Behaviorism Exhibit

What is Behaviorism?

I've included my Classical and Operant Conditioning pieces below along with my summaries of the Flip videos that I posted to my class group. I had created this blog to help make the videos accessible, and to provide supplemental materials for those posts.

The main take-away I gathered from reading about behaviorism, classical conditioning, and operant conditioning is that these learning & teaching theories focus exclusively on outward, observable behaviors from the subject. Behaviorism can be leveraged in training situations where the subjects are able to make the connections and associations between the behavior and reinforcement, whether actively or passively.  It seems that varying ratio reinforcement schedules have great long term establishment of desired behaviors. I brought this up in my Flip video explanation of Operant Conditioning by including the casino slot machines example from the AdvertEnticement (2011) YouTube video. I think that Behaviorism-based learning theories have a place and can be very successful but they lack the ability to explore the nuances of lived experiences, as well as the thoughts and emotions behind the actions and behaviors of the subjects.

For example, I use two alarms in the morning, one for medication that I must take on an empty stomach at 04:00 and the other to wake up for work during the week. I've assigned different songs to each of these alarms based on how I prioritize how important they are, and what they're supposed to be reminding me to take care of for myself. After being on this medication for 6+ months, if I hear the medication alarm song in the wild, my first thought is to check if I've taken my medication.

I noticed while I was reading through the materials that I was making associations with some of the unfamiliar terminology and things I was already familiar with; e.g. Thorndike’s drills and practice in mathematics I labeled internally as “Rote memorization” I think what I learned here is that behaviorism can be very successful when looking at physical manifestations of behavior, like practicing piano or running a marathon. While mathematics drills can render fast, accurate responses, I don’t know that it’s truly teaching math skills over just memorizing components of mathematics for the specific equations involved in their drills. In this case, once generalization is achieved the students might have some of the desired skills but the drills themselves are not teaching them that, it happens internally and I don’t think it’s fair to credit the drills with the establishment of the behavior as "learning".

Operant Conditioning

I might have misunderstood the assignment a little bit and in-turn the AI may not have operated as well as I would have liked. I used Chat GPT to try to empathize with and explain operant conditioning from the perspective of a young dog. We recently stayed with friends who are trying to train their puppy and I thought that it would be neat to see how the AI interprets the perspective of an animal. The response it gave seems from an outside perspective rather than from the dog’s perspective though.

I think I wanted to try looking at the internal reasoning on behalf of the subject, to get a better idea of what types of reinforcement might be best for forming stimulus-response bonds or connections. That’s probably my biggest critique is that it does not give much credit to the subject’s full range of thoughts or feelings when measuring the progress of the conditioning.

Classical Conditioning

I used Canva to create my mood board and I chose #F2CDDC or "relaxing pink" (I was looking at Baker-Miller pink [#FF91AF] but wanted a lighter color) for the background because I remembered an experiment that was performed to study (Genschow et al., 1993) whether Baker-Miller pink does reduce aggression, and I was hoping it might have a calming effect for me working on it. Each row tells a little story or gives an example of classical conditioning. The second row represents Pavlov's experiment with dogs. The third row depicts that scene from The Office where the computer ding eventually makes Dwight's mouth taste bad when not offered a mint. The fourth row is our nurturing teacher example where students are happy to come to class and learn because they will be spending time with someone who treats them well and they trust. The fifth row represents the Kit Kat jingle and/or commercial and how it works to associate the chocolate bar with break time and relaxing.

The top of mood board is the representation of the connection I made to classical conditioning. It is hard to get by in today's day and age without a smart phone, and I think a byproduct of that is that these devices rarely leave our immediate reach. Our phones are our calendars, clocks, alarms, timers, emergency contact information, and so much more. I use two different alarm apps because I have medication I need to take well before I wake up for the day, the first alarm I set plays a specific song so I know that it's time for my medication. The other alarm I set for work has a different tone so I know that it's okay to snooze it for an extra 15 minutes and while I might be late to work, I won't mess up my dosage schedule which can greatly impact how I'm feeling. Before I started the medication just under a year ago, my alarm did its job and woke me up. Once I adjusted to have two different songs as alarms, they both woke me up but now I hear one of those songs and reach for my medication. When I hear that song randomly throughout my day I now ask myself, "Did I take my medication on time this morning?" Which did not happen when I heard the song before.

When we see a commercial that shows happy people using a product, the marketing professionals know that they need to blast that imagery or messaging as much as possible so that when consumers see their product, through classical conditioning they associate it with being happy, which incentivizes them to buy the product. In the case of cigarettes and fast food it's particularly troubling when the health risks are minimized or not clearly stated. The effects of this conditioning are also more impactful on vulnerable populations like children, who may not be able to detect the persuasive intent behind an advertisement, which can lead to the internal normalization of unhealthy behaviors.

References

Genschow, O., Noll, T., Wänke, M., & Gersbach, R. (2015). Does Baker-Miller pink reduce aggression in prison detention cells? A critical empirical examination. Psychology, Crime & Law, 21(5), 482–489. https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2014.989172

AdvertEnticement. (2011, January 24). Adventures in the Skinner Box: Operant conditioning (dove example) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtoH5tlr-bI