Operant Learning: Foster puppies and fully grown men (may just) be the same

The argument that the existence of evidence based practice is scarce to find is a notion that often pervades through our mind when we look through academic papers and publications that we make as graduate students. The warranted assertability that human subject research in fields like Educational Psychology (which I currently study) and the other social sciences makes us ask the burning question; what concepts within the social sciences can be considered to fall within this umbrella? Upon our discussions in class, its pretty obvious to note that operant learning is one such example. Skinner and the behaviorists talk about integrating experience into the notion of reinforcement, in order to shape reactions and chains of operation within the mind.

When we discussed the training of Golden Retrievers in class, I remembered how during my undergraduate degree, we fostered a lot of dogs under our care. They became our guardians in some way, and we fed them and showed them love in exchange. We even raised a few puppies in the process as a group of over a 100 liberal arts students, and this experience really echoed the notion of 'ignoring unfavorable behavior' for me. Puppies are so excitable! They can be pretty unruly too. But as you socialize them into understanding that certain behaviors and tendencies are not 'acceptable' they begin to make their journey into being more mellow, but equally faithful companions.

Amy Sutherland's text, which we're all reading for class, talks about how such principles of animal training can transcend to humans. She used her husband as as sort of 'guinea pig' to prove this point, and a lot of us were asking 'how can we know for sure  that what can be done to manipulate a dog can be done to a fully grown man?' While we're new to class and have trouble fully understanding how the primeval instincts and responses of animals can transcend to the sophisticated, complex realm of human thinking, I'm sure that our shared purpose as a class will soon reach a level of understanding that resonates with this notion, as we come to understand how to manipulate people to bend to our will through the subtle art of implementing operant learning.