CLASSICAL AND OPERANT CONDITIONING
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In life we are faced with many phobias, fears, and many obstacles, but most of the time
we are clueless on where these come from and how they are handled.
They are all related to
classical conditioning, operant reinforcement, and operant punishment which happen every day
whether we are aware of it or not. Classical conditioning refers to how we react and how we
continue to react after a certain point or incident in life. There are four different stages of
classical conditioning and they are: uncontrolled response, uncontrolled stimulus, controlled
response, and controlled stimulus. Operant reinforcement deals with the aspect of rewarding
someone for achieving a goal, or on the other hand, punishing that same person for not reaching
their goal. The third and final component is operant punishment and that takes place with either
the removal of an object, which is a negative punishment, or by being administered something
unpleasant, which is a positive punishment. All these components come together and play a
crucial role in our lifestyle and how we act out are everyday life.
Classical Conditioning Component
Do you ever wonder why people are afraid of harmless things? Or why harmless things
seem so terrifying to you? It all is related and has to deal with classical conditioning. Classical
conditioning is a type of learning in which a stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a response
that was originally evoked by another stimulus (Weiten, 2008, pg. 188). There are four aspects
to classical conditioning and they all play a big role in what we do and how we react to our fears.
The first two aspects of your classical conditioning are the unconditioned stimulus (US) and
unconditioned response (UR). The unconditioned stimulus is a stimulus that evokes an
unconditioned response without previous conditioning while the unconditioned response is an
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unlearned reaction to an unconditioned stimulus that occurs without previous conditioning.
(Weiten, 2008, pg. 189). The second two aspects of classical conditioning are the conditioned
stimulus (CS) and conditioned response (CR). The conditioned stimulus is a previously neutral
stimulus that has, through conditioning, acquired the capacity to evoke a conditioned response,
which is, a learned reaction to a conditioned stimulus that occurs because of previous
conditioning (Weiten, 2008, pg. 189). An example of all these coming together and creating
classical conditioning would be: An owner keeps his dogs food in the garage. When the owner
opens the door to get the food from the garage the dog comes running to the door. After a while,
whenever the garage door is opened the dog comes running to the door. In this example, the
food, itself, is the unconditioned stimulus and the dog getting the food from the garage would be
an example of the unconditioned response. An example of the conditioned stimulus would be
the sound of the door opening, while the dog running to the door every time it is opened is an
example of the conditioned response. The food is the unconditional stimulus because that is
what the dog wants in the first place and by getting the food from the garage is the unconditional
response because that illustrates where the owner keeps the food. The conditioned stimulus is
the sound of the door opening because the dog now knows that the food is out in the garage and
when the dog approaches the door because of this sound it is an example of the conditioned
response because the dog knows that if he goes to the door, he will get food.
Operant Conditioning-Reinforcement
Positive and Negative Reinforcement
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Operant conditioning is a form of learning in which voluntary responses come to be
controlled by their consequences (Weiten, 2008, pg. 196). This differs from classical
conditioning because in this it forms an association between behaviors and the resulting events.
These resulting events can be handled in two different ways: positive reinforcement or negative
reinforcement. Positive reinforcement occurs when a response is strengthened because it is
followed by the presentation of a rewarding stimulus while negative reinforcement occurs when
a response is strengthened because it is followed by the removal of an aversive stimulus (Weiten,
2008, pg. 203). Reinforcements can be handled in a number of ways. For instance, if kids do a
number of chores at home for the whole week or for any amount of time and receive allowance
for those chores. If these kids did not do these chores though they would not receive their
allowance and possibly get grounded for this but, since they did their chores they received an
allowance. This right here would be an example of positive reinforcement because they were
rewarded for doing something good and helpful. This is correctly identified as a positive
reinforcement because the kids received an allowance for helping out around the house. By
getting the allowance the kids will be willing to not only continue to do their chores, but they
might even do a little extra for the chance of getting more allowance. But if these kids would not
have done this they would have received no allowance and could have had the possibility of
doing even more chores for equal or less allowance then what they would have got if they would
have done them in the first place.
Operant Conditioning-Punishment
Positive Punishment versus Negative Punishment
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Operant conditioning punishment occurs when an event following a response weakens
the tendency to make that response (Weiten, 2008, pg. 205). Like operant reinforcement there
are two forms to punishment. The first form is positive punishment which would just be
administering an unpleasant stimulus while negative punishment would be the removal of a
desirable stimulus. To give an example of all this: two parents realize that their eleven year old
son is becoming a bit obese. So instead of confronting him about his problem and making him
feel uncomfortable, the parents decide to stop buying all forms of junk food and remove the
existing junk food from the house. The consequences in this example would be that the kid no
longer has access to any junk food in his house and hopefully this with lead him in the right
direction of eating better and starting a healthy lifestyle. This example would illustrate a form of
negative punishment because the kid is losing something that he wants and something that is
desirable to him. This is correctly illustrated as a negative punishment because in this case the
parents took away a desired object. If the parents would have punished him by making him do
five sit ups every time he ate junk food that would be a form of positive punishment, but since
they completely took away all forms of junk food it is a negative punishment.
Conclusion
As people can see, in life we are faced with many phobias, fears, and many obstacles, but
most of the time we are clueless on where these come from and how they are handled.
They are
all related to classical conditioning, operant reinforcement, and operant punishment which
happen every day whether we are aware of it or not. People now know how big of a role and
how crucial all of these components are to people’s lives and now they can see that basically
CLASSICAL AND OPERANT CONDITIONING
everything that happens is somehow related to psychology and how the brain works. If it were
not for classical conditioning people would continue to do the same actions as they did before
without realizing that every time they did that action something positive or negative happens to
them. And without operant reinforcement people would have no motivation to do anything if
there was not some sort of prize for accomplishing what they had just done or some sort of
downfall if they were not able to accomplish or reach their goal. Lastly, without operant
punishment all humans would continue to make the same mistakes over and over again because
they would have no enforcement to tell them that they did something wrong or something that
they were not supposed to do. So as everybody can see, without classical conditioning, operant
reinforcement, operant punishment, and even psychology itself they world as we know it would
be completely different and the people we know would act completely different.
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CLASSICAL AND OPERANT CONDITIONING
References
Weiten, W. (2008). Psychology: Themes & Variations (8E). California: Wadsworth, Cengage
Learning.
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CLASSICAL AND OPERANT CONDITIONING
General Psychology: Classical and Operant Conditioning
Bo M. Hellquist
University of Minnesota Duluth
1
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
ii
Introduction
2
Classical Conditioning Component
2
Operant Conditioning
3
Positive and Negative Reinforcement
3
Positive and Negative Punishment
4
Conclusion
5
ii