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 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6026093/ Ava Schubel This article goes into the deep long lasting effects emotional stimuli can have on us. Examples of this are a event, a song, a person or a thing that causes long term stress. This chronic long term stress plays a role in the way our bodys feel and develop, how sic we get, our mental health i the future all due to the chemical compounds released which its happening that affects us for life. The article says " There is an association between mood (e.g. Long-term stress), emotional states and homeostatic changes . When a stimulus is perceived, the brain initiates a reverse course of actions that releases different biochemical compounds throughout the body to bring the body back into a balance state." A homeostatic change is the body's way of coping with an internal or external change.     This goes to show us how managing stress from an early age can affect us in the future. Finding coping mechanisms, ways to be ...

  Think about when you open your phone or device – is the first thing you open up social media? Do you find yourself doom scrolling on TikTok or Instagram reels after telling yourself you are only checking your email or calendar? These habits are learned through habituation and sensitization. Constantly scrolling through videos and posts for long periods of time is the sense of habituation, eventually being unable to notice how much time has passed by or not noticing that advertisements have been popping up between each post. Sensitization can be exemplified by reacting quickly to a notification from our social media. The urgency to see who posted or who liked and commented on your post becomes a stimulus our brain quickly responds to.  In this article published by Cureus, it is highlighted that excessive social media usage is linked to negative effects in teenagers’ and young adults’ well-being. Because this generation mostly grew up being exposed to social media, the integri...

  Oprah Winfrey’s “you get a car, you get a car… everybody gets a car” giveaway continues to be quoted as a meme over twenty years later. One wishes our needs could be fulfilled as easy as it was for Oprah to give out these cars! Clark Hull’s drive reduction theory explains the importance of satisfying our body’s physiological needs, but what about our other needs? Incentive motivators are what we need to feel enjoyment and satisfaction outside of out physiological needs, “a form of sensory stimulation that you find highly reinforcing” (p. 277-278). Can incentive motivators help reduce college student burnout?  As a college student, I know I constantly struggled with balancing my life outside of school in order to make deadlines and maintain good grades to have a good GPA by the time I graduate. Between commuting close to an hour, full course load, part time jobs, and home life, my stress and burnout were at an all time high. I often forgot to make time for myself, but somethi...

Imagine being a five-year-old little girl moving to a new country but thinking you are there for vacation? My mom told me the story of a little five-year-old me at 3am after the first week of being in America – still jet lagged due to the 12 hour time difference – and asking my parents “how long is our vacation here?” As a first-generation immigrant child, it came with many struggles growing up. Having grown up in South Jersey, I was not exposed to many Filipinos, but rather grew up with a more White-dominant culture. Radical behaviorism, as explained by Burrhus Frederic Skinner, is external influences that play into one’s behavior. Thankfully, I spoke English in addition to speaking our Bisaya dialect, so language was never an issue, but cultural identity was something that I struggled with then and continue to struggle with today. My parents never forced my Filipino culture over American (or what we called westernized) culture and vice versa, but it created this internal battle of fe...

       Most people think that punishment is the best and most effective way to stop bad behavior in dogs in most aspects, but psychology suggests the opposite. Operant conditioning shows us that behaviors followed by rewards are more likely to occur again, while punishment of that behavior could only suppress it briefly. Many professional dog trainers rely on strictly positive reinforcement to train dogs, doing things like rewarding dogs with treats, rewards, playtime or other things dogs enjoy when they perform in the way they would like to train them in.. This method has been shown to improve and strengthen learning skills as well as improve the relationship between pets and their owners.         What’s so fascinating is that this same logic and fundamental can be applied to humans. Employees, students and even patients in healthcare settings usually respond better to things like encouragement and rewards instead of criticism. While punishm...

  Anthropologists and psychologists can both fundamentally agree that observational learning is fundamental in early adolescent years for both humans and animals alike. A baby watches their parent cook something, and is curious enough to perform percussion on their cooking ware. Or, for animals, a kitten will watch its mother groom herself, and subsequently copies her.  Observational learning can also save lives. For example, many people who have obtained a CPR license can often attest to how hands on and observational the learning process is. You are not simply sitting through power point slides on human anatomy. Everything that you are expected to be trained to do is demonstrated, and particularly in first aid intervention, you are also tested on your ability to perform the observed behavior. Additionally, in a more endearing example, dogs that are trained to be rescuers and guides may potentially perform better with observational learning. Although animal experimentation of...

                                     College students are often no stranger to a local dive bar, a party, or a friend’s twenty-first birthday party, and the drinking culture often associated with university students arguably spans decades. Even in some cases it is to some students' shock, that they may discover that their parents are better at beer pong than they are. This is not to say that this is the universal experience, naturally there are many students who do not partake in alcohol consumption, and they can reap the benefits of a healthier liver and spare themselves an embarrassing story or two.  But for the students who do, however, the current education that they receive on alcohol safety consumption may not be enough. A rather taboo, yet concerning issue that arises for some students, is the prospect of drinking in a social versus solitary environment. In a pers...

  Alex the African Grey Parrot: Rethinking Animal Intelligence      For years, many scientists believed that language was uniquely human. Irene Pepperberg's work with Alex the African Grey Parrot challenged that assumption. As described in Chapter 13 of Introduction to Learning and Behavior , Alex learned to identify colors, shapes, numbers, materials, and even answer questions about objects. His responses suggested that he understood many concepts rather than simply repeating sounds for rewards.      I think Alex's story forces us to rethink how we define intelligence. If a bird can demonstrate reasoning and communication skills once thought to belong only to humans, then perhaps animal cognition exists on more of a continuum than a strict divide. At the same time, it's important not to overinterpret his abilities by assuming they are identical to human language. Pepperberg's research expanded our understanding of learning while encouraging scientists...

  Skinner's Box: Are We Really That Different?      Imagine pressing a button and instantly getting a reward. It sounds familiar because we do it every day when we check our phones for notifications. Skinner's operant chamber, better known as the Skinner Box, demonstrated that behavior is shaped by its consequences. According to Powell, Honey, and Symbaluk (Chapters 6 & 7), behaviors followed by reinforcement become more likely to occur, while those followed by punishment become less likely.      What surprised me is how well Skinner's research explains modern technology. Social media apps, video games, and even loyalty programs often rely on variable schedules of reinforcement to keep people engaged. At the same time, I think Skinner's theory has limits because human behavior is influenced by thoughts, emotions, and personal goals, not just rewards and punishments. Even so, operant conditioning remains one of the most useful explanations for why h...

 Pavlov's Psychic Secretion Experiment: More Than Just a Drooling Dog: Pavlov's Psychic Secretion Experiment: More Than Just a Drooling Dog When most people hear about Pavlov's dogs, they think of dogs drooling at the sound of a bell. However, Pavlov's psychic secretion experiment was much more important than that. As discussed in Introduction to Learning and Behavior by Powell, Honey, and Symbaluk (Chapters 3 & 4), Pavlov demonstrated that animals can learn by forming associations between events, even when the original stimulus had no biological meaning. This discovery became the foundation of classical conditioning and changed the way psychologists think about learning. What I find most interesting is how often classical conditioning happens without us noticing. Advertisers pair products with attractive people or happy music to create positive emotional responses, even when the product itself has not changed. While Pavlov's findings have had enormous scientif...

Social Learning and Gender Norms in Disney Movies/Shows This study examined level of engagement with Disney Princess media/products as it relates to gender-stereotypical behavior, body esteem (i.e. body image), and prosocial behavior during early childhood. Participants consisted of 198 children ( M age  = 58 months), who were tested at two time points (approximately 1 year apart). Data consisted of parent and teacher reports, and child observations in a toy preference task. Longitudinal results revealed that Disney Princess engagement was associated with more female gender-stereotypical behavior 1 year later, even after controlling for initial levels of gender-stereotypical behavior. Parental mediation strengthened associations between princess engagement and adherence to female gender-stereotypical behavior for both girls and boys, and for body esteem and prosocial behavior for boys only. This article relates to Bandura’s Social Learning Theory because it shows that children lear...

Observational Learning and Social Learning Theory in Disney Music      The purpose of this study was to examine the multidimensionality of prosocial behavior in Disney animated films. Characteristics of the target and initiator and context of each prosocial act were also examined. Prosocial behavior was portrayed at a rate of approximately 1 act per minute, rarely occurred in combination with aggression, targets were most prosocial toward friends, and tended to help those similar to themselves. This study views Disney in a more positive light than past studies by highlighting high levels of prosocial behavior, as well as portrayal that may facilitate imitation. This study also used a broad definition of prosocial behavior that provides a more nuanced picture of the nature of prosocial behavior in children's programming. Disney movies support  observational learning  by showing characters model caring and helpful behaviors that children can observe, imitate, and ...

     Country Music as an Unconditioned Stimulus      An experiment ( N  = 68) explored how background music in a realistic web advertisement could condition implicit and explicit attitudes toward a novel brand. Conditioning effects were apparent in both traditional explicit attitude measures and also in the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Further, brand choice was predicted by explicit attitudes, but prediction improved significantly when implicit attitudes were considered. Mood-congruent judgment, demand effects, and conditioning are considered as potential explanations for our results, and we argue that conditioning provides the most parsimonious explanation. Finally, the results are discussed within the context of the associative-propositional evaluation model ( Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006 ). This model provides a framework for the integration of the implicit attitude construct into the study of consumer behavior.     I n this article co...

  Have a favorite teddy bear? Or a baby blanket you used to carry around? You may still be sleeping with it now as an adult. Well, many children become attached to a favorite blanket or stuffed animal, usually carrying it everywhere they go. Even as adults, some people still keep these comfort items close. I can personally relate because I still have two baby blankets, and I need at least one of them to fall asleep comfortably. To most people, it probably seems weird and silly that an old blanket could provide so much comfort, but learning theory offers an interesting explanation for why these attachments develop. One explanation comes from classical conditioning and conditioned emotional responses. As children, blankets and stuffed animals are often present during comforting moments, such as being rocked to sleep, cuddled by parents, or feeling safe at bedtime. Over time, those comforting experiences become associated with the blanket itself. The blanket becomes a conditioned sti...

Including myself, when people are afraid of something, their first instinct is to avoid it. Someone afraid of public speaking may avoid giving presentations, while someone afraid of dogs may avoid crossing the street to stay away from one. In the moment, avoiding these situations provides immediate relief, but through learning theory, we see that, over time, it may actually make those fears even stronger. Instead of giving people the opportunity to learn that a new or intimidating situation is not as dangerous as they perceive it to be, avoidance allows those feelings to continue without ever being confronted. One explanation for this continued behavior is negative reinforcement. Through learning theory, we see that a behavior can be encouraged if it allows a person to escape or avoid an unpleasant experience or feeling. In Introduction to Learning and Behavior , it is explained that avoidance behaviors can become persistent because individuals rarely have the chance to discover that t...

  Why Are Habits So Hard to Break?  By: Angelina Pluchino  Most people have at least one habit they wish they could change. Whether it's procrastinating, checking social media too often, or biting their nails, breaking a habit can feel much harder than it seems. Psychology helps explain why habits are so difficult to break and why they often stick with us for years. From a learning perspective, habits are behaviors that have been repeated so many times that they become automatic. According to behaviorism, behaviors are strengthened through reinforcement. When a behavior leads to a rewarding outcome, we are more likely to repeat it in the future. Over time, these repeated behaviors become habits. One reason habits are difficult to break is that they often provide some type of reward. For example, scrolling through social media may offer entertainment, distraction, or social connection. Even though a person may want to spend less time on their phone, the immediate reward ma...