Behaviorism in everyday life

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Behaviorism in everyday life

Behaviorism is a holistic concept of development that pervades our everyday lives. It is based on the premise that our environmental experiences may shape us and create the person we are today (Baum, 2017). Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner concentrated their efforts on behaviorism and its consequences. However, I’d want to focus on Skinner’s operant conditioning theory of learning in this situation.

Sharing an apartment with three other students can get rather hectic as a sophomore. The garbage accumulates, the restroom is filthy, and your food is “accidentally” eaten. Our primary source of contention, though, was the dirty kitchen. The sink was constantly clogged with dishes. While I always washed and placed my dishes in the dishwasher, it seemed as if two of my other housemates preferred to dump their dirty dishes in the sink and wait a week. Without someone to clean the dishes, the pile would continue to grow. Each time I entered the kitchen, I grimaced and cleaned the dishes by myself. As a test, I stopped washing the dishes and waited for one of them to do it independently. When one of them finally did it, I staged a great impression. I expressed my gratitude and was amazed at how “clean” the kitchen had become.

It wasn’t long before my housemates realized the importance and began taking up their slack. I was astonished at how effortlessly I could get them to pick up after themselves without scolding or uncomfortably pointing it out. I was able to keep a clean kitchen and maintain excellent relationships with my housemates simply by employing positive reinforcement. By praising their positive actions and ignoring their negative ones, I increased their positive behaviors without creating enmity. It’s a basic concept, but it may reveal a great deal about the human brain and how it operates when implemented well.

When an antecedent stimulus reinforces an organism’s future activity, it is called reinforcement. Reinforcement theory uses a combination of rewards and punishments to promote or deter desired behaviour (Muhajirah, 2020). Operant behaviour is any action that affects when a person works on their surroundings. Positive reinforcement, such as complimenting my roommate on a job well done, is the most driving factor. I frequently prefer positive to negative reinforcement since it does not involve taking away or adding a negative consequence. Encouraging acts is much easier than discouraging them, making positive reinforcement a more effective tool than punishment in most cases (Baum, 2017). I praised my roommates for washing the dishes, which encouraged their inclination to do so.

References

Baum, W. M. (2017). Understanding behaviorism: Behavior, culture, and evolution. John Wiley & Sons.

Muhajirah, M. (2020). Basic of Learning Theory:(Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism, and Humanism). International Journal of Asian Education, 1(1), 37-42.