Thursday, September 16, 2010
Operate Conditioning
As we discussed in our previous class, B.F. Skinner often focused on Operate Conditioning. More specifically, he focused on the consequences of behavior and how that effects someone's behavior and actions. Skinner stated that free will is an illusion. In some ways, I do agree with this comment, but only to a certain extent. Often times, children's actions are effected by the consequences of their parents. Personally growing up, if I had thoughts of making a bad decision or behaving poorly, the one thing that would come to mind would be getting in trouble with my parents, and not the fact that what I am doing is actually wrong. Because I was nervous about the reprecussions, I would hold back from the poor behavior. This is where I agree in part with Skinner. Although I wanted to act a certain way, I wasn't allowed to because I knew the consequences of my actions. Growing up, I believe many if not most children feel the same way. In my mind, the consequences from parents effect children's actions more than almost anything else, and this in part takes a little of the free will away from them, however probably in a good way.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yes, I definitely agree, Henry, that many children anticipate that certain actions on their part will produce consequences that will be unpleasant and hence avoid such activities and we refer to that as avoidance learning not surprisingly. Many parents warn their children that if they were to behave in certain ways they'll be punished and to the extent that parents follow through on this "threat" and the punishment is sufficiently aversive, children will often refrain from behaving in certain ways or learn to hide their behavior. Sometimes we refer to that as being sneaky. Being "caught" is what produces the punishment not the behavior itself necessarily. Skinner would argue that other people, for example, parents, as well as the environment (e.g., the natural environment as well as the culture), punish and reward ALL our behaviors in one way or another so we're really "controlled" by these various contingencies and therefore only have an illusion of acting freely.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree. I did the same thing, as a child. I was more afraid of the consequences of my behavior than the action itself. However, I feel that Skinner meant that our actions are not our own, because of how we were raised and the environment that we grew up in. I think that he means that we have no choice in our actions, because we have been conditioned from the time we were young to act a certain way.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with the sentiment that free will is an illusion to some extent. We are taught by our parents, teacher, friends, and family what is right and wrong, what we should and shouldn’t do, what is normal and what is abnormal. We are often punished or rewarded for certain behavior, giving us guidelines on our way of living. Natural instincts and reflexes are also influences which effect our behavior involuntarily. We have the right for our own choices and decisions, but outer influences have a great affect on how we make those choices or decisions.
ReplyDeleteI agree our parents have a singnificant influence over our behavior as young children. I too was skeptical to do certain things because I was scared as to what consequences my parents would implement. Skinner's theory, that we are conditioned to act in certain ways from a young age and the influence of our envniornment contributes to this phenomenon. Ultimately, from a young age our behavior is pretermined and monitored by our parents and outside influences but as we get older we begin to follow our instincts and new aquired knowledge to distinguish between right and wrong as oppossed to past experiences.
ReplyDelete