The learning phenomenon most likely to contribute to my life on a daily basis is instrumental conditioning (Domjan, 2003, 125). This is goal-oriented behavior in which the stimuli I receive are a direct result of my behavior. In this type of conditioning, some aspect of a person's behavior acts to produce a significant stimulus or outcome. The behavior occurs because this type of behavior has produced this outcome in the past, and repeating the behavior produces the same outcome each time, so the behavior continues to be rewarded. Such behavior is known as instrumental behavior because it is instrumental in bringing about a certain desired result.
In my own case, I grew up in a very critical household, and nothing I ever did was good enough. This criticism only made me try harder, and so was instrumental in making me study to obtain better grades. I never received any positive encouragement for my hard work, so there were never any positive rewards forthcoming from my parents: studying to get better grades became a natural response to me in a vain effort to win my parents approval. After a while, the criticism became the stimulus to which I responded best, directing my behavior towards higher and higher achievements. Positive feedback or rewards from others had no effect on me because I did not know how to respond to them. I had become conditioned to respond to criticism.
In instrumental conditioning, the subject responds and this produces an outcome (Domjan, 2003, 133). In my case, I did my homework, and the response it produced was criticism from my parents for not being good enough. Because the response was negative, this was an aversive stimulus (134). With such conditioning, a negative contingency is in effect between the response and its outcome: studying harder brought more criticism. The result of the conditioning procedure in such cases depends on the response-outcome contingency and on the nature of the...