Journal 3

PSY 211 Module Three Activity Template In the Module Three Activity Guidelines and Rubric, review the Overview and Prompt sections. Then answer each of the following questions with a minimum of 2 to 5 sentences. Complete this template by replacing the bracketed text with the relevant information.  Describe a specific behavior that you learned in response to an external stimulus. Address the following in your response: o What external stimulus affected your behavior? o Were you aware that your behavior was being influenced by the stimulus? If so, how did you know? A specific behavior I learned from an external stimulus is that when I am driving, and the light turns green I always wait an extra few seconds before going because I was in a bad car accident. When my husband and I were on our way home one Saturday afternoon I was driving and got to a red light. When the light turned green, I went and the person on the other side of the road (who had a red light) took a left right in front of me and I ended up hitting them. I was injured In the accident and ever since then I have severe driving anxiety especially at traffic lights. I was aware that my behavior was influenced by the stimulus because it was such a traumatic experience for me.  Explain whether the conditioned behavior was positive or negative. o If positive, in what ways can you continue to reinforce this behavior? o If negative, what are some steps you can take to change this behavior? I believe that the conditioned response is a combination of both negative and positive. The negative side is that I have severe anxiety driving but the positive side is that is has forced me to be a more careful driver. I can continue to reinforce the positive by continuing to be an observant driver and always being aware of my surroundings. I believe that the negative side of this behavior can be changed by continuing to drive and practice safe driving. By doing this I can hopefully continue to make myself more comfortable driving and have less anxiety.  Describe a specific behavior that you changed in response to an external stimulus. Address the following in your response: o What external stimulus affected your behavior? o Were you aware that your behavior was being influenced by the stimulus? If so, how did you know? A behavior that I changed in response to a stimulus was wearing makeup. When I started wearing makeup occasionally, I would get compliments from friends like “You look so pretty today!” or “Your makeup looks so nice!”. When I didn’t wear makeup, I wouldn’t get these compliments. As I got older, I started to wear makeup more and taught myself how to do makeup well. My friends would ask me to teach them how to do their own makeup or ask me to do their makeup. The external stimulus that affected my behavior was the compliments I got about how I looked or about how good I was at doing makeup. I wasn’t aware that my behavior was being influenced at the time. It wasn’t until I was older that I became aware that I relied on makeup to be confident because of the compliments I would receive.  Explain whether the change in behavior was positive or negative. 1

o If positive, in what ways can you continue to reinforce this behavior? o If negative, and if it is something that you would like to change again, what are some steps you can take to change this behavior? I believe that this change in behavior could be seen as negative. Especially when I was in high school, I relied heavily on wearing makeup to be confident and feel good about myself. When I didn’t wear makeup, I felt like I wasn’t pretty. When I got older, I learned to feel better about myself and realized I didn’t need to wear makeup to feel pretty. I also learned that wearing makeup everyday wasn’t good for my skin, which was part of the reason I felt I needed to wear makeup, because I had blemishes that I wanted to cover up. I taught myself about good products for my skin type and developed a skin care routine that helped to clear up my skin which helped me to understand that I could feel pretty without makeup.  Explain why one of the behaviors described above is an example of classical conditioning (Watson), operant conditioning (Skinner), or neither of these. Address the following in your response: o If one of the above types of conditioning applies to your example, which specific features helped you to identify it? o Explain why this type of conditioning is most effective in learning or changing this behavior. o If neither type of conditioning applies to the behavior, why is this the case? Explain your response in terms of specific conditioning features (e.g., stimulus, response, association) or inherent aspects of the behavior itself. I believe that the behavior of wearing makeup could be described as operant conditioning. “In operant conditioning, a learner first behaves in some way (rather than reacting automatically to a stimulus, as in classical conditioning) and then comes to associate this behavior with the positive or negative consequences that follow it.” (Sigelman & Rider, 2017, p.42) When I started wearing makeup occasionally, I started getting compliments about how I looked. I began to associate the compliments about how I looked with wearing makeup which made me want to wear makeup all the time so I would get compliments and feel good about myself. 2