While most disorders are worldwide, the western society seems to manifest the most eating disorders. Anorexia, bulimia, and body dysmorphia are three eating disorders that seem to affect people, men and women alike, with 30 million people diagnosed with an eating disorder in a year in the US. Why do we have such a high per number than other countries? It is because of the stigma placed on appearance in the United States that does not exist in other countries, or is not as aggressive.
Anorexia is the most diagnosed eating disorder, and it occurs when a person develops an unreasonable fear of being overweight. People with this disorder exhibits symptoms such as starving themselves, or exercising excessively. When a person reduces eating to the point of a weight loss of 15% below their expected body weight, it is officially diagnosed as anorexia nervosa and should immediately start to be treated. Therapy and rehab are two very good ways to help someone suffering from anorexia.
Bulimia is a condition where a person develops a cycle of binge eating and then using inappropriate methods of purging, such as throwing up, to avoid gaining weight. Bulimia should also be treated immediately, and therapy and rehab along with different behavior changes in order to deal with stress or anxiety in everyday life.
The western society has been getting called out lately when it comes to exploiting women in magazines and advertisements by photoshopping them to look unnaturally skinny. Seeing these images when you are young, or even as an older person, has been linked to different self esteem issues in society. When it comes to eating disorders, men also suffer from wanting their body to look a certain way and using different but extreme methods to reach that.
In my life, I know multiple people, some of my closest friends, who have suffered from eating disorders. I have watched people lose so much weight, yet still look in the mirror and see a different image. Eating disorders really take over someone’s whole life, socially, emotionally, and physically. It is up to usas a society to try to change this stigma and start showing an average body weight in ads, and also reiterating the fact that skinny does not equal beautiful, and that fat does not equal ugly.
After the experiments conducted by Chartrand and John Bargh in 1999, they discovered what is formally known today as the Chameleon effect. The Chameleon effect is a phenomenon describing the tendency of unintentionally imitating other’s expressions, postures, and voice tones in society. Most often, an individuals efforts to mimic someone else tends to make them more likable and strengthen interpersonal relationships. Normally we are unaware of these kinds of situations. but if you pay closer attention you begin to notice the patterns. Individuals often strive to behave the exact same way as their surrounding peers.
Through personal experience, I can prove this phenomenon is accurate. The example I want to share is school related and commonly occurs throughout society. The context is when you are asked to answer a question and raise your hand to determine which is the correct answer although you might be unsure which one is right. When I am unsure of the correct answer to the question, I will wait to raise my hand until I notice the point in time when half the class begins to raise their hand. Despite their answers being wrong, it is much less embarrassing when you are not the only person who got the answer wrong.
Instead of trying to determine the correct answer on my own, I will unintentionally conform with the rest of the class when they all begin to raise their hand. An individual feels more comfortable getting an answer wrong when others get it wrong. The key idea in this situation represents how the Chameleon effect works. I am unintentionally mimicking the behavior of my fellow classmates. This is a habit that carries with me in school and probably one that other students follow as well.
Our everyday lives are shaped by different reinforcements and punishments that help to determine our behavior, a learning process known as operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is when one forms an association between behaviors and the results they produce. Sometimes these results are consequences, but they can also include rewards. Additionally, these results can come from both positive and negative behaviors. Events that increase these behaviors are known as reinforcers. Positive reinforcement is when a desirables stimulus is added to increase behaviors, such as receiving candy or getting paid. On the other hand, negative reinforcement is removing a negative stimulus to increase behavior, which can include cleaning a room to stop someone’s complaining or turning off an alarm clock to make the sound stop. Rather than being strengthened, behavior can also be diminished with punishment. Positive punishment is when an aversive stimulus is given, while negative punishment is when a desirable stimulus is removed. An example of positive punishment is when one is given a fine for speeding or touching a hot stove and getting burned. Negative punishment can include having privileges taken away, such as going out with friends or playing video games. Behaviors that are rewarded are likely to recur, while behaviors that have negative outcomes are likely to stop. I understood that this was the case after looking at an experience with my niece.
When my niece was born, she was a relatively quiet kid. However, when she reached her toddler years, she began to act out and became louder. She would constantly yell, fight, and make big scenes in public. When she was around 2 years old, she would jump across the couch or beds. But, one time she fell off and had to go to the hospital because of how bad she hit her head. After she healed, she never jumped on the couch again. This act demonstrated positive punishment, since her behavior became good after receiving an aversive stimulus (getting hurt). My niece also used to hit her sisters all of the time, but after not receiving snacks anytime she hit them, she stopped hitting them and would hug them instead. Her behavior here, demonstrated negative punishment since her behavior increased after having a desirable stimulus removed (snacks). My niece never liked vegetables, but she wouldn’t be allowed to leave the dinner table until eating a few bites of them. One time at dinner she wasn’t allowed to play with her sisters until she finished her carrots. She took a few bites and then was allowed to get up. Negative reinforcement is shown her since she was removing a negative stimulus (vegetables) by eating her vegetables, which increased her behavior (playing with her sisters). Recently, anytime my niece would behave well for the day, my family would give her a treat, which ultimately made her act well most of the time. This demonstrates positive reinforcement, since her good behavior is being reinforced by a desirable stimulus (a treat). Ultimately, all of these can be shown as operant conditioning because they demonstrate how my niece’s behavior changed after being faced with rewards and negative consequences.
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.
Operant Conditioning is a form of learning where you would use positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment to solidify or obtain a behavior. By using this form of learning humans and animals are able to create associations between their behavior and the event that is occuring. This results in the behavior to be strengthened by repeated attempts. I used this tactic to train my dog when I was younger. Teaching tricks to a dog that’s around the age of 2 or 3 is not the easiest thing because it’s like resetting their previous knowledge. So to teach my dog how to sit I used positive reinforcement by giving her a treat when she would successfully sit down properly when I would say “Sit”. I did this by raising the treat over her head so her body would basically lean back on its own resulting in her to sit. When she would jump up while trying to reach the treat instead of sitting she would not receive a treat. She soon associated that the only way she would get a treat if she would lean back into a sitting position. Now when she displayed a behavior that was displeasing like jumping on the couch and engaging in rough play, we would take away the toy she was playing with on the couch. She continuously would jump and play on the couch which repeatedly resulted in her toy being taken away. She soon realized that when she played only on the floor she was able to keep her toy and play. By using Negative punishment her behavior of jumping on the couch became extinct. By using operant conditioning I was able to teach my dog proper behavior by having her associate her correct behaviors with the event that would follow.
How we behave and what we think is based on what we learned. Learning is essential for our lives, and without the ability to learn, life would be effectless and meaningless. Conditioning, the ability to change one’s behavior depends on the environment, is one type of learning, and classical conditioning is one of the types of conditioning. Classical conditioning is learning that occurs when a neutral stimulus becomes associated with the unconditioned stimulus that causes a natural response. This condition has demonstrated by Pavlov’s experiment. In this experiment, the experimenter fed the dog after ringing the bell. After a few days, the dog drooled when he heard the bell ringing. The dog made an association between the bell ringing and food and caused him to salivate. The sound of the bell was a neutral stimulus and became a conditioned stimulus.
The classical conditioning has characteristics of acquisition, extinction, generalization, and discrimination. The neutral stimulus (NS) must be associated with an unconditioned stimulus (US), and the NS must come before the US. The conditioned response is not always permanent. It diminishes as the US does not follow the CS, but it could reappear after a break, which is called spontaneous recovery. When an organism learns something by classical conditioning, a similar stimulus can cause a similar response. On the other hand, the conditioned organism can distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli.
My sister hates to go to the hospital because of the disinfectant smell at the hospital. When she was a baby, she did not like to go to the hospital because of the injection, and this caused her to dislike the smell of disinfectant at the hospital. When she went to the hospital to get a shot, she smelled the distinctive odor, and she made an associated between the smell and getting a shot. In this case, getting a shot is the unconditioned stimulus and the unconditioned response is rejection to the hospital. Then the neutral stimulus, the smell of the disinfectant, became conditioned stimulus, and the rejection of the hospital became the conditioned response.
Operant conditioning is when an association is formed between behaviors and resulting actions. Two predominant experiments were conducted that helped to solidify the idea of operant conditioning. Thorndike’s experiment focused on the law of effect. The law of effect is defined as a rewarded behavior is likely to recur. A simple example is with food as the reward for an animal doing a trick. In a similar experiment, it was concluded that animals can be trained to do unnatural behaviors that they would never do in their natural habitat. This was called the Skinner Box or Operant Chamber experiment. In order to prove this experiment true, shaping was used. This term refers to using reinforcers to guide behavior closer towards the desired behavior. This involves giving a reward during each step of a trained behavior which is defined as successive approximations. In many cases, positive reinforcement is used to increase the good behavior when something is added to the environment.
All these different but related points pertaining to operant conditioning can be surmised by training a dog a trick. In my experience, my family got a golden doodle puppy about five years ago. Since the puppy was my idea, I was tasked with training her. An old farmer who has been our family friend since before I was born had a dog that would roll over and play dead when he made a gun shape with his hand and said, “bang!” All our neighbors would laugh every time. When I got a dog, I knew I wanted to train it to do the same trick through operant conditioning. I started off using shaping and successive approximations. I first taught her to sit by holding a treat in my hand and pushing down on her back while saying “sit”. When she sat, I rewarded her with a treat. After a while, Thorndike’s experiment was proven to be correct. Every time I said “sit”, she would sit down because she knew she would get a reward. This also proves positive reinforcement. After this, I taught her how to lay down and roll over using the same technique. When I started to teach her to play dead, I followed the same methodology. I would get her to sit, lay down, and then roll over. However, when she rolled over, I started to say “bang” so that she would associate that word with being upside down. I got her to stay on her back by using the stay command that I had previously taught her. After emptying a treat bag, she would roll over and play dead whenever I said “bang”. This proved the Skinner Box experiment. In a dog’s natural environment, they would never play dead when a human said “bang” to them. Nevertheless, my dog was able to be fairly easily trained to do this unnatural trick. Overall, operant conditioning proved to be very successful in teaching my golden doodle a fun party trick.
Most of the communication that horses receive is from human to horse, we always are telling them what to do and when. However, with newer research being put into teaching animals to communicate one barn has taught horses to communicate when they want to wear a blanket or not. Learning theory has been increasingly becoming more popular in the equitation world, giving us more of an insight into the cognitive abilities and preferences of horses.
One barn used reward based operant conditioning to teach horses to touch a board, and to understand the meaning of three different symbols (Mejdell, 2016).
Visual symbol boards given to horses. To the left, the horizontal bar meaning “put blanket on”, in the middle the blank board meaning “no change”, and to the right, the vertical bar meaning “take blanket off”.
Operant conditioning is teaching animals to form associations between behaviors and resulting events. In this case the behavior was touching a board with a symbol, and the resulting event was removing or putting on a blanket. The researchers use positive reinforcers to shape the behavior they wanted. Shaping is reinforcing behaviors to get closer and closer to a desired behavior (Mejdell, 2016). So, in this experiment they started with reinforcing just the horse walking up and touching the boards, then they continued reinforcing the behavior and added the resulting consequence until the horse understood desired behavior.
The steps that the trainers went though to make sure that the horses were able make a “free” choice.
The reinforcer in this experiment was positive reinforcement, this is when you add a desired stimulus, and in this case, it was horse treats. The treats were a primary reinforcer, meaning that they were something that the animal finds inherently reinforcing. The researchers also used clickers as a secondary reinforcer as a bridge between the behavior and the primary reinforcer. This was so that there was no lag between desired behavior and positive reinforcer (Mejdell, 2016).
Here the horses are choosing which board to pick.
The experiment was done because of a commonly disputed management technique in the winter. To blanket a horse or not to blanket a horse. They hoped to be able to “ask” the horse whether or not they wanted a blanket, and then record the temperature that they chose a blanket to better understand when horses truly felt cold (Mejdell, 2016). The experiment used 23 horses, 13 cold-blooded, 10 warm-blooded, 3 Arabians, and 1 Thoroughbred. All ages from 3 to 16. The positive reinforcement training was done by an animal trainer, and they used this training to teach horses to choose whether they wanted a blanket on, off, or not changed. The horses, once the symbols were learned, was given a single choice and given a consequence (Mejdell, 2016).
Though this experiment they found that horses were able to discriminate between simple visual symbols (the boards) and extend that to associations of different outcomes (the blanket on or off). As could be predicted, horses preferred to wear a blanket during bad weather and stay without a blanket in nice weather. When 10 horses were tested on sunny days with a relatively high temperature (about 68 degrees Fahrenheit) all 10 choose to have their blankets off, and when they were tested on another day with and temperatures about 41 degrees Fahrenheit these same horses choose to keep their blankets on (i.e. no change) (Mejdell, 2016). The understanding of choice showed the horses were able to understand the effects that the blanket change would have on their thermal well-being (Mejdell, 2016).
This experiment paved more paths for operant conditioning to be seen as a successful way of training horses. Within the past two years positive reinforcement, and clicker training have been becoming more popular. Many people are now realizing that horses are very motivated learners, and can easily distinguish and learn what is right and wrong. From my own personal experience with operant conditioning with horses, I have found it very easy to teach a horse different tasks using positive reinforcement. Such as lifting their feet, coming in from the pasture, heeling, ground manners, and overcoming fears (because horses are naturally flight animals). They pick up on cues and body language quickly, and will do anything for a reward.
Citation:
Mejdell, Cecilie M., et al. “Horses Can Learn to Use Symbols to Communicate Their Preferences.” Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Elsevier, 29 July 2016, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159116302192.
It can be hard to distinguish whether reinforcement is happening or punishment. It can also be hard to distinguish whether it is positive or negative. Reinforcement is when behavior is increased. Whether it is negative or positive reinforcement, the behavior is always increased. Positive reinforcement is when a positive stimuli is presented and negative reinforcement is when behavior is increased by taking away a negative stimuli. An example of positive reinforcement would be getting a sticker every timeyou do well on a test. An example of negative reinforcement would be the annoying beeping sound in the car when you don’t put your seatbelt. This is considered negative reinforcement because once you put on the seatbelt, the negative stimuli (beeping sound) is taken away.
I recently got a new a puppy and we have been using reinforcement help house train her. Basically what we do is every time she goes the side door to be let out and she waits until she is outside to relieve herself, we give a small treat. We do this in hope that she will continue to wait by the side door when she need to go to the bathroom rather than going inside the house. This is an example of positive reinforcement. We are trying to increase her behavior (which is why it is reinforcement and not punishment) and it is positive since we presenting a positive stimuli and not taking away a negative stimuli. The stimuli in this scenario would be the treats and the behavior would be waiting by the side door.
It is important to be able to identify reinforcement. The first step is to see if the behavior is increasing or decreasing.If the behavior is increasing then you know that it must be some kind of reinforcement. Once you have identified it as reinforcement you can then see if it is positive or negative reinforcement. If a stimuli is being presented then it is positive and if a stimuli is being taken away then it is negative reinforcement.
Observational learning also known as modeling is a part of the cognitive learning theory. Observational learning is the idea that humans and some animals, can learn by watching. How exactly does it work though? Well firstly, it involves mirror neurons in the brain, which are activated during observational learning and watching others. Mirror neurons are not able to distinguish between watching an action being done and doing the action yourself. This leads us to copy other people. As well, if we see something that someone else is doing and know what it is like, we can share that experience with them and therefore learn from the actions of others by seeing the outcomes. In addition to mirror neurons, there are also 4 elements that are needed to learn from observing. The first element is attention which means that the individual must notice the action. Then the individual must remember the action or experience they witnessed which is the element of memory. The person must be able to do the action, which is the element of imitation and lastly, they must have a desire to do so, which is motivation. Looking at the class example of the Bandura’s Doll Experiment we can see the 4 elements:
Attention: The children watched and noticed the adults hitting the doll.
Memory: The children remembered the actions of the adults.
Imitation: the children were then given the chance to interact with the doll and hit the doll.
Motivation: the children learned from the adults they were watching so because of this they were motivated to do repeat the action because they did not know if it was wrong or right.
Observational learning has both benefits and negative consequences. According to the Psychology textbook by Josh Wede, one of the benefits is that it allows animals and humans to learn without having to engage in potentially risky behaviour. This can help to increase survival. However, there are also consequences such as the correlation between children who grow up in violent families and be a victim of violence or a violent person later in life.
Observational learning has occurred in my life on many different occasions, one example is through watching my siblings. I have two older brothers and growing up I learned a lot of things by watching them. If they got hurt or if they got in trouble, I for the most part knew not to repeat what they did because I would suffer some sort of consequence. One example is when my brothers and I were much younger my parents did not want us swearing. If my brothers would swear my parents would threaten them with having soap put in their mouth to wash it out. I don’t remember them actually making my brothers “wash out” their mouths but I remember it was enough for me to notice how my brothers would apologize and try not to swear. I also would remember the incident because I would imagine it would be nasty for soap to be in one’s mouth, but also because it caused a strong reaction in my brothers, in the fact they actually listened. So, I quickly learned that there were certain words I was not supposed to use or repeat because seeing my brothers get in trouble and threatened with soap when I was little, left a lasting impression. By middle school no one really cared anymore, but my earlier experience is a good example of how observational learning can play out in everyday learning and life.
