What Is Operant Conditioning?

If you own or have ever owned a dog, you’ll likely have heard the term “operant conditioning” at some point. It seems strange to me that what was a fully developed system of learning back in the 1960’s has become a messy confused and misunderstood and misapplied topic today across the dog world. I have decided to put things into my own words so that some of the original clarity might return, and so that the way I work with dogs makes more sense to people. Let’s start at the beginning……

A psychologist by the name Burrhus Frederic Skinner, or B.F. Skinner, as he was more commonly known, a former Harvard Professor of Psychology, is the chap that coined the term Operant Conditioning. He is credited with the discovery of it and how it works, and of experimenting to arrive at a scientific definition.

The reason I’m writing about these things is that B.F. Skinner developed a very specific definition, but broad context and over time, it has been interpreted, simplified and messed with, resulting in definitions today that do not align with B.F. Skinner’s. You might think that’s called scientific progress, to develop understanding of concepts and to make them simpler to understand, and you’d be right, if, the understanding and simplification didn’t fundamentally alter the meaning of the terms, and with operant conditioning, the simplification process has done exactly that. The simplifications bare little to no resemblance of the original, and this has caused a lot of problems, and continues to cause a lot of problems, specifically where' I’m interested, and that is in how we view and understand our dog’s behaviours.

Let’s get into some definitions, these are important.

Operant Conditioning, according to B.F. Skinner, taken from “About Behaviourism”:

“A very different process, through which a person comes to deal effectively with a new environment, is operant conditioning. Many things in the environment, such as food, water, sexual contact and escape from harm, are crucial for the survival of the individual and the species, and any behaviour which produces them therefore has survival value. Through the process of operant conditioning, behaviour having this kind of consequence is more likely to occur. The behaviour is said to be strengthened by its consequences, and for that reason the consequences themselves are called reinforcers.”

Here is the definition from an article on the American Kennel Club’s website by Stephanie Gibeault, MSc, CPDT.

Article here: https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/training/operant-conditioning-positive-reinforcement-dog-training/

“Also known as trial-and-error learning, this is when dogs learn to associate their behavior with its consequences. And dogs increase the frequency of behaviors with pleasant consequences and decrease the frequency of those with unpleasant consequences.”

A definition by Saul McLeod, PhD, here: https://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html

“Operant conditioning is a learning process that modifies behavior through reinforcement and punishment.” This particular definition is what is most commonly found in dog training publications, and that is a big big problem.

Both of these other two definitions, whilst from a technical descriptive standpoint are correct, are missing a crucial bit of context; they are not descriptive of the purpose of operant conditioning, and that is a vital component. This occurs because of the way it’s been simplified. Every animal exists to procreate and sustain the species through to the next generation. Leaving aside religious and political beliefs, everything all animals do is predicated on the goal of survival and reproduction. It is the purpose of each and every animal out there. All the actions they take from obtaining water and food, to the herds or packs they form, the hierarchical social structures, places they live, the whole works, are designed to keep the individual and species going. Therefore, anything attempting to explain the learning process the animal is constantly going through in pursuit of that goal, which is operant conditioning, must be viewed through the lens of that goal and thus the eyes of the animal, or put another way; when trying to understand and explain operant conditioning, you must put yourself in the animal’s shoes to understand the what and why of what happens. If the description of operant conditioning fails to take into account the purpose of the animal’s existence, and whose eyes things have to be considered through, a significant part of the definition has been missed or cast out, and the definition is no longer fit for purpose.

I can simply other things in such a bland way as to make the same mistake: Take football (soccer). I could describe football by its purpose which is to win the game. That is correct. But it is so far short of the full picture as to be laughable. A little better: The purpose is to score goals by kicking the ball into a defined area called the “goal”, but even this fails to describe the process of winning football. It would take a solid paragraph to accurately describe winning football as a process. So it is with the descriptions of operant conditioning.

So having warned about misinterpretations, here’s my interpretation of what B.F. Skinner defined as operant conditioning: Operant Conditioning is the ceaseless process we (all mammals actually, but that’s a different reference) go through that teaches us how to get the things we need to survive, and the things we want to have, from each and every environment we encounter in our lives, at both individual and species level. The same holds true for avoiding the things that kill or harm us, or prevent us from obtaining the things we need to survive or want to have. Operant Conditioning is the continuous process of learning how to operate in the world around us, in the optimum way. The lessons the environments offer us in that regard, come in a sliding scale, from the really harsh consequence of a single bad decision equals instant death, all the way through to multiple great decisions that result in being the top human with all the territory, money and unlimited descendants.

My summary:

Operant Conditioning is the continuous process by which the environments you encounter shape who you are through the consequences of your actions in striving to survive and win at the game of life.

Examples are always more illustrative than conceptual words, so let’s use a theoretical real life example: Imagine I am stood next to you discussing what we should do, go for a pub lunch, or go get a sandwich from a supermarket and sit on a park bench, you will have a preference for one over the other (based on previous experiences through operant conditioning) and based on immediate environmental triggers such as weather, location, quality of pub, etc etc, which are operantly conditioned responses to your immediate surroundings - what is better for you in striving toward your goals at micro and macro levels.

If you say pub lunch, and I say naaahhh, lets do the sandwich in the park and I’ll give you 10 bucks to accept my choice, you are no longer in your own operant response loop to the question I posed because I just changed the environment with the offer of a bribe. I have manipulated your environment to suit my purposes. Deliberately. Let’s unpack that a bit more;

In the example, I am taking you out of your operant response loop to the original question of where to have lunch, and have essentially made myself the environment with which you now need to deal with, by changing the question with the offer of money and a counter suggestion. In terms of this new decision, I have shrunk your world down to my wishes and the money I think that you’ll want versus what you wanted. I have tried to control you. I deliberately altered your environment to suit my purposes, using my knowledge of you to try and gain the outcome I want. Thus the broader environment, is no longer having much impact on your choice, just me and my money. Sounds a little weird, no?

Though yes I was originally in your environment, by changing your environment with the offer of money, I have tried to push aside your “free choice” for lunch. I have discarded your wishes in effect, and tried to force a decision you were given to make towards the outcome I wanted. That cannot and must not be considered a normal operant conditioning situation. It is manipulation and bribery, and its not something we enjoy being on the end of generally. However, we’re not out of the operant loop entirely;

What’s really wacky about operant conditioning is that you’ll notice my attempt at control, and it’ll update your understanding of me in your brain; you will operantly condition yourself to my behaviour and expect me to repeat my bribes in future, which will cause you to either return with manipulations of your own (wait until bribe is offered to do something, require bigger bribe, always try and do the opposite of what I want to elicit a bribe etc etc) or, you’ll start avoiding me because you feel insulted / not valued for who you are and you’re sceptical of my motivations, or, put another way, the relationship begins to breakdown because I’m not being open and honest with you; you can see the attempt at manipulation and probably don’t like it.

So, back to animals, and operant conditioning for domesticated animals, such as ourselves and dogs? Humans certainly don’t behave much like wild animals anymore, we have built civilisations and do meaningless desk jobs for money. How does that fit into my narrative about operant conditioning and the purpose of life? It’s a variation on a theme. Not really any different to the lower ranking animals in a wolf pack, or a lion pride. Those animals, accept that they can be part of the constructed social thing, or, go it alone. Same as you & I in our nice warm homes in villages, towns and cities. There is nothing physical stopping me from just walking out from my house, and deciding I am going to live off the land in the outback. I can make that decision. I could go right now. So could you. Why don’t we? I am too soft and domesticated, I will die and along the way lose my children and wife. I know this deep down, and so do you. My best chance of survival, and my children’s survival, is for me to make the best I can out of the civilisation that I live in, here in Melbourne. If civilisation collapsed, I’d be forced to reevaluate that decision, along with 5 million other people, but my operant conditioning across my lifespan to this point says abandoning everything would be a really bad idea.

So I work, I exchange effort and time for money, I put up with crowds, I put up with traffic jams and public transport, I put up with neighbours, well, I actually like mine at the moment, but you get the point, I am doing well enough at the game I’m playing, one that really I was born into, that I don’t feel the need to do anything drastic to change it. I am operantly conditioned to the environments that I inhabit in this civilisation and culture successfully enough that it remains the best strategy for my family and our survival. Within this current system I inhabit, are a whole lot of bribes and manipulation, we can’t escape this in such a complex society, that is certainly true, but being the super intelligent animals we are, we can see it all and accept the bribes that suit our purposes and fight against the ones that don’t. Some we can refuse, some we can’t, there are some fairly harsh penalties for not complying in some cases.

I would like to think you can see a parallel in this blog for your dog. Our species co-evolved together as a means of bettering our chances at survival as individuals and species because the world is a tough place and so many things want you dead. The quid pro quo; dogs can do things for us that we just cannot do, in return we offered them access to what we had in terms of shelter and food, i.e. higher chances of survival and so via the process of operant conditioning, Man’s best friend became a reality, they had a free choice in the matter though, and that is another sticking point we’ll get to.

Remember, operant conditioning is a process. It never stops, not one moment in your whole life. Every experience shapes and updates who you are, how you understand the world around you and therefore how you act in it. Now we need to dig into how the process works. How does the process of operant conditioning work, what’s the nitty gritty? Reinforcements.

What are reinforcements? I will tackle that in the next blog, otherwise this one would be a monster.