Psychology

In my psychology class on Friday we were talking about operant conditioning, which is basically saying that people are more likely to continue doing a certain behavior if you are reinforced for doing that specific thing. SO! we had a little example of it and a guy from the class volunteered and the professor sent him out of the room. Once the guy was out of the room the professor told us that our goal was to get the guy to draw a smiley face on the whiteboard at the front of the room and the only way we could get him to do that was by cheering (positive reinforcement), or booing(punishment) at him.

The guy that volunteered walked in the room and immediately everyone in the room started cheering. It was pretty awesome. It was like we were at some huge sporting event, but we were in a classroom full of people and we were cheering at just one guy. So he walked in and started going to the front of the class, but he turned to go back to his seat because he didn't know what he was supposed to do: "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" He proceeded to walk to the front of the classroom: "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" *applause applause*. He picked up one of the dry erase markers from the board: "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! WOOWOOWOOWOO!" He started drawing a line on the board (which the class took to be one of the eyes for the smiley): "OHHH YEAH!!!!! WOOOOOO!" Then...he drew another line! The crowd went wild. Then he drew a line in the middle of them to connect them and he made the letter H. Everybody booed him pretty bad. Basically that is what happened for the first 10 minutes of class. He finally got it, but the cheering and booing were definitely mixed with tons of laughter because it was absolutely hilarious.

I love my major.