Learning Theories of Skinner & Bandura

Skinner's Theory of Operant Conditioning

American psychologist, B.F. Skinner, spent over 50 years of his life developing and refining a theory of conditioning to elicit desired behavior in both animals and people. This theory was an outgrowth of an early study (Skinner, 1938) in which pigeons were taught to respond to bars of different colors by using rewards delivered as a consequence of the response.

Abstracting the findings of this study and others, Skinner derived the following principal: Organisms will tend to perform a behavior to obtain a desired response. This principal that behavior can be controlled via manipulation of rewards and punishment serves as the basis of operant conditioning theory. This manipulation is termed "reinforcement."

In his writings over the years (Skinner, 1950; 1957; 1959; 1969), Skinner identified several mechanisms and processes that give rise to effective operant (sometimes termed "instrumental") conditioning. In general, these mechanisms and processes are derived from the basic postulate that any response (operant) emitted by a

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oods, emotions are not viewed as the proper focus of psychology; only the response or the behavior which people emit is considered the appropriate focus of the field. Bandura's Social Learning Theory Social learning theory, developed by Albert Bandura (see: Bandura, 1977; Bandura & Walters, 1963), is an offshoot of Skinnerian learning theory. According to Papalia and Olds (1992), social learning theory holds that people and children in particular: ...learn by observing and imitating models (like their parents). The theory is...mechanistic in its stress on response to the environment. But it sees the learner as more active than behaviorism does and acknowledges the role of thought in human learning. (p.30) Rosenthal and Bandura (1978) have stated that social learning theory emphasizes the acquisition of cognitive and behavioral competencies through modeling and guided participation. The authors further state that the most effective model-based learning occurs when models compel attention, instill trust, appear as realistic figures for self-comparisons, and have standards that seem reasonable to the learner. In more current revisions of social learning theory (see: Bandura, 1982), modeling processes were given a more centr
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