How behavior is learned?

Learning may be thought of as a lasting change that comes as a result of experience. There is debate about how much of behavior is learned and how much is genetic or innate. Innate behaviors are considered hardwired, meaning that people perform them without prior experience. For example, babies swallow when their mouth fills with milk. This can be considered an innate behavior. Babies learn through experience whether or not their cries for help with eating, having their diapers changed, and similar things, will result in someone arriving to help meet those needs. Some behaviors have both learned and innate parts.

Research demonstrates that humans and animals learn at least some of their behaviors from experience. In psychology, behavior theorists worked to understand how some learning occurs. Behavior researchers identified conditioned behaviors, which are the result of learning by association, can take two forms: classical conditioning and operation conditioning.

Classical conditioning is a response that is already associated with one stimulus is associated with a second stimulus which it had no previous connection to. A famous example of classical conditioning is the experiment Ivan Pavlov conducted with dogs. The dogs were already conditioned to drool for food; Pavlov began to ring a bell along with presentation of food, which created the conditioned response of the dogs learning to salivate to the sound of a bell.

Operant conditioning is different in that it doesn’t rely on an existing stimulus and response. Instead, when a behavior is performed, a reward or punishment is given. Through the use of this sort of reinforcement, someone is motivated to perform the behavior either more or less frequently. A good example of operant conditioning is the use of behavior points systems with children. They may receive a point for good behavior, that they are able to use for a prize, theoretically increasing the chance for good behavior over time.

For the behavior researcher, the focus was on understanding how people and animals learn, and thus understanding how to change behavior. These theories of learning are often criticized for seemingly removing the human elements of our experience to very simple parts.

Sociocultural learning is another approach that studies how people may learn from others. This approach to understanding how we learn examines the link between social interaction and learning. For example, we may learn through behavior modeling of those around us what behavior at work is acceptable or not. Another aspect of this sort of learning involves working with others socially towards resolutions of problems. For example, a group of children playing with a set of blocks together are all watching one another learn to build things with the blocks. The children are watching and witnessing what works for peers and what doesn’t.

Learning is a layered process that happens in different ways. Learning is social, experiential, shaped by consequences, and often facilitated by being met by challenges to be solved.