Learning and Behavior
Elizabeth Cervantes
Salt Lake community College
Prepared for Psychology 1010, May 2013.
I decided to choose my topic to be learning and behavior. I thought this chapter
(Schacter, Gilbert and Wegner, 2013) was interesting because it gives more explanation on why
people behave the way they do and how we learn to adapt to new changes and obstacles
throughout our lives. I decided to change a behavior about myself and what I came up with was
changing my eating habits for a week. This was a bit of a challenge for me but I thought it was a
good experience. I decided to do this because I do not eat so healthy, and I am always getting an
urge to eat unhealthy foods, which is the problem.
I wanted to stop eating so much unhealthy foods such as hamburgers, chips, candy and
soda all the time and instead replace them with healthy foods or fruits. I think this behavior of
continuously eating unhealthy food occurs because there is always food available. For example,
at my job we get treats at least once a week, and most of the time they are not healthy. We also
get food once a month, they call them potlucks. Sometimes this occurs multiple times during the
month and that makes it harder to try to make healthy eating choices. Another reason I eat
unhealthy things is that when I feel nervous about something I start eating more than usual.
I think this behavior has been occurring since I was younger because I’ve always loved to
eat, and my family and I would always go out to restaurants or they would bring home fast food
a lot of the times. Now that I am older I still go out to restaurants about once a week. I think it
just became a habit. Psychologist (Schacter, et al, 2011) discuss different types of learning that
involve classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Operant Conditioning is a type of
learning in which consequences of someone’s behavior determines whether it will be repeated in
the future. This also involves punishment and reinforcement. Psychologist B.F. Skinner was the
one who came up with how Operant Conditioning works and involves punishment and
reinforcements. Reinforcers are meant to strengthen the behaviors and punishers are meant to
make the behaviors less likely to occur (Schacter, et al, 2011). Some of the things that reinforce
this action of making unhealthy food choices is that unhealthy foods look and taste good. I tend
to push healthy foods away. Another big factor is the people around me are not healthy eaters
themselves so that makes it even harder to make different choices. An effective punisher for this
behavior would be looking into the side effects that come with eating too much unhealthy
products. This would make me think twice before eating some chips or a donut.
Some of the options I have tried over the past week of watching what I ate were looking
at the food labels and seeing how much fat and sodium they contain, this was a good punisher in
helping me stop eating unhealthy. I also tried to focus my attention to other things. Instead of
turning to food I would walk my dog or do outdoor activities. I found that by doing this it helped
with my urges and helped keep my mind focused on something other than food, and I was more
conscious of how healthy I was actually eating. Rewards are also a part of Operant conditioning,
Author (Pokharna, Urvashi) states, “A person is motivated to learn new behavior if there is an
opportunity to gain incentives. Since, a reward is a great way of expressing appreciation or
acknowledging the efforts of another person in a positive light, rewards are better than
punishments!” This can help impact my behavior by implementing rewards or punishments
depending on my behavior. This will help me move forward and complete my desired outcome
by knowing there is a reward at the end.
I can train myself to eat healthy by keeping a food log and writing down everything I eat
that way I can keep track of my food intake. It would be effective to involve another person that
is close to me like a family member because they would help motivate me and keep me on track.
Others can impact my behavior in different ways, there could be people who can pressure me to
make the wrong eating choices and there can be others who encourage me to eat healthy and
work out. A good way to train myself to start eating healthy and watching what I eat is by
positive reinforcement. Positive Reinforcement is when there is some type of reward involved
after the individual performs the desired behavior (Education Portal). My reward would be to go
out to eat to a restaurant or choose any place I wanted to go on the weekend, only if I made good
eating choices throughout the whole week. There are 3 types of schedules of reinforcements that
Skinner studied; they are continuous, interval and ratio (Education Portal). A schedule of
reinforcement I would try out would be Interval, because it is after a certain amount of time
passes. In my case it would be at the end of the week.
I chose to try this behavior out for 2 weeks and the outcome was interesting. The process
I went through was trying to watch what I eat and try to stop eating unhealthy foods all the time.
At first it was hard to keep track of my eating habits and to turn down bad foods. The first couple
of days I started to cut down on unhealthy foods but I was still eating junk food here and there
throughout the day, as time passed it started to get easier. By the second week I was able to turn
away from foods I was not supposed to eat and I did not really think anything about it. I knew
that if I followed my plan the whole week it would pay off and I would be able to eat what I
wanted on the weekend, without going overboard. The results turned out great, I feel healthier
and more energized and I would like to keep trying this out.
References
"B.F Skinner and Operant Conditioning." Education Portal. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Cherry, Kendra. "Introduction to Operant Conditioning." About.com Psychology. N.p., n.d. Web.
17 Apr. 2013.
Pokharna, Urvashi. "Rewards Vs. Punishment: Which One Is More Effective?" Buzzle.com.
Buzzle.com, 30 Dec. 2011. Web. 02 May 2013.
Schacter, D. L., Gilbert, D. T, & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Introducing Psychology. New
Publishers.