ABSTRACT
Unlike classically conditioned responses, many everyday behaviors are not elicited by a specific stimulus. Behaviors such as walking, talking, eating, drinking, working, and playing do not occur automatically in response to any particular stimulus. In the presence of a stimulus such as food, an animal might eat or it might not, depending on the time of day, the time since its last meal, the presence of other animals, and so on. Because it appears that the animal can choose whether to engage in behaviors of this type, people sometimes call them “voluntary” behaviors and contrast them with the “involuntary” behaviors that are part of unconditioned and conditioned reflexes. Some learning theorists state that whereas classical conditioning is limited to involuntary behaviors, operant conditioning influences our voluntary behaviors. The term voluntary may not be the best term to use because it is difficult
After reading this chapter, you should be able to
• describe Thorndike’s Law of Effect and experiments on animals in the puzzle box • discuss how the principle of reinforcement can account for superstitious
behaviors • describe the procedure of shaping and explain how it can be used in behavior
modification • explain B. F. Skinner’s free-operant procedure, three-term contingency, and the
basic principles of operant conditioning • define instinctive drift, and explain why some psychologists believed that it
posed problems for the principle of reinforcement • define autoshaping and discuss different theories about why it occurs
to define in a precise, scientific way, but whatever we call nonreflexive behaviors, this chapter should make one thing clear: Just because there is no obvious stimulus preceding a behavior, this does not mean that the behavior is unpredictable. The extensive research on operant conditioning might be described as an effort to discover general principles that can predict what nonreflexive behaviors an individual will perform and under what conditions.
