Nicholas Watson Psychology Operant Conditioning Paper Operant conditioning, conditioning which involves it subjects to associate behaviors with

consequences, is used to explain and train certain behaviors. While operant conditioning involves acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, and discrimination, what separates it from classical conditioning is respondent behavior and operant behavior. Respondent behavior is behavior that happens as an automatic reaction to a kind of stimulus, and operant behavior is behavior with an action operating an environment to produce a certain punishing or rewarding stimuli. The experiments we have conducted over the past 7 days have applied the principles of operant conditioning. Every time our behavior would occur, we were to apply a punishment of a rubber band snap to our wrists to decrease our chosen bad behavior. By doing this we aimed to decrease the frequency in which we partook in our chosen behavior. I chose to conduct my experiment on the behavior of procrastination. I procrastinate a lot. Over the years, it has become a constant practice with me because I know that my abilities allow me to wait until very close to a due date and be able to turn something in. I also do it because Im lazy. Procrastination is the act of holding off an action until later when one can do it now. It is bad for me because it would make my stress problems evaporate if I just had a set agenda and worked with allotting my work over a designated time frame rather than trying to cram all of my focus into one session which is not only stressful but extremely tiring and makes me very anxious.

I felt weird at first about smacking myself with the rubber band. I knew exactly when I was about to procrastinate and it was the fear of being hit with the rubber band that prevented many of my attempted procrastination efforts. It was weird realizing that I was my own experiment and my own reinforcer. I was seeing my results while I was dishing my punishment. If I had had more time to complete the experiment, I feel fairly sure that I would have severely crippled my behavior almost to its death. I started off mentally acknowledging the rubber band and decreasing my procrastination efforts during Friday and Saturday. Once Sunday came, the popping came. It was painful and unpleasant, and it didnt take long for me to start feeling a desire to avoid the pain of the rubber bands. As the week progressed, I learned to be more efficient so as to avoid the pain of the rubber band. Every time the little voice of procrastination would come up, I would have to shut it down once I looked down at my wrist. The experiment could have gotten better if I was not the one applying my own punishment. By being my own experiment, observer, and administer of my punishment, there were times where I refused to pop myself and continued my behavior. Despite the experiments guidelines, if I am the only one who is enforcing my full adherence to the experiment, it was very easy for me to ignore the experiment all together if I wanted to procrastinate something. These times were few but it revealed the need for another party to be active in the experiment so as to ensure the desired result.

Procrastination Data
25 20 15 10 5 0 Procrastination Data

References:

Comparative Psychology: Lecture 7

http://www.dur.ac.uk/robert.kentridge/comp7.html The Five Main Types of Procrastination http://procrastinators-anonymous.org/node/25 Operant conditioning http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Operant_conditioning

Operant Conditioning (B.F. Skinner) http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/operant-conditioning.html

A taxonomy of behavior change techniques used in interventions. http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/hea/27/3/379