Question

What is shaping? Explain how you could use shaping to get one of your friends to say kind things to you while you are walking to class. Must be at least 150 words, please. (cannot use food of any kind)

Answer 1

Shaping is the process of establishing a behavior that is not already learned or performed by the person (or animal) at present.This concept was developed by B.F Skinner, who is a behaviorist.

The theory involves reinforcing behaviors that are successively closer and closer to the approximations of the desired, or targeted, behavior. Shaping is important because most of the times, it’s not likely that an individual would display the target behavior spontaneously. However, by reinforcing the behavior that is closer and closer to the target behavior, the required behavior can be taught. Examples of shaping are : language development, training a pet, teaching a kid how to walk, etc. The method of reinforcing successive approximations in order to teach a behavior has been found to be effective in both humans and animal.

We can use shaping technique to get one of your friends to say kind things to you, while walking to class, by following these steps:

In this situation, the best available reinforcement would be to "be kind" itself. That means to do a kind gesture to reward the new behaviours of the friend that are closer to saying kind things

• For starters, I'll need to reinforce any behavior that is even remotely close to the friend "saying kind things" which is our target behavior. So, if the friend simply smiles, he/she will be rewarded with a compliment
• For next step, I need to reinforce the new next behavior which is closer to our target behavior. This behaviour could be, talking anything about me. Also, we wouldn't reinforce the previous smiling behavior from here on, since the crucial aspect of shaping is to only reward new behaviors that are closer to the targeted behavior.
• I keep reinforcing his/her new behavior that resembles saying kind things even more closely. Continue reinforcing the successive approximations until the target behavior is achieved.
• And when the friend finally says a kind thing, his/her final response will be rewarded with a reinforcement such as offering to carry their bag.