Types of Behavior

When you look at behavior as a science, you see there are two types of behavior: respondent and operant. Let's take a look at them more closely.

Respondent Behavior

Respondent behavior looks at behavior in terms of a stimulus and response. The psychologist Pavlov highlighted the stimulus response theory. He showed that one could pair two stimuli together to bring a response under control of another stimulus. You’ll no doubt remember the classic experiments Pavlov conducted in which he paired a bell with the presentation of food to dogs. He showed that dogs, after repeated pairings of the bell and the food, would salivate in response to the bell alone (this same principle applies to me and chocolate . . . ). Respondent behavior, although interesting, typically only applies to behaviors that are reflexive. For example, I’ll blink if you spray a puff of air into my eye or, if you hit my knee with a hammer at the doctor’s office, my knee will jerk. These are reflexes that typically occur in all of us.

Operant Behavior

The second type of behavior is operant behavior. "Operant" refers to behavior that “operates” on the environment and is changed by the environment. Operant learning posits that new behavior is the result of the relationship between behavior and its consequences or what comes after the behavior. Almost all behavior of interest in education is operant behavior. We want to know more than about simple reflexes. We want to be able to change behavior, and we’re able to change behavior through operant learning. I may want to have my student sit in his/her seat longer without calling out; I may want all the children in my class to independently learn their vocabulary; or I may want to decrease the number of times I eat chocolate in the day. I can change these behaviors through operant learning. Operant learning is new behavior that results from the relationship between antecedents, behavior, and consequences. This often is called an “ABC” analysis.

Below you’ll find videos that further explain respondent and classical conditioning.

Respondent and Classical Conditioning

Nike Commercial

Operant Conditioning