Chapter 17 – Respondent and Operant Conditioning Together

Janice, a University of Manitoba student, was assigned a paper at the beginning of a course she was taking that was due by midterm. A week before the paper was due, Janice still hadn’t worked on it. Like most people, Janice probably had a history of being punished for failing to meet deadlines. Punishment elicits feelings of anxiety, a respondent reaction. As a consequence of prior pairings with punishment, stimuli associated with missing a deadline were likely CSs eliciting anxiety as a CR in Janice. Both operant and respondent conditioning also occur in behavioral sequences involving positive reinforcers. Emotions play an important role in our lives. Emotion researchers recognize that there are several components to any emotion. There is an internal, private, and subjective feeling component, and there is an overt, public objective component. Skeletal reflexes may not be as easily conditioned by respondent conditioning as autonomic reflexes are.