Question

Jenny’s history teacher always sets the temperature in her classroom very low. Jenny always shivers when she is in class because she is cold. Now as Jenny approaches the classroom, she starts to shiver.

Which type of conditioning:
Support for your choice:

• Jake hates walking. He parked his car in a handicapped parking space and got a ticket. Now Jake is willing to park at the back of the parking lot and walk a longer distance into any store.
Which type of conditioning:
Support for your choice:

• You are dissecting a sheep’s brain in biology. It makes you ill every time you have to work on the brain. One night, your mom makes mashed potatoes and steamed cauliflower for dinner. You look at both the potatoes and cauliflower that look far too much like the sheep’s brain and you run screaming from the table.
Which type of conditioning:
Support for your choice:

• A stranger complimented you on your new short haircut and since then you have decided to keep your hair short.
 Which type of conditioning:
Support for your choice:

Answer 1

1) This type of conditioning is called classical conditioning. We learned that Jenny is always associating her room as a very cold environment. Because of this, she starts to anticipate this coldness that she even starts to shiver before she enters the room. Associating two events together is part of classical conditioning.

2) For this item, the type of conditioning shown is called operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is defined as having a change in behavior because of a reinforcement or a punishment. In this case, Jake is met with a punishment in the form of the ticket that's why his behavior changed.

3) This item is also an example of classical conditioning. Because you really disliked the sheep's brain, you started changing your behavior towards it that even something only similar to the brain makes you react unpleasantly. Here, you associated the brain (or the sight of something similar) to your very unpleasant experience in biology.

4) This one is another example of operant conditioning. Here, instead of being punished, you are offered a reinforcement in the form of a compliment. Because of this compliment, you decided to continue your haircut. Thus, the reinforcement successfully influenced your "behavior".