payoffs. (Variable-ratio is the greatest of all schedules)
3. Fixed-interval: the organism is reinforced for the first response following a designated period of time. Example: A student got a reward every time they working hard for 5 minutes.
4. Variable-interval: the organism is reinforced after the lapse of random or varied periods of time. example: A student got a reward every time they working hard in random minutes.

Q: How responses lost after learned?

A: Once learned, responses can be lost for at least four reasons. First, they can simply be forgotten during the passage of time. Second, and more likely, they can be lost due to the interference of preceding or subsequent learning. Third, they can disappear due to punishment. The fourth cause of lost learning is extinction, defined as the tendency of a previously acquired response to become progressively weakened upon nonreinforcement.

Q: How the principles of behavior in animals applied to the human organism?

A: Skinner’s view was that an understanding of the behavior of laboratory animals can generalize to human behavior, just as physics can be used to interpret what is observed in outer space and just as an understanding of basic genetics can help in interpreting complex evolutionary concepts.

According to Skinner, human behavior (and human personality) is shaped by three forces:

1. Natural Selection: Human personality is the product of a long evolutionary history. As individuals, our behavior is determined by the genetic composition and especially by our personal histories of reinforcement. As a species, however, we are shaped by the contingencies of survival. Natural selection plays an important part in human personality. Example: pupillary reflex and rooting reflex
2. Cultural Evolution: Selection is responsible for those cultural practices that have survived, just as selection plays a key role in humans’ evolutionary history and also with the contingencies of reinforcement. “People do not observe particular practices in order that the group will be more likely to survive; they observe them because groups that induced their members to do so survived and transmitted them”. In other words, humans do not make a cooperative decision to do what is best for society, but those societies whose members behaved cooperatively tended to survive. Example: toolmaking, verbal behavior, warfare
3. Individual’s history of reinforcement

Q: How does one assess personality in a behavioral approach?

A: The behavioral approach to assessment, then, emphasizes three things:

(1) identification of specific behaviors often called target behaviors or target responses ; (2) identification of specific environmental factors that elicit, cue, or reinforce the target behaviors; and

(3) identification of specific environmental factors that can be manipulated to alter the behavior.

KEY TERMS:

Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning, Shaping, Reinforcement, Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement, Punishment, Positive Punishment, Negative Punishment, Continous Schedule, Intermittent Schedule, Fixed-ratio, Variable-ratio, Fixed-interval, Variable-interval, Human Organism

REFERENCES:

Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2015). Personality: Theory and research twelfth edition. John Wiley & Sons.

Feist, J., & Feist, G. J. (2008). Theories of personality. McGraw-Hill.