Behaviorism

Key words:

Paradigm: the lens through which you look at the world

Theory: Logical proposition that exists within such a world view

Behaviorism

is a paradigm that considers the learner to be passive and responsive to stimuli. Not something that a learner will actively engage in.

Furthermore, it happens to them whenever they are being subject to stimuli.

Three Scholars and their theories adhere to the behaviorist paradigm

• Ivan Pavlov - Classical Conditioning (Dogs, Food and Bells.)
  • Associative Leaning - behavior is being associated with stimulus
  • Reflexive Response - all happens automatically. Dog not sitting there thinking: oh nice food
  • Ethically Questionable - might not be ethical at that time
  • Reinforce Behavior - Repetitive to reinforce the behavior
• B.F. Skinner - Operant Conditioning
  • Voluntary response if followed by a reinforcing stimulus.
  • Skinner box: Environment with a number of stimuli and response mechanisms present. An animal is placed in it, and the researcher can then try out behaviorist experiments on it. For example, give food whenever they press the button and see how that changes their behavior.
  • Using similar methods, Edward Thorndike developed theories like Thorndike’s Law of Effect, that states how behaviors followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated, while behaviors that produce unpleasant are less likely to be reproduced.
• Albert Bandura - Social Leaning Theory
  • A collection of theories that explains how people mimic each other’s behavior.
  • Its not related to the rewarded or punished, but about mimicking behavior of others.
  • Child learns adult behavior, simply mimicking
  • Constraints: in order for people to mimic others, a couple conditions have to be made
    • Attention - people needed to notice those behaviors
    • Retention - people needed to able to memorize the behavior that was happening
    • Reproduction - people needed to be able to reproduce the behavior
    • Motivation - people needed to feel motivated to do those behavior

How Behaviorism related to Game

Game - Variable rate of reinforcement (like slot machine)- From experiment that rat pushes a button, randomly get food.

Usually, the behaviorism is used to generate more money or get the players into compulsion loop. Easier done than said.

B.F. Skinner found out that biological needs are satiating. If we keep eating, we are no longer hungry and our motivation goes away. However, money does not work that way. If we work on these variable ratio schedules of artificial rewards, we can make it so that people are motivated to keep playing out games pretty much forever. Video games are pretty like skinner boxes.