Operant Conditioning and Superstition

The historical antecedents of operant conditioning was first coined by Burrhus Frederic Skinner who believed the best way to understand behavior is to look at the causes of human and nonhuman action and its consequences, which are external causes of behavior only. However, Skinner experiments and his concepts of operant conditioning stem from that of Edward Thorndike's "law of effect" and operant conditioning added a new term to "law of effect" called reinforcements. There are several types of reinforcement’s positive and negative, which both t reinforcement are strengthen or weaken to shape behavior although the reinforcement is unknown and unlikely to happen. Moreover, a behavior that comes from a stimulus that behavior is than repeated in the future based on the strength of the reinforcement. However, if the behavior is not reinforced by a stimulus than that behavior is likely removed or less likely to occur also due to the strength and weakness of the reinforcement. What else do the historical antecedent says about operant conditioning, basically is states that behavioral psychology was taught for many years but sky rocketed in the 20th-century with a new theoretical perspective, known as behaviorism also bought new insight to psychologist and how certain environmental stimulus can shape behavior and illicit responses in human and non human development, through direct or indirect reinforcements. In the mean time leaving behind the conscious and unconscious mind perspective and how it functions now hardly have any room in the behavioral science department. Another interesting fact, psychology had once lost its grip at one point and time but came back with a new twist, yet still using the basic principles of behavioral psychology that focusing only on the observable behaviors for the most part. Furthermore, behaviorism is an enormous subject that has covered a lot of behavioral perspectives through experiments conducted by earlier psychologists such as,