Behaviorism in Every Day Life
Behaviorism is a holistic theory of development that can be seen everywhere in our daily lives. It focuses on the concept that the environmental experiences can shape us and create the person that we are today. Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner all focused on behaviorism and its effects. However, in my case, I want to focus on Skinner’s learning theory, operant conditioning.
As a sophom*ore, living with three other roommates in an apartment can become very hectic. The trash fills up, the bathroom is gross, and someone “accidentally” eats your food. Our biggest problem, however, was the dirty kitchen. There was always a huge pile of dishes in the sink. While I always dutifully rinsed my dishes and put them in the dishwasher, it seemed that 2 of my other roommates liked to toss their dirty dishes into the sink and wait a week. Instead of someone doing the dishes, the pile would just get bigger and bigger. Every time I walked into the kitchen, I would grimace and clean the dishes myself. As an experiment, I stopped cleaning the dishes and waited for either one of them to do it themselves. When one of them finally did it, I made a huge show of it. I thanked them, and marveled at “how clean” the kitchen finally was.
It didn’t take long before my roommates got the point and started picking up their own slack. I was surprised at how easily I got them to clean up after themselves, without yelling or awkwardly pointing it out to them. Just by simply using positive reinforcement, I was able to have a clean kitchen and still maintain good relationships with my roommates. By reinforcing their good behaviors and ignoring the bad ones, I was increasing their good behaviors without any animosity. It’s a simple idea, but when put to practice can show a lot of information about the human brain and how it works.
