Alright so back to behaviorism but I want to introduce a new wrinkle, a new

paradigm really that came into play that really expanded the reach of behaviorism

and really showed people how applicable it was to every day life.

So let's go there. All right, week four, lecture four called

learning by consequence. Because as you'll see this new kind of

behaviorism something called operant conditioning has everything to do about

the consequences of behavior and how they ultimately evolve behaviors.

shape how you choose to behave in a given situation.

Operant condition was really pioneered by B.F.

Skinner. Skinner's known for all sorts of things.

He created a bunch of cool little apparatus, that things like Skinner box

as we now call it or the operant conditioning chamber.

but he was really the driving force behind this new approach of, of operant

conditioning. One thing I want you to note is this

isn't that long ago anymore. We're talking, you know mid 1900s when

Skinner was really reigning supreme, sort of 50s through the 70s not long ago at

all. What skinner emphasized was what he

called the three term contingency. Let me take you a little bit slowly

through this, it'll make sense in just a couple minutes but the basic idea is

this. We find ourselves in some situation and

we choose to behave a certain way and then things happen as a result.

And ultimatley the notion was that our mind, not consciously but our mind kind

of put things together and figured out relationships between what we're going to

call discriminative stimulus, a response and the result, the consequence, which

we're going to call the reinforcing stimulus.

So let me just jump right to an example to, to make this concrete.

and it's an example related to the first dog I had, Max.

So we brought Max into our home. And at that point Max knew nothing about

us, knew nothing about our home. and so as she became, it's Maxine by the

way, as she became more comfortable with the home, she would experiment with

things, she would try things. And so, let's say we brought her into our

living room and she would jump up on the sofa.

Now sometimes when she jumped up on the sofa, she got kicked off the sofa and

yelled at and told, no, no, don't do that.

Other times she'd jump up on the sofa and she'd get to just lay there and be

comfortable. And so the notion is very early on she's

trying to figure out. Why am I sometimes being punished and why

am I sometimes not being punished? So she's kind of paying attention to the

scene. Again, none of this need be conscious.

I'm not suggesting she's doing any deep thought processes.

But that her brain is making these connections.

And at some point her brain might realize that there's a critical stimulus that's

determining what happens. And in my household that critical

stimulus was my father because my father was the one who set the rules on the

dog's behavior. I didn't do that, I just took the dogs

for a walk and picked up the dog crap laying around the lawn.

He set the rules and so the way things were actually working is that if dad was

present when Max hopped on the sofa, sorry.

That's the bottom one. If Dad was present when Max hopped on the

sofa, then she got kicked off and punished.

But if he wasn't present and she hopped on the sofa, she got comfort and warmth.

So the kind of reinforcement, the kind of consequence associated with this

behavior, dependent on dad's presence or absence.

So in this example, dad is the discriminative stimulus.

And what we mean by discriminative is the presence or absence of dad's signals what

the reward is likely to be. The reward or punishment.

Okay. So Skinner thought this was a model of

how all of our behaviors evolve. That we go into new situations, that we

behave randomly. Sometimes good things happen, sometimes

bad things happen. Over time and over experience we kind of

learn what's predicting a good thing and what's predicting a bad thing.

And ultimately it's that that controls our behavior.

We just walk into our situation and depending on the discriminative stimuli

we will behave in a way that tends to give us good outcomes.

So eventually Max, for example, if she walked into the room and Dad was present,

she would not hop on the sofa. Because she does not like this.

She would only hop on the sofa when Dad was not present then she would be

rewarded, okay. Again, not conscious, just a, a

behavioral tendency that she would develop.

Now, so it's all about the consequences to some extent.

And Skinner made a big deal about talking about kind of splitting the potential

consequences into ultimately four kinds. The kind that made a behavior more likely

to reoccur, so he called those reinforcements and the kind that made it

less likely to occur. Punishment.

and each of these can take one of two forms.

to some extent the distinction's not critical although I am going to highlight

the importance of this in the next slide so let me just very quickly give you the

following. If you're in some situation and you

behave a certain way, there's two ways of something good happening.

One way is through the actual addition of something good.

So let's say you see someone you're attracted to and you decide I'm going to

go talk to them. And after you, as you start talking to

them, they smile, they seem happy, you're world just got a little better, something

good was introduced. Well, that's cool.

That reinforced your behavior and you're more likely when you're in that situation

again to repeat that. If you see somebody else you'd like to

talk to, you're more likely to do it now because of this positive experience.

but there's another way you could have a positive experience.

Let, let's say your mom was really frantic.

She had too many things to do and you tell her, "you know what mom, I'll go get

the groceries for you because I can see you're really stressed out, so I'll go

get the groceries. and you do that for her and when you

bring them back, she says, you know, "honey that we such a nice thing for you

to do and it really helped me out". "So as a reward, you do not have to do

the dishes for the rest of the week." Okay, so notice the subtle distinction.

She's not adding something positive to your world.

She's removing something negative, your chores.

But either way, it's a good thing, right? And so any time a behavior is followed by

a good thing then it's more likely to increase.

Similarly any time a behavior is or conversely I should say, anytime a

behavior is followed by a bad thing its less likely to repeat and there's two bad

things. So one is the actual addition of a bad

thing. You go up to your father and say, give me

the car keys. He goes slap, [LAUGH] that's a direct

addition of a negative stimulus. You're not likely to go give your dad

that attitude again, okay? But another way is if you went and said,

give me the car keys. And he said, not only am I going to not

give you the car keys now but you will not get to drive the car again for a

month. Okay.

Again, he didn't slack you, he didn't add a negative stimulus to your rent, he

subtracted a positive one, your access to the car.

Okay? Now, in psychology terms, these first two

are called positive and negative reinforcement like something added or

subtracted that reinforces the likelihood.

These two are called punishment versus response cost.

Kind of a hard lingo to follow. but this distinction is sometime between

punishment and response cost is sometimes seen as really important.

and it's often highlighted in terms of, how best to raise children.

So, in the spirit of trying to give you some useful life advice from this course.

Let's go there. and let me give you an example.

Let's say we have little Micky here and little Micky has developed a bad habit

and let's talk about how the habit even developed in the first place.

You have friends over every now and then and let's say once, just by chance, you

had friends over and little Micky ran out naked.

Yoohoo I'm naked, I'm naked! And what did all your friends do?

They laughed they smiled, they giggled, they thought it was really cute and they

rewarded him basically. And so Mickey liked that and so next time

your friends are over. Woohoo I'm naked!

And this is happening over and over again.

And at some point, you're saying, okay. This isn't funny anymore.

This is, I, I do not want him to be a 15 year old kid.

Woo hoo, look at me, I'm naked. we have to put an end to this.

And so we want to somehow reduce that behavior.

Well, two ways of doing it, in my, sort of, best formula.

depending on his behavior. So, one way is to positively reinforce

the behavior you want. So, let's say you have friends over some

time. And Mickey comes out with clothes on or

at least a diaper and a hat. He comes out this way.

well then you could positively, way to go Micky, nice to come out with clothes on.

Good boy, I'm going to give you a nice healthy grape to reward you.

yeah. That's one thing.

So, now you're rewarding an opposite behavior.

You're rewarding non-nakedness. Okay, which is going to make

non-nakedness more likely and therefore make nakedness less likely.

but what if he comes out naked. Okay, now here's the distinction that a

lot of psychologists would make. Yes you could yell at him, scream at him,

hit him, tell him he's bad but if you do any of those punishment, adding something

negative kinds of punishment. You're kind of eroding the relationship

you have with that child. You're making that child feel less loved

and we all want our children to feel loved.

So they say instead of adding something negative it's much smarter to use the

response cost technique. So you would use it, you know, this, this

would be the best way to use it, to say "you know Mickey, I love you very much

you're my beautiful child but while I love you a lot I do not like this running

around naked behavior at all. and so I'm going to punish that

behavior". I'm not punishing you but I'm punishing

the behavior. "So whenever you show that behavior, you

no longer get to watch your favorite shows".

So, you know, Little Einstein, Sesame Street, whatever it is little Mickey

watches, today you're going to have to watch CNN or something like that.

Something little Mickey does not like. And you say hey as soon as you start

behaving right, you, you get your good TV shows back again.

but if you behave wrong you're going to lose that privilege.

So the subtle distinction being made here, is when you take away something

positive, it's, it's less scarring. physically or psychologically.

You're not really hurting the child by removing something positive.

And in fact, you can remove something positive and still give love at the same

time. You can say I love you.

You're a good boy who's doing this bad thing.

And it's that bad thing that we have to get rid of.

But the good boy is fantastic. So you can simultaneously give love and

yet penalize the behavior. and, and especially if you do that while

positively reinforcing when he's right. So the first time he comes in with

clothes on, you give him a lot of positive reinforcement.

This is considered the best way to shape the child's behavior while keeping the

really good, loving relationship. All right?

Cool. Now I want to end this section with a

really interesting point about Skinner. Skinner ultimately believed that all

there was to behavior was your reward history.

So if he saw me in a certain situation and you asked him what do you think Steve

would do in that situation? He would say well all i have to know to

know that is I have to know about when Steve was in this situation or ones like

this in the past. How did he behave and then what happened

after he behaved in these situations? How often was he rewarded or punished for

given behaviors? You tell me the behavior where he was

mostly rewarded and very seldom punished. That's probably the behavior that he will

emit. He won't think about this.

It's, it's a naturally occurring connection between these discriminative

stimuli, the ones that kind of cue him to what the rewards, contingency will be.

And the behaviors and the consequences that occurred in the past, but if I knew

all that, I could tell you with certainty how we would behave.

And so ultimately, Skinner was saying we don't have any conscious choice over our

behavior. Our behaviors are determined by our

previous reward history. Which is kind of odd because we all feel

like we control our behavior. We feel like we choose how to behave.

But when Skinner was asked about that he said, yeah oh yeah, I agree.

We all feel like that, that conscious experience is there and it's real but

that notion that it's controlling your behavior is wrong.

In fact, he argued, consciousness is an epiphenomenon.

What is an epiphenomenon? Well, here's the best example I've heard.

If you take a motor engine like this one and you turn it on and it starts running,

what naturally happens is a magnetic field develops around the engine as it

runs. So its all around here a magnetic field

develops. If you had something that could measure

magnetic fields you would detect it. Its there.

It exists but it exists as a consequence of this machinery and it doesn't alter

the working of the machinery in any way it just emerges from the machinery.

Skinner thought our conscious experiences were like that.

That our brain was really doing everything and making the decisions and

determining our behavior and our conscious experience was just like that

magnetic field, something that emerges around the machinery.

But doesn't actually play any causal role.

It's not actually doing anything. It's just there.

which is a very provocative idea. You know, a very and, and really humbling

idea if it's true. Because we all feel like we are the

authors of our own lives. you know, Skinner said things like this.

I did not direct my life. I didn't design it, I never made

decisions. Things always came up and made them for

me. That's what life is.

So, to his death, Skinner believed that this was true.

That our notion of conscious control was just an illusion.

that consciousness was just an epiphenomenon and that all of our

behaviors evolved over our lifespan as a function of how we were rewarded, and how

we were punished. Very extreme view.

Skinner was a very extreme character. If you'd like to know a little more about

Skinner, well here's something. So here's a formal video on operant

conditioning you can check out. And Skinner will be featured well in this

one. this is from the, the comedy TV show, The

Big Bang Theory. it's a funny little episode where, where

they're using operant conditioning. so just.

A little humor sometimes helps you learn a bit.

and here's another whole video that's more specifically Skinner speaking about

consciousness. That's epiphenomenon idea.

So, check that out, and hear it from him himself.

operant conditioning itself most definitely works.

In fact it's used in the training of animals all the time.

When you go to Seaworld and things like that and you see animals do amazing

things. Why do they do it?

Well, because we give them a fish afterwards or we do something like that.

So operative conditioning is the basis of most animal training programs.

It's used to shape their behavior. So check that out if you want a little

bit more, information about that. And then finally there's a TedEd talk

that's all about classical and operant conditioning.

kind of brings the two together. So I thought this would be a good place

for you to, to check that out. kind of solidify your knowledge so far.

Alright, now you guys are becoming behaviorists.

Experts on behaviorism. Fantastic.

[LAUGH] A great little journey we're on together.

hopefully I'll see you in the next step of the journey, until then, have a great

life.

Lecture 4 - Learning by Consequence (17:32 min)

Introduction to Psychology

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