William Cope
Pinakini Shah
Nadia Ayub
Miquel Colobran.png "Samuel Chukwuemeka Obasi")
Samuel Chukwuemeka Obasi
Sara RichterLearning, Knowledge and Human Development MOOC’s Updates
What do you make of Skinner's comments about free will?
What do you make of Skinner's comments about free will?
When we think of learning in very common terms, we imagine a classroom scenario wherein, a teacher is teaching his students and students listening to him. But in psychology learning is defined as a long term change in behaviour that is based on experience. Skinner extended the Classical Conditioning theory of Ivan Pavlov and introduced Operant conditioning. In this, we learn how consequences lead to change in voluntary behaviour.
I would like to quote the Monkey stepladder experiment. A group of scientists placed a few monkeys in a cage and placed a ladder in the middle with a few bananas on top. Every time a monkey went up the ladder, the scientists soaked the rest of the monkeys with cold water. After some time whenever a monkey tried to reach out to the banana, the rest of the monkeys would drag it down and beat it up. A new monkey was introduced to the group. Unaware of the rule tried to climb up the ladder for the bananas. the rest of the monkeys dragged it down and beat it.
Through this, we can learn that the innate nature ( Free will) of the monkey - to eat the banana was curbed by negative reinforcement. According to Skinner, most of our actions is a consequence of operant conditioning and there is no room for free will
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkT0BtfOB-M
Skinner extend classical condition theory( learning through association when two stimulus are linked together to produce learned new result) eg when phone rings you check your phone although it's someone's else. This is natural stimuli..he further extended and introduced operant conditioning.operant conditioning is method of learning that occurs positive or negative reinforcement ( rewards).the vest way to understand this is to
Look at cause ,effect and reward of certain behavior.if reward is positive then it tends to be repeated if reward or reinforcement is negative it tends not be repeated.eg. if I. Class student getting highest mark in mid term exam is selected as monitor of class then for a student it is positive reinforcement and student tends to repeat his efforts to get good score again.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html
https://study.com/academy/lesson/ivan-pavlov-and-classical-conditioning-theory-experiments-contributions-to-psychology.html