Evaluation: Operant Conditioning

Evaluation: Operant Conditioning

1. Supporting Studies

   • Skinner found that rats would learn to push a lever in order to get food. This is because receiving food acts as a reinforcer, and encourages the rat to press the lever more in order to continue getting rewarded.
     • Operant conditioning suggests that behaviour can be learnt through reinforcement (positive and negative) or punishment (positive and negative) strategies. The idea is that by reinforcing behaviours through giving a reward, or taking away something bad (e..g pain), the person carrying out that behaviour will be encouraged to repeat that behaviour. Punishing someone after exhibiting a behaviour, either by giving them something bad or taking away something good, aims to discourage that behaviour from occurring again.

2. Criticism of Supporting Studies

   • Skinner's experiment was only done on rats. As rats are a lot less complex in terms of behaviours than humans, and only share a limited amount of genetics, you are unable to fully generalise the results to humans. Because of this, the evidence to support operant conditioning is lacking.

3. Opposing Evidence

   • Although operant conditioning can explain a wider range of behaviours than classical conditioning can, it is still criticised for being an incomplete explanation of behaviour. This is because it only explains the maintenance of a behaviour, or how a behaviour is strengthened and weakened, but fails to explain where that behaviour originated from. This suggests that operant conditioning is only a partial explanation of behaviour.
     • There are primary and secondary reinforcers. Primary reinforcers include rewards that have biological significance, such as food, water, shelter and sex. Secondary reinforcers are rewards which have become associated with primary reinforcers, for example money which is associated with being able to buy food and drink...

4. Different Theories

   • Social Learning Theory suggests that behaviour is learnt through the observation of a role model, as this information is retained and then reproduced by the observer.
   • Classical conditioning suggests (reflexive) behaviours are learnt through the association between two stimuli. This explains where behaviours may originate from, which is something operant conditioning fails to do.

5. Application

   • Operant conditioning can be applied to many aspects of life, such as in schools and while parenting. A child's good behaviour in schools or at home can be rewarded through being given a gold star, or poor behaviour can be punished by taking away toys or games. This shows that operant conditioning has good application to the real world and is useful outside of psychology's theoretical interest.