Operant Conditioning by B. F Skinner

Introduction People do on a day to day basis, many actions without realizing it, and most of the time, they don’t know why they do them. Certain reinforcements, some positive, and some negative have conditioned their actions and thoughts. In this essay, I chose Burrhus Frederic Skinner who came up with the theory of operant conditioning. B. F. skinner,(March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) is an American psychologist who believed that we do have such a thing as a mind, but that it is simply more productive to study observable behavior rather than internal mental events. As Skinner's theory was based on the earlier work of Thorndike, he also believed that the best way to understand a behavior is to look at the causes of the action and its consequences. He called this approach operant conditioning.
Skinner's most well known and respected contribution to behaviorism and psychology in general was his findings to do with behavior and the effect of reinforcement on responses and the role of operant conditioning in learning.
Main Assumption The main assumption that Skinner’s theory is based on is that human behavior follows ‘laws’ and that the causes of human behavior is something in their environment.
He came up with the four possible consequences (Appendix 1) which show how behavior can be reinforced to make it more or less frequent, or even extinct.
It is basically learning from the consequences of our behavior which are: • Positive reinforcement • Negative Reinforcement • Punishment (Positive and Negative) Skinner's theory of operant conditioning states that when a behavior is followed by a reinforcing agent that behavior is more likely to be repeated in the future under similar circumstances, when the behavior is followed by a negative reinforcement agent that behavior is less likely to be repeated in the future. “In the language of operant conditioning, reinforcement occurs when a consequence strengthens a response,