Classical vs Operant Conditioning, With Examples

Classical and operant conditioning are the two forms of associative learning, and they are the most tested pair of ideas in Intro Psychology. The definitions are short. The trouble is that exam questions describe a scene, a dog, a child, a driver, a slot machine, and ask which kind of learning it is and which part is which. This guide gives you the one-line difference, the vocabulary of each, and a set of worked scenarios.

Everything here comes from the learning unit of Encodr's free Intro Psychology course, built from OpenStax Psychology 2e.

The one-line difference

• Classical conditioning associates two stimuli. A neutral stimulus is paired with one that already triggers a reflex, until the neutral one triggers the response on its own.
• Operant conditioning associates a behavior with its consequence. What happens after a behavior makes it more or less likely to happen again.

A second way to tell them apart: classical conditioning tends to involve involuntary, automatic responses (salivating, feeling afraid, feeling queasy). Operant conditioning involves behavior the learner emits and that consequences shape (pressing a lever, cleaning a room, driving more slowly).

A quick test for any scenario: ask what comes first. If a signal comes before an automatic response, think classical. If a behavior comes before a consequence, think operant.

Classical conditioning: the vocabulary

Ivan Pavlov was studying digestion in dogs when he noticed they began salivating before food arrived. The standard terms come from his experiments:

The sequence: before conditioning, meat powder triggers salivation and the tone triggers nothing. During conditioning, the tone is paired with the meat powder many times. After conditioning, the tone alone triggers salivation. Note that the UCR and CR are the same behavior (salivation); what differs is what triggers it.

A side fact that shows up on quizzes: Pavlov is popularly said to have used a bell, but he mainly used metronomes, buzzers and tuning forks.

The processes that follow:

• Acquisition: the pairing phase, when the NS becomes a CS.
• Extinction: the CR weakens when the CS is presented again and again without the UCS. (A common trick answer reverses this. Extinction is the CS without the UCS, not the UCS without the CS.)
• Spontaneous recovery: an extinguished CR reappears after a rest.
• Generalization: responding to stimuli similar to the CS, like a dog salivating to a slightly different tone.
• Discrimination: responding only to the CS, like a child who fears the dentist's drill but not other buzzing sounds.
• Higher-order conditioning: an established CS is used to condition a new neutral stimulus.

Two research findings refine the picture. Garcia and Koelling (1966) found that rats made sick after drinking flavored water, with lights and sounds present, learned an aversion to the flavor but not to the lights or sounds; taste aversions can also form with a delay of several hours, far longer than most conditioning allows. And the Rescorla-Wagner model holds that conditioning depends on how well the CS predicts the UCS, not just how often they occur together.

Operant conditioning: the vocabulary

Edward Thorndike's law of effect (1911) says behaviors followed by satisfying consequences become more likely to be repeated. B.F. Skinner built on it, using an operant conditioning chamber (a Skinner box) with a lever or disk and a food dispenser.

Two definitions carry the whole topic:

• Reinforcement is any consequence that makes a behavior more likely.
• Punishment is any consequence that makes a behavior less likely.

Then "positive" and "negative" are added, and here is where most errors happen. In operant conditioning, positive means a stimulus is added and negative means a stimulus is removed. Neither word means good or bad.

Negative reinforcement is not punishment. It removes something unpleasant, and the behavior goes up.

Reinforcers come in two kinds. Primary reinforcers, such as food, water and sleep, are rewarding without learning. Secondary reinforcers, such as money, praise and tokens, gain their value by association with primary ones. A token economy, like a sticker chart, runs on secondary reinforcers.

Shaping and reinforcement schedules

Reinforcement can only follow a behavior that actually happens, so complex behaviors are taught by shaping: reinforcing successive approximations of the target, then only closer ones, until only the target behavior is reinforced.

Continuous reinforcement (rewarding every response) is the fastest way to teach a new behavior. Partial reinforcement rewards only some responses, on one of four schedules. Ratio schedules count responses; interval schedules count time. Fixed means predictable; variable means unpredictable.

Variable ratio produces the highest, steadiest responding and the most resistance to extinction. In operant conditioning, extinction means the behavior fades once it stops being reinforced.

Side by side

Worked scenarios

Cover the answers and try each one.

1. A child gets a painful shot at the pediatrician and later cries at the sight of the clinic. Classical. The shot is the UCS, pain and crying the UCR, the clinic the CS, and crying at the clinic the CR.
2. A teen studies harder so a parent will stop nagging. Operant, negative reinforcement: studying removes the nagging, and studying increases.
3. After food poisoning from seafood, the smell of fish weeks later makes you queasy. Classical, a conditioned food aversion.
4. A basketball player is benched for fouling, and fouls decrease. Operant, negative punishment: playing time is removed and the behavior drops. (It is not negative reinforcement, because the behavior decreases.)
5. In Watson and Rayner's 1920 "Little Albert" report, a white rat was paired with a loud hammer clang on a metal bar. Classical: the clang is the UCS and the rat becomes the CS. The study is now widely criticized for flawed methods, data and ethics.
6. A gambler keeps pulling a slot machine lever. Operant, variable-ratio schedule.

Mixing scenario types like this, instead of doing all the classical ones first, is harder and works better; see interleaving vs blocking. Writing your own scenarios from daily life is better still, for the reasons in the generation effect.

A third kind of learning

The same unit adds two ideas that neither form fully explains. Tolman's rats ran a maze faster once food was added after many unrewarded runs, showing latent learning and a cognitive map formed without reinforcement. And Bandura's social learning theory says people learn by watching models, including through vicarious reinforcement and vicarious punishment, without being reinforced directly. Observational learning follows four steps: attention, retention, reproduction and motivation.

Learning through observation and consequences also matters outside psychology. Sociology studies how people learn the norms of their groups; what's in Intro Sociology and how to study for Intro Sociology cover that side.

Keep going

How to study for Intro Psychology has more look-alike pairs from other units, and what's in Intro Psychology shows where the learning unit sits among the 16. Other courses in the series are listed in free college gen-ed course flashcards.

The learning unit has 5 chapters and 84 cards, all free on Encodr in the Intro Psychology flashcards.