Imagine that you have a roommate who is a slob and you would like to change this behavior. From your knowledge of conditioning principles, how would you encourage and reinforce behavior?
What will be an ideal response?
The behavior of keeping a clean room will need to be shaped. Since the roommate is not emitting the desired response on his own, you would need to treat him much in the same way as Skinner did his rats and pigeons to shape him. This would involve a process in which closer and closer approximations of the desired response would be reinforced until the desired response is accomplished. Cleaning behavior could be reinforced through a variety of ways including both primary (food, drink) and secondary (praise, money) reinforcers.
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