Operant Conditioning Essay

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Distinguish between operant conditioning, classical conditioning, and social learning. How are these different kinds of learning utilized in the work place? Give specific examples for each one. There are two main components in Operant conditioning, reinforcement and punishment. Reinforcement makes it more likely that you will do something again, while punishment makes it less likely. Both of these components can be negative or positive. For example, your mother gives you desert after you have finished all of your vegetables. You know that every time you finish your veggies, she’ll give you a delicious desert. That’s a positive reinforcement. A negative reinforcement would be like if I were at a traffic stop light and the light just turned green. The car in front of me continues not to move at all, I honk my horn and the car in front of me moves. I know now that each time I do this that vehicles in front of me know to move or pay attention on the road next time someone honks at them. Classical conditioning was discovered by a Russian man named Ivan Pavlov in the 1890’s. He used dogs to prove his theory on classical conditioning. He showed dogs some food and rang a bell at the same time. After a while, the dogs would associate the bell with the food. They would learn that when they heard the bell, they would get fed. Eventually, just ringing the bell made the dogs salivate. They learned to expect food at the sound of a bell. We call the food an unconditioned stimulus, and we call salivation the unconditioned response. Nobody trains a dog to salivate over some steak. However, when we pair an unconditioned stimulus like food with something that was previously neutral, like the sound of a bell, that neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus. Another example would be, the fear you get when you see a lion out of a cage. That becomes triggered by a formerly neutral
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