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Importance Of Operant Conditioning In Criminal Behavior

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OPERANT CONDITIONING PLAYS A ROLE IN CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR Group#1: NAMES: Ureshemi Balogun, Kyle Vasell, Ester Ferguson, Rajiv Reyes, Sarita Choco University of Belize Operant Conditioning and Criminal behavior helps to better understand what causes people to display criminal behavior and why they continue to display it. Operant conditioning is a process that tries to modify behavior using positive and negative reinforcement and punishment. In operant conditioning an association is made between behaviour and the consequence for the behaviour. Burrhus Frederic Skinner is regarded as the father of operant conditioning. He developed operant conditioning, because he believed that the first type of learning; Classical conditioning, didn’t do justice in explaining the complexity of human behaviour. He thought that the best way to understand why humans behave the way they do was to look at what causes an action and the consequence (punishment or reinforcement) of the action, for this reason operant conditioning was developed. Skinner’s work was based on Edward Thorndike’s law of effect which stated that; satisfying responses are more likely to occur again and dis- satisfying responses are less likely to occur again. Skinner added the term reinforcement to the Law of effect, where reinforced behaviour is more likely to occur again and behaviour that is not reinforced is not likely to occur again, he studied operant conditioning using a ‘Skinner’s Box’ or operant
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