Author: Edward Kaufman

I will be discussing the topic of shaping for this post. Shaping can be defined as reinforcing behaviors that are closer to a target behavior through a process of successive approximations until a desired or targeted behavior is reached. I have a dog that has been a part of my family since I was four years old. I remember when I was young that my parents wanted to teach her to do tricks when we offered her a treat. I remember that the first they wanted to teach her to do was sit. When they first tried to teach her nothing happened and my dog would just stand there and look confused and eventually get worked up and upset because she was not getting the treat. I can recall my parents making fools out of themselves falling on the floor trying to show my dog what they wanted her to do. Eventually my dog either began to catch on her just so happened to sit down and she was rewarded with the treat. After this attempt my dog began to sit more and more frequently until as soon as she saw the treat she would immediately sit down. We then repeated this process with teaching her to shake and it went far faster than teaching her to sit did. We used successive approximations and rewarded my dog when she completed a behavior that was similar to the one that we wanted her to complete until she finally did what we wanted. We clearly underwent the shaping process to alter my dog’s behavior when she sees a treat.

I am going to be discussing a time in my life in which I experienced the psychological concept of illusory correlation. Illusory correlation can be explained to mean, the perception that there is a relationship between two separate variables, when in reality no connection exists between the two at all. Throughout my childhood I played many sports. I was most committed however, to playing hockey. I did so for 14 years and through this time I developed many superstitions that I believed effected the outcome of my performance. My superstitions ranged widely and included things such as eating a specific meal before games, working through a specific pregame workout, putting my gear on in a specific order, my locker room routine, and most outrageous being lucky underwear. I had convinced myself that if all of these variables were taken care of that I would undoubtedly be at the top of my game. On the contrary, if I missed completing one of these tasks I would overthink and i believed that I would play poorly. While some of these variables such as the warmup up routine may have had a small impact on my performance, the majority of these variables had no actual effect on my performance. These superstitions most likely came into reality though coincidence. The most logical explanation is that I played a good game either the first time I did one of the previously mentioned tasks or I just so happened to remember doing after I played well. I then continued to do these tasks and only took notice to the times that I did play well rather than the times that I didn’t. This then formed the illusory correlation that by performing the same routine I was increasing my chances of playing a better game. I perceived that there was a connection between my routine and my performance but in reality there was not.