Psychology for Dummies (27 page)
Read Psychology for Dummies Online
Authors: Adam Cash
Tags: #Psychology, #General, #Body; Mind & Spirit, #Spirituality
At this point, you know how to perform classical conditioning, and you know the rules that have to be followed in order to do it. (If not, check out the previous sections in this chapter.) Certainly, classical conditioning is useful. We can learn about our environment in ways that make us much more adaptable and capable. But why does it work at all? Why are we able to associate previously unrelated stimuli with each other?
Pavlov believed that the simultaneous activation of two distinct areas in the brain form associations between a CS and a US. This activation results in the formation of a new “pathway” between the new centers, kind of like a telephone wire being strung up between two previously unconnected homes. When the CS is activated, the US “gets a call” that is made possible by this new connection.
Clark Hull presented an alternative account. He felt that the association formed is actually between the CS and the UR, which then becomes the CR. Scientists are at their most creative when they figure out how to make two different theories compete with each other in predicting the outcome of an experiment. Their creativity is needed to dream up a critical experimental test. Holland and Staub set out to test this theory. They conditioned rats using noise and food pellets.
According to Pavlov, the rats learned to associate the noise with the food. But Holland and Staub pitted Pavlov’s idea against Hull’s — they tried to make the food an unattractive US. They put the rats on a record turntable, spinning them around to make them nauseous. After doing this for a while, they presented the noise again, and the rats didn’t respond to it.
Pavlov thought that the original connection was between the noise and the food. But Hull predicted that devaluing the US would not make a difference in the rats’ response, since he felt the critical association forms between the noise (CS) and eating (UR). It did make a difference, though. Hull’s theory stated that the association was between the noise and the response, eating. Spinning the rats around on the turntable and making the food less attractive as a result should not have made a difference, according to Hull. Hull was wrong. There has to be a connection somewhere between the CS and the US. It can’t be left out of the loop.
So, Pavlov rules the day! This isn’t just rigid tradition. It actually has predictive value. Learning doesn’t stop here however. Check out Chapter 9 for new adventures in learning about learning.
In This Chapter
Staying in condition
Reinforcing behavior
Punishing the culprit
Fighting extinction
Scheduling rewards
A thletes are some of the most superstitious people around, and only gamblers can outdo them in this category. When I played college baseball, I had one teammate, a pitcher, who wore the same undershirt without washing it for as long as he kept winning. Some of us kind of hoped that we’d lose so he’d wash his shirt. Other athletes carry lucky charms, perform rituals, or engage in elaborate routines to keep a streak alive or keep winning.
I had a couple of superstitions. I couldn’t knock the dirt off of just one of my cleats with my bat. I had to do both, even if the other one was clean. And when running in off the field, I never stepped on the chalk line. The other players never questioned me about my superstitions; they had their own weird habits. When I started studying psychology, I began to wonder where this stuff comes from. Where did I learn that if I stepped on the chalk line I’d have a bad game? At some point in time, I must have stepped on the line and then had a bad game. I saw a connection between what I did (stepped on the line) and what happened to me (had a bad game). I drew a connection between my behavior and a consequence, in this case, a negative consequence. Psychologists call this
superstitious learning.
When an actual connection exists between what we do and a particular consequence that follows, be it positive or negative, a specific type of learning takes place. We have learned that when we do A, the action is followed by B. Behavioral or learning psychologists consider all learning as a process of
conditioning
, a type of learning in which an association between events is made. In Chapter 8, I introduce
classical conditioning
, a type of learning in which in which two events become associated with each other. In this chapter, I discuss
operant conditioning,
learning in which an important event necessarily follows a specific response. I know, I know, — that sounds kind of jargony. Try thinking of it this way:
Every month I get paid at my job. Am I paid just to sit around and take up space? No, I’m paid for performing the duties of my job, for working. I do something, and something happens. I work, and I get paid. Would I work if I didn’t get paid? Probably not, for two reasons. First, I have better things to do with my time than to work for free. (My credit card debtors wouldn’t be too happy with me either.) Second, according to operant conditioning theory, I work
because
I get paid. The “something” that follows my working behavior is a reward, a positive consequence. David Lieberman in 1993 stated that operant conditioning carries that name because responses
operate
on the environment in a way that produces a consequence.
Operant conditioning takes place all around us, in our homes, as well as in the workplace. Parents use rewards, or operant conditioning to get their children to do their homework. The following sections take a closer look at how operant conditioning works.
From the introduction, you can see that when I do something, something happens. Then what happens? I keep going to work every month, so that paycheck I get must be having an effect on me. Way back in 1911, Edward Thorndike created a theory, known as the
law of effect,
that addressed this idea of a consequence having an effect on behavior.
Thorndike decided to look into this phenomenon by doing research with cats. He constructed the
puzzle box made out of
a wooden crate with spaced slats and a door that could be opened by a special mechanism. He placed a hungry cat inside the box and shut the door. He then placed some food on a dish outside of the box that the cat could see through the slats in the crate. Sounds kind of cruel, doesn’t it? The cat would reach for the food through the slats, but the food was out of reach. The only way for the cat to get the food was for Thorndike or the cat to open the door.
We know that Thorndike wasn’t going to open the door; he was conducting an experiment. The cat had to figure out how to open the door himself. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a lot of cats going around opening doors. What did he do? It’s suspenseful isn’t it? What will our little cat hero do? Will he open the door and feed voraciously on the prized food just beyond his reach? Or will he meet his demise at the hands of a fiendish psychologist? Tune in next time. . . .
Anyway, the cat had to figure it out on his own, and Thorndike was a patient man. He waited and watched, waited and watched. The cat wandered around the box, stuck his little paw out, meowed, bounced off the walls, and acted in any number of random ways inside of the box. But then, something remarkable happened. The cat accidentally hit the latch that was holding the door shut, and the door miraculously opened! Hurray! The cat got to eat, and everyone lived happily ever after.
What did Thorndike learn from his little experiment? Nothing, he wasn’t done yet. He put that poor cat back into the box to go at it again. No problem, right? The cat knew what to do, — just hit the latch. But when it got back into the box, the cat acted like it didn’t know that it had to hit the latch to open the door. It started acting in the same random ways all over again.
Never fear, our faithful cat eventually triggered the latch by accident again and was rewarded once again by gaining access to the food. Thorndike kept performing this experiment over and over again and made a remarkable observation. The time that it took for the cat to figure out that the latch was the key got shorter and shorter with each subsequent trial. Why was the cat getting faster? Thorndike proposed that the food helped the cat learn the association between the triggering the latch and the escape.
His law of effect states, “Of several responses made to the same situation, those which are accompanied or closely followed by satisfaction to the animal will, other things being equal, be more firmly connected with the situation, so that when it (satisfaction) recurs, they (the responses) will be more likely to recur . . . The greater the satisfaction . . . the greater the strengthening . . . of the bond.” Basically, the consequence of getting the food served as a reward for learning how to open the box. The opening-the-box behavior was like my job, and the food was like my paycheck.
Getting back to my original question of whether my paycheck has an effect on me or not — I keep working, just like Thorndike’s cats kept opening the box to get the food. Therefore, the consequence of my action actually leads me to perform that action again.