We're talking about operant conditioning today
and how it differs in some ways from classical conditioning, and also how it
overlaps in some ways with classical conditioning.
So, we talked early in the course about Thorndike's Law of Effect which sounded like
common sense but so does
the Sun going around the earth until you amass enough data to
challenge that common sense. So, this turns out to be right but it wasn't
really
well understood until a man named B.F. Skinner comes along.
Law of Effects says essentially, associations, remember
learning is associating, ring the bell gets associated with food,
produces salivation, right? That's classical conditioning. Association is between a
response and a stimulus followed by pleasant consequences
tend to get strengthened, those which
are followed by neutral or unpleasant consequences tend to get weakened, but now
we're talking about
operant conditioning, right, and that's behavior that you emit voluntarily,
right? You can get really strong long-lasting
effects from one-trial learning for sickness pain, right, and fear
but that's what we're talking about the, the
cascade of adrenaline that comes from that or the quivering
of the nausea that comes from that, right, or the saliva that's produced by the bell
ringing, right? Those are physiological things and that's classical conditioning.
Under operant condition we're talking about now the responses themselves,
the behavioral ones that we can emit and choose
but don't seem to be choosing in some cases are controlled by consequences
so those responses being controlled by consequences were best explored by BF
Skinner. Now there were a lot of other
very important researchers other than Watts and other than Skinner, other than
Pavlov that we won't go into
but if you get into higher levels of learning in psychology, you'll learn about Clark,
Hall, and many others, Tolman,
etc. B.F. Skinner's got a little asterisk beside his name because he's a very
important figure. We already talked about him
in the early part of the course when we were talking about behaviorism.
Well, we're knee-deep in behaviorism right now. That's the predominant school
of thought we're looking at
and he demonstrated this. He demonstrated it scientifically,
methodically, and convincingly such that we really don't question
a lot of his findings because they turned out to be very much
replicable and applicable. Very practical this information. If you understand this
information
thoroughly you can change your life with it. You can change other people's lives with it. You could do it
for better or for worse so I hope you'll be
benevolent with your powers once you've acquired them, but you have to
understand it well.
Not rocket science but it is science and these terms matter
and the contingencies, if-then statements
are what we're talking about here. The circumstances that produce a response,
that response then brings a consequence, the consequence then feeds back
to make the organism more or less likely to do a similar response
in similar future circumstances. So, operant chambers, this old Skinner box
over here.
Now, he didn't like it being called the Skinner box. He worked with pigeons
and he worked with rats, he did other stuff he worked with people too and designed some
really interesting things that
didn't get there do probably in terms a credit, but what do you got inside of a
Skinner box? Well, you got a grid
through which feces can pass, or urin but also could be electrified if you're
interested in punishment.
You've got levers that you can get responses to measure them, you've got
devices to record exactly how many responses, what the frequency intensity
and duration responses are.
You've got different stimuli like lights or buzzers,
you've got a food dispenser as a possible mechanism for reinforcement which we'll
talk about,
and so you can study in a laboratory
with great precision all kinds of facets of behavior.
That you couldn't do with human beings, because it wouldn't be ethical,
right? And you learn a lot from that, and people are like, 'Im no rat!.'
I'm not a rat. Well no, you're far far more complicated than a rat.
But, you will do things in a very similar fashion
to a lot of other animals and if you understand the similarities,
of course we can appreciate the differences, but the similarities give us a basis for
understanding behavior in a way
that makes it predictable, and that's one of the goals science, right? Measurement
and prediction.
So, you look at the Skinner chamber over here; doesn't look so good he puts his baby, Little Debbie,
in an air crib.
and published the air crib, and people thought he was a a monster! Putting that baby up in that little
air crib.
What's an air crib? An air crib's a little enclosure, the humidity's controlled. The
temperatures controlled, you know that back in those days they had cloth diapers.
I dunno if you've seen babies with cloth diapers, but that's a damn mess, is what
that is, right?
It's gonna go everywhere, right? It leaks everywhere.
and so that means the bedding has to be changed. You've been in those, you been in
the doctor's office where they had the sheets on the,
on the table? And they can just change the sheet? Well his crib,
you could just change and bring in new clean sheets very quickly,
and it had this crazy idea in it that was a little intercom system,
so that the baby was crying or was a cooing or needing something you can
hear it from another room and respond to the baby. Now, we
assume everybody needs that we call it a baby monitor.
And we all put kids in cribs anyway right? His crib was badass.
And people thought he was a lunatic because they thought
he's experimenting on a child like a rat. He loved this child, they said 'that kid wound up committing
suicide didn't she?' Myth.
No, she's a very successful artist.
Nothing bad we can tell, she said her her dad was a a very loving dad.
So, what are the consequences that make us do different things? Well, they are
reinforcement or punishment.
Reinforcers are events that occur after
a response that make the response more likely to happen again.
Punishers occur after a response and they make
that same response less likely to happen again.
There are two main categories: a reinforcer, one is
primary reinforcer. Primary reinforcer is inherently gratifying.
You seen the sign 'will work for food?' Maybe they're being serious about it, maybe they're
not but if you haven't eaten,
by God you will work for food. You'll work for all those things if you have to to get them.
Food, you've got to have it. Air, you've got to have it and people just assume air but if
you're on
oxygen tanks, I seen a guy once,
oxygen ran out and he has a suffering
condition he almost became animalistic, as he went almost through me to get to the
next oxygen tank
and as soon as he got it, he was like, 'sorry about that I'm sorry about that'
changed his behavior dramatically cause you gotta have. Most of us just
assume we have it,
but if you don't you'll work for it. Shelter, well you don't have to have the craziest,
biggest,
house on the block, right? But shelter helps, helps you out
with the elements, helps you from keeping bad people out, and
keeping the good people in, sometimes, unfortunately, keeps the bad people in, and
and the good people out. But you don't have to have food like this do ya'?
Now, if you're in trench warfare in WWI, and you didn't get your rations, rats will do.
You'll eat rats. You'll eat whatever you have to eat to survive
cause you remember we got a survival instinct. We try to live. People who
suicide
have gone past that instinct and over ridden it somehow.
Which is not easy to do, and we don't want anybody to do it so we want to keep
them around and show them other
alternatives. Clothing doesn't matter in the tropics,
right? If you're on the equator you don't need a big ole' fuzzy coat, but if you live up in the
Arctic region you got to have certain clothing to live.
And sex. Sex is part of the species that's really what Freud was talking
about more less was
sexual energy in terms of what motivates us as species to make more of us to create
a society,
and regenerate ourselves, but think about that,
think about sex, and you don't need other people have sex right? You could do it by
yourself. We lost a
good surgeon general, Joslin Elders, because she had the audacity to
recommend that masturbation might be a good form of safe sex.
Well it is. It's about as safe as it gets,
and why not have that as a possibility if it fits into your world view. But some people said
no, you shouldn't tell people that.
But here's the thing: think about all the politicians who got into trouble
they had everything,
right? Everything they could possibly want, and then they get involved in what?
A sex scandal, right? Exactly. Tell me that's not a powerful variable,
and why is it primary? Cause it's built into the species.
It's inherently gratifying. The orgasm is something that you experience as an
organism,
you don't have to learn it, no associations, you don't need it all the time.
We're not like lower animals, we have choices we can make.
We don't go into mating season and go nuts with it, right? We have societies that
have
prescriptions, and prohibitions, and when people don't follow them,
you would look kind of like, why couldn't you? Because that was a very powerful motivator.
Part of biology. Just part of being
a reproducing species. Nothing has to be weird about it other than recognizing
it's powerful.
People will do things for those primary reinenforcers, but you don't usually work
for food, right? You don't usually work for shelter, you work for
something else that you then convert into food and shelter, right?
Secondary reinforcers are things that are not originally inherently gratifying,
but they acquire a power that is
almost as powerful, and in some cases may be more powerful than
primary reenforces because of their association with primary reenforcement.
You don't give a one-year-old a hundred-dollar bill do you?
Doesn't mean anything to it what means something to a kid? Being cuddled, that
touch factor, right?
Being warm, being fed, being sheltered,
secure. But you give 'em a hundred dollar bill, it doesn't have any inherent gratifying
meaning, they stick it in their mouth, they tear it up, doesn't mean anything.
But, you give 'em time where, now they're toddlers and they go into stores and they see
something they want, they
go ' I what that.' And you go, 'no, that cost too much money' or 'we have some at home.'
I'm not gonna spend the money and they see you exchanging, what?
Tokens, tokens for things,
Now, the kid gets to to be a little bit older and they understand the power
of money, right? You get enough of it,
well, it doesn't have to be money per say there's other kinds
of things that you can now associate, right? You don't need a car like that to get
around, do you?
Is anybody ever gonna really turn one down if they're offered it,
right? Because it has what? Image?
Fashion? Style? Power Projection?
Or, if you're really practical you can sell it and buy a couple other cheaper cars
and then still have money for dinner.
Right? So it's got this associated
reinforcement value, and reinforcers are something we work for, so we don't work
directly necessarily for some
primary reinforcers, but the secondary reinforcers
can get us the primary reinforcers and they themselves can acquire power of
their own such as people work for just them. Some people have more money
then they could literally ever spend. But, they keep working to obtain more
because it's gratifying now, it's got a gratifying property
that it didn't have when you were one-years-old, right? So that
that is the concept behind secondary reinforcement.