Learning

       In psychology, learning goes along with experience. This learning is different than the educational learning found in a classroom. Rather, it is through experience of our everyday life we

learn or notice the unique patterns and recurring events that happen around us, and we are able to
associate them with each other. Learning is also in place through our recurring actions that we aware of and the certain reactions or consequences that follow those actions. This idea of learning can not only be seen in people but also in animals.
     A study done by the psychology professor B.F. Skinner, demonstrates animal's ability to learn from their experiences and actions. Skinner based his work off of another psychologists, Edward Thorndike. However, Skinner's work is more well known because of his ability to apply his finding to not only animals but to humans too. His most prominent finding was that all behavior is

determined by its consequences, which takes away our free will. This is very controversial. Skinner put a rat into a operant chamber, a box made to keep an animal such as a rat in in order to observe and record its behavior in response to consequences. Inside the box was a lever and every time the rat would press it, he would receive a piece of food as reinforcement or for a reward. This encouraged the rat to press the lever because he knew he would get something in return, this is an example of positive reinforcement. Now in the second part of Skinner's study, he made it to when the rat pushed the lever, instead of receiving food, he would receive a shock. This action made the rat not want to push the lever because he knew the consequence. This would be known as negative reinforcement. Positive and negative reinforcement do not mean good and bad, but rather desirable and undesirable.
       Just like the rat, we are trained that we are more likely to do something if we are given a desired reward in the end, a positive reinforcement. For example, if you tell a child that if they clean their room, they can then have a piece of candy, they will do it in order to reap the benefits. However we are also trained that if we receive a negative or undesired reaction after doing an action, we are unlikely to do that action. An example of this is would be if someone goes to the beach and gets a sunburn they are left with a negative reinforcement of that event because of the pain brought on by the sunburn.





Sources:
Chapter 6 PDF on Learning