1. Operant Conditioning in Day to
Day Life
Kumari Karandawala
BA Psychology (Hons) (US)
MSc.(MSSW) In Social Enterprise Management
and International Social Work / Development
Higher National Diploma in Psychology
Module Code GP003

2. Lecture Contents
• Human Behavior and Emotions explained in
terms of Motivation
• Operant Conditioning for Motivating Students
• Operant Conditioning for Motivating
Employees
• Learned Helplessness

3. Human Behavior and Emotions explained in terms of
Motivation – Some Terminology
• Motivation involves goal-directed behavior
• Acquired motivation: Motivation that originates
from experience with reinforcers or punishers in
instrumental learning tasks
• Incentive motivation: Motivation for
instrumental behavior created by anticipation of
a positive reinforcer.
• rG-sG mechanism*: A theoretical process that
allowed Hull, Spence, and others to explain in S-R
terms how “expectations” of reward motivate
instrumental responding

4. Human Behavior and Emotions explained in terms of
Motivation

5. Positive Emotional Response = Reinforcement
When a stimulus elicits a
positive emotional response,
the organism will be reinforced
by contact with the stimulus.
We see this with food, water,
and sexual stimuli.
For example, the sight of an
apple on a table invokes or
elicits a positive emotional
response in the hungry child.
Then, approaching the apple,
grasping and biting into the
apple will result in
reinforcement for the child.

6. Learning & Emotion
This experience for the child produces 2
types of learning for the child:
1) First the child would have LEARNED*
to approach the apple.
This type of learning is
specific: the child has learned
a specific response to a
specific stimulus.
2) The EMOTION** the child
experiences on seeing the apple
constitutes a stimulus.
Emotional responses, in fact most responses,
have or produce stimulus properties.

7. Positive emotional
Response
(Stimulus) +
Approach Behavior
• When the child is reinforced for approaching
the apple, the child is also being reinforced for
approaching a stimulus that elicits a positive
emotional response.
• Through this experience the child will learn an
association between the stimulus of the
positive emotional response and an approach
behavior

8. Emotional Response &
Stimulus and Motor
• Anything that elicits a positive emotional
response will automatically tend to elicit
approach behavior – the stronger the
emotional response, the stronger elicitation of
the behavior.
• S------------ R ----------------S ------------- R
• Emotional response motor
• & stimulus

9. Stimulus ER
Stimulus  incentive
• If a stimulus elicits an emotional response, in
addition to being a reinforcer, the stimulus will
also serve as a directive (incentive) stimulus to
elicit either approach or avoidance behavior.

10. Operant Conditioning for Motivating
Students - classroom
• PSYCO 281 Project: Learning Strategies in the
Classroom.m4v (7 minutes)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXwzHlTII
xQ

11. Activity reinforcers!!
• Allow students to participate in preferred activities
• Make your expectations clear and explain how the
reinforcer will only occur if good behavior is evidenced
• Make reinforcer unexpected, periodically
• Always follow-through with your reinforcement eg.
Give early recess/breaktime
• As promised to ensure the validity of the
reinforcement.
• Change-up reinforcements so old reinforcements don’t
become boring!

12. • Don’t punish but reinforce!!

13. Breaking the Silence: Using a Token Economy to Reinforce
Classroom Participation – Boniecki & Moore (2009)
• Boniecki and Moore proposed a procedure for increasing
student participation, particularly in large classes.
• The procedure establishes a token economy in which students
earn tokens for participation and then exchange those tokens
for extra credit.
• The researchers evaluated the effectiveness of the procedure
by recording the degree of participation in an introductory
psychology class before, during, and after implementation of
the token economy.

14. Breaking the Silence: Using a Token Economy to Reinforce
Classroom Participation – Boniecki & Moore (2009)
• Results revealed that the amount of directed and nondirected
participation increased during the token economy and
returned to baseline after removal of the token economy
• Furthermore, students responded faster to questions from
the instructor during the token economy than during baseline,
and this decrease in response latency continued even after
removal of the token economy.

15. Journal Articles:
• “A Descriptive Approach to Classroom
Motivation”
• By David G. Ryans
• Sir, tell them we are rising!": Situated descriptive
accounts of how K--2 "balanced literacy"
classrooms constructed success in three urban
schools that serve low SES students
• By Jean M Landis, University of Pennsylvania

16. Operant Conditioning for Employees
• “Positive Reinforcement in the workplace”
• Positive reinforcement is a key element in behavioral analysis. It is
the most powerful interpersonal tool. It can be a word of
encouragement, reward or praise - that charges nothing but puts up
individual to go as far as they are capable.
• So, what are the other factors of positive reinforcement that can
help in changing and improving an individual's behavior? Here we
have the presentation that emphasizes on positive reinforcement
and its factors.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbjuziVtzKA

17. Operant Conditioning for Motivating
Employees
• “Employee Motivation: The Power of
Encouragement”
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ysn8BPO
ozM
• How to Motivate Your Employees
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU7a5vrk9
LU

18. Operant Conditioning for Motivating
Employees - Basic steps
• Motivate you first! Focus on yourself!
• Get to know your employees. Get some
insight into the lives of your employees (and
what motivates them!)
• Use smarter goals – realistic and measurable
• Delegate authority – provide ENTERPRISE and
INITIATIVE among your employees
• Work out a reward system!

19. Journal Articles:
• Employee Reactions to Leader Reward Behavior
-Keller and Szilagyi
• Abstract
• Relationships between positive and punitive leader
rewards and employee role conflict and ambiguity,
expectancies, and job satisfaction were investigated. The
data showed positive leader rewards to be more strongly
related to role and satisfaction variables. Punitive leader
rewards were more strongly related to effort-to-
performance expectancy. Implications are discussed.

20. Study: Motivation in Public and Private
Organizations – A Comparative Study
• Jurkiewicz et al (1998) cited Kovach (1995) for the motivators
indicated here. Their study sample size was 1000 employees:
• -Good wages (5th)
• -Job Security (4)
• -Promotion and growth in the org (6)
• -Good Working conditions (7)
• -interesting work (1)
• -Personal loyalty to employees (8)
• -Tactful discipline (9)
• -Full appreciation of work done (2)
• -Sympathetic help with personal problems (10)
• -Feeling of being in on things (3)

21. Operant Conditioning in Advertising
• When we see a commercial on television, hear an ad on the radio,
or read an ad in the newspaper, we often encounter a person who
has received a reinforcement (or avoided a punishment) by using a
particular product. Via observational (or vicarious) learning, we are
led to believe that if we use the product, we too might experience
the same benefit as the person in the advertisement.
• Skinner’s premise of “consequence” or “contingent” (i.e.
conditional)
• explicitly or implicitly, through words or images, the purpose of
these ads is to communicate an "if … then…." statement: “…if we
use the product, we will receive the specified benefit.”
• Some of these contingencies seem reasonable.
• Eg. an ad for a particular brand of shampoo may promise clean hair
if we use the product

22. Operant Conditioning in Advertising
• However, many ads suggest contingencies that appear far-
fetched.
• they promise an outcome that the product couldn't
realistically deliver. For example, the shampoo or jeans ads
described above might implicitly promise that if you use the
product being advertised, a stunningly beautiful person would
suddenly find you irresistibly attractive.
• This outcome may not be impossible, but most would agree
that it is far from automatic, and in fact is largely false.

23. Operant Conditioning in Advertising
• Not many of us meet the stunningly beautiful woman
the stunningly handsome man, so why then, do we
continue to buy them?
• Perhaps the answer to this question relates to the fact
that the products do, in fact, provide reinforcement,
but it is more modest and less fantastic than the
reinforcement promised in the ads.
• For example, if the shampoo ad promises instant sex
appeal, and the shampoo fails to deliver on that
promise but it does deliver clean hair at a reasonable
price, perhaps the latter reinforcement is sufficient to
cause us to buy the shampoo again.

24. Extinction
• extinction process also depends upon the reinforcement schedule
of the behavior.
• Ads that imply a fixed schedule of reinforcement suggest to the
viewer that if a product is used a certain number of times or for a
certain length of time, the reinforcement should predictably be
delivered.
• For example, an ad for a facial scrub that promises clearer skin if
the product is used for 30 days indicates to the consumer that if
more than a month passes with no results, the scrub isn't working,
so extinction is likely to follow.
• However, ads with less predictable promises, those that states or
implies something along the lines of "results may vary," make it
more difficult for the consumer to know when to give up hope that
they will receive the reinforcement. Thus, the behavior of buying
the product may continue for a relatively long time.

25. Learned Helplessness
• Definition:
• Learned helplessness is the condition of a human or
animal that has learned to behave helplessly, failing to
respond even though there are opportunities for it to
help itself by avoiding unpleasant circumstances or by
gaining positive rewards. Learned helplessness theory is
the view that clinical depression and related mental
illnesses may result from a perceived absence of control
over the outcome of a situation.
• Organisms that have been ineffective and less sensitive in
determining the consequences of their behavior are
defined as having acquired learned helplessness.

26. Learned Helplessness
• A condition in which a person or animal has come to believe
he or she is helpless in a situation, even when this is untrue.
The first person to do research on this topic was Martin
Seligman. He found that when animals were given shocks that
they were not able to prevent in any way they tended to react
similarly in situations where they could have taken control.
• He did further research on the subject and found that this
type of learned helplessness could apply to humans as well
and that it can start as early as infancy. This type of issue can
be caused by many things such as a distant mother or a way
of thinking that includes broad generalizations based on
previous experiences

27. Learned Helplessness
• For instance, a person who keeps failing drivers ed would say
“I can’t drive” and therefore never take the initiative to learn
how to parallel park correctly, thus insuring that they pass
next time.
• Example: One theory to explain why some people remain in
situations where domestic abuse is present is learned
helplessness; that is, the victim sees no way out of the
situation.

28. Learned Helplessness
• Charisse Nixon, Ph.D Developmental Psychologist at Penn State Erie, The
Behrend College and Director of Research and Evaluation for The Ophelia
Project discusses the phenomenon of learned helplessness. (Shot by Mark
Steensland) 6 mins…
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFmFOmprTt0

29. References
• Behavior and Personality: Psychological Behaviorism By Walter W. Staats, Arthur
W. Staats