Individual Behaviour, Learning

and Behaviour Modification

Dr J Choudhury
 Individual Behaviour
Behaviour is the pattern how a person responds
to a stimulus. Influenced by-------------
1. Culture: The shared patterns of behaviours and interactions
2. Attitude: Represent the cluster of beliefs, assessed feelings
and behavioural intentions toward a person, object or event
3. Values: Beliefs of a person or social group in which they have
an emotional investment.
4. Authority : Power or right to give orders or make
decisions
5. Genetics: Inherited from parents; pertaining to genes
Why Study Individual Behaviour
?
• Learn and interpret one’s own behaviour pattern
• Take corrective measures to develop appropriate
behaviour pattern
• Develop self competency
• Understanding one’s own personality
• Taking responsibility for managing oneself
• Assessing and establishing one’s own
developmental, personal and work related goals
 Individual Behavior
Four factors that affect individual behavior in
organizations:
1. Motivation
2. Ability
These two factors drive Behavior
3. Role perceptions
4.Situational Contingencies
These two factors provide opportunities and
constraints
 Model of Individual Behavior
Role
Perceptions

Motivation
Individual
Behavior and
Performance
Ability
Situational
Contingencies
 Employee Motivation
• Forces within a person that drive his or her
direction, intensity, and persistence of
voluntary behavior
• Direction - goal oriented
• Intensity - amount of effort
• Persistence - continuing effort
 Ability
• Natural Aptitudes
– based on talents, size, capabilities
– cannot be learned, or acquired
• Learned Capabilities
– can be taught and learned
– physical and mental skills
• Competency vs Person Job Fit
– Generic competencies not specific task abilities
 Role Perceptions
• Role Perceptions - beliefs about what behaviors
are appropriate or necessary in a particular
situation, including job tasks, relative importance,
and preferred behaviors to accomplish those tasks
• Role Problems
– Role Overload
– Role Conflict
– Role Ambiguity
 Situational Contingencies
• Environmental Factors outside of employee
control that constrain or facilitate their
behavior and/or performance

– time, people, resources, working conditions,

customers
 Behavior Modification
Behavior is modified with learning
• Learning is defined as A relatively permanent
change in behavior (or behavioral tendency)
that occurs as a result of a person’s interaction
with the environment.
 Definitions: Learning is:
1. “a persisting change in human performance or
performance potential . . . (brought) about as a result of
the learner’s interaction with the environment”
(Driscoll, 1994, pp. 8-9).

2. “the relatively permanent change in a person’s

knowledge or behavior due to experience” (Mayer, 1982, p.
1040).

3. “an enduring change in behavior, or in the

capacity to behave in a given fashion, which results
from practice or other forms of experience” (Shuell, 1986, p. 412).
 Learning Theory
Q: How do people learn?
A: Nobody really knows.
theories on learning:
Behaviorism

Cognitivism

Social Learning Theory

 Behaviorism
• Behaviorism
– Programmed Instruction (logical presentation of content,
overt responses, immediate knowledge of correctness)
• Focuses solely on observable behaviors
• Learning is context-independent
• Classical & Operant Conditioning
– Reflexes (Pavlov’s Dogs)
– Feedback/Reinforcement (Skinner’s Pigeon Box)
 Behaviorism
Principles of Behaviorism
•Communicate or transfer behaviors representing
knowledge and skills to the learner (does not consider
mental processing)
•Instruction is to elicit the desired response from the
learner who is presented with a target stimulus
•Learner must know how to execute the proper response
as well as the conditions under which the response is
made
•Instruction utilizes consequences and reinforcement of
learned behaviors
 Classical Conditioning - Pavlov
• Pavlov said the dogs were demonstrating classical conditioning.
• Neutral stimulus (the bell), which by itself will not produce a
response, like salivation.
• There's also a non-neutral or unconditioned stimulus (the food),
which will produce an unconditioned response (salivation).
• Presenting the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus
together, eventually the dog will learn to associate the two.
• After a while, the neutral stimulus by itself will produce the same
response (Salivation) as the unconditioned stimulus, like the dogs
drooling when they heard the bell called a conditioned response.
• Unconditioned response is completely natural and a conditioned
response as something that is learnt.
 Behaviorism
 Classical Conditioning - Pavlov

A stimulus is presented
in order to get a response:

S R
 Behaviorism
 Classical Conditioning - Pavlov

S US
UR

CS US

CR
 Behaviorism

Classical Conditioning
•Unconditioned Stimulus (US)
– a stimulus that brings about a response without
having been learned (smell of food causes
salivation)

•Unconditioned Response (UR)

– a response that is natural and needs no training (e.g.
salivation at the smell of food)
 Behaviorism
Classical Conditioning – Pavlov
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
– a once-neutral stimulus that has been paired with
a UCS to bring about a response formerly caused
only by the UCS
(bell rings, dog salivates because he has paired
the bell with food due to conditioning)
•Conditioned Response (CR)
– a response that, after conditioning, follows a
previously neutral stimulus (salivation caused by
bell ringing)
 Behaviorism

• Classical Conditioning – Pavlov

• Unconditioned Stimulus (US)
– a stimulus that brings about a response without
having been learned (smell of food causes
salivation)

• Unconditioned Response (UR)

– a response that is natural and needs no training (e.g.
salivation at the smell of food)
 Behaviorism
 Operant Conditioning - Skinner

The response is made first,

then reinforcement follows.
 Behaviorism
• Operant Conditioning
– learning in which a voluntary response is
strengthened or weakened depending on its
positive or negative consequences
– Responses that are satisfying are more likely to
be repeated and those that are not satisfying are
less likely to be repeated
 Behaviorism
• Skinner believed that the best way to understand
behavior is to look at the causes of an action and its
consequences. Skinner's theory was based on Thorndike
(1905). 'Law of Effect'. -----
– Responses to the situation followed by satisfaction more
likely to reoccur . Conversely, if the situation is followed by
discomfort, the connections to the situation become weaker
and the behavior of response is less likely to occur when the
situation is repeated.
 Behaviorism
• Operant Conditioning
– learning in which a voluntary response is
strengthened or weakened depending on its
positive or negative consequences
– Responses that are satisfying are more likely to
be repeated and those that are not satisfying are
less likely to be repeated
 Behaviorism
Components of Operant Conditioning
•Reinforcement: any event that strengthens or
increases the behavior it follows.
• Punishment: the presentation of an adverse
event or outcome that causes a decrease in the
behavior it follows.
 Behaviorism
Types of Reinforcements
•Positive reinforcement are favorable events or outcomes that are
presented after the behavior. In situations that reflect positive
reinforcement, a response or behavior is strengthened by the addition of
something, such as praise or a direct reward.
•Negative reinforcement involve the removal of an unfavorable events
or outcomes after the display of a behavior. In these situations, a
response is strengthened by the removal of something considered
unpleasant.
 Behaviorism
Types of Reinforcement
•Positive reinforcement
If your teacher gives you £5 each time you complete your
homework (i.e. a reward) you are more likely to repeat this
behavior in the future, thus strengthening the behavior of
completing your homework.
•Negative reinforcement
 If you do not complete your homework you give your teacher
£5. You will complete your homework to avoid paying £5, thus
strengthening the behavior of completing your homework.
 Behaviorism
Types of Punishment
•Positive Punishment:
 Punishment by application, involves the presentation of an
un favorable event or outcome in order to weaken the
response it follows.
•Negative punishment:
 punishment by removal, occurs when an favorable event or
outcome is removed after a behavior occurs. In both of these
cases of punishment, the behavior decreases.
 Behaviorism
Types of Punishment
• Positive punishment
A child wears his favorite hat to church or at dinner, his parents scold him for
wearing it and make him remove the hat.
• Negative punishment
For a child that really enjoys a specific class, such as gym or music classes,
negative punishment can be removal from that class and sent to the principal’s
office because of his misbehaviour.
 Behaviorism
• Negative Reinforcement vs. Punishment
Negative reinforcement involves the
removal of a negative condition in order to
strengthen a behavior. Punishment, on the
other hand, involves either presenting or
taking away a stimulus in order to weaken a
behavior.
 Behaviorism
Consequence No Consequence
is Introduced Consequence is Removed

Behavior
Increases/ Positive Negative
Maintained reinforcement reinforcement

Behavior Punishment Extinction Punishment

Decreases
 Behaviorism
Schedules of Reinforcement
•Continuous reinforcement- after every behavior
• good for starting behaviors
• drastic fall of after some time
•Fixed
– Fixed interval- after set amount of time
– Fixed ratio- based on a set # of behaviors
•Variable
– Variable interval- average time, but no pattern
– Variable ratio- average number of behaviors, no pattern
 Behaviorism
Shaping
•To achieve a desired behavior, step-by-step
trails are used to direct the participant towards
the end goal. In other words: breaking down
behavior into small steps, and giving positive
reinforcement along the way can result in the
learning of more complex behaviors.
 Behaviorism
• Extinction is a behavioral phenomenon
observed in both in operant and classical
conditioned behaviour which manifests itself
by fading of non-reinforced conditioned
response over time. When operant behavior
that has been previously reinforced no longer
produces reinforcing consequences the
behavior gradually stops occurring.
 Behaviorism
Extinction
•In classical conditioning, when a conditioned stimulus is
presented alone, so that it no longer predicts the coming of
the unconditioned stimulus, conditioned responding gradually
stops.
• For example, after dog was conditioned to salivate at the
sound of a bell, it eventually stopped salivating to repeated
sound of a bell .
 Critiques of Behaviorism
• Does not account for processes taking place in the
mind that cannot be observed
• Advocates for passive student learning in a
teacher-centric environment
• One size fits all
• Knowledge itself is given and absolute
• Programmed instruction & teacher-proofing
 Cognitivism

Proposed by Tolman and Kohler

Events of Instruction (Conditions of Learning)
• Learning is defined by the outward expression of
new behaviors
• Learning is out come of deliberate thinking about
a problem/ situation both by intuitively and based
on known facts and responding in a goal oriented
way
• S ----S
 Cognitivism in the Classroom
• Inquiry-oriented
projects
• Opportunities for the
testing of hypotheses
• Curiosity encouraged
 Key Principles: Cognitivism
• Learning is a change of knowledge state
• Knowledge acquisition is described as a mental activity
that entails internal coding and structuring by the
learner.
• Learner is viewed as an active participant in the
learning process
• Emphasis is on the building blocks of knowledge (e.g.
identifing prerequisite relationships of content)
• Emphasis on structuring, organizign and sequencing
information to facilitate optimal processing
 Critiques of Cognitivism
• Like Behaviorism, knowledge itself is given
and absolute
• Input – Process – Output model is
mechanistic and deterministic
• Does not account enough for individuality
 Social Learning Theory
(Bandura, 1990)
• Cognitive and environmental process combine to
facilitate learning
• Behavioral modeling, Vicarious Learning
– Observing and modeling behavior of others
• Learning behavior consequences
– Observing consequences that others experience
• Self-reinforcement
– Reinforcing our own behavior with consequences within our
control
• Rewards signal information about self
• Learning takes place through observation and sensorial
experiences
 Social Learning Theory (SLT)
• It takes place when people observe the behavior of
others, note the consequences and alter their own
behavior
• People learn by simply modeling those behaviors that
seem to have favorable outcomes and avoiding
behaviors that invite negative consequences
– Attention
– Retention
– Reproduction
– Reinforcement
– Self efficacy
– Self control and self reinforcement
 SLT in the Classroom
• Collaborative learning
and group work
• Modeling responses
and expectations
• Opportunities to
observe experts in
action
 Critiques of Social Learning
Theory
• Does not take into account individuality,
context and experience as mediating factors
• Suggests students learn best as passive
receivers of sensory stimuli as opposed to
being active learners
• Emotions and motivation not considered
important or connected to learning
 Learning Through Experience
• Benefits of experiential learning
– Helps acquire tacit knowledge/skills
– Allows implicit learning
• Practicing experiential learning
– Reward experimentation
– Recognize mistakes as part of learning
– Action learning -- investigating a real problem
• Success experience increase self-efficacy
 Learning through Feedback
• Any information about consequences
of our behavior
• Clarifies role perceptions
• Corrective feedback improves ability
• Positive feedback motivates future
behavior