The Social Environment Critical Thinking Samples

Although some theorists may regard social behavior as a separate phenomenon, according to the Skinnerian theory it is actually produced by the repeated behavior of many separate interdependent individuals living in one social environment (Skinner, 2014, p. 298). This environment is characterized by two features that affect one’s social behavior, and these are social reinforcement and social stimuli, which are different from their counterparts in a non-social environment as they require the interaction with another living being for the behavior to be learned, dropped or changed.
In social environment people need to learn a certain behavior with other people through social reinforcement for the purposes of personal mediation. In the example, provided by Skinner (2014) in the passage describing the verbal request of glass of water, the request is inefficient in absence of another person (p. 299). However, in a social environment it can lead to the attraction of attention from another person and, thus, to receiving a glass of water as a primary reinforce. In this case, attention from a person, to whom the verbal request is addressed, works as a social reinforcement through a mediation. Social reinforcements can be both positive and negative, with the former including attention, affection, approval and other positive feelings that reinforce the behavior, and the latter being disapproval, insult, aversive stimulus, such as slap on the hands, used to seize the behavior (Skinner, 2014, p. 299). With the variety of different responses and effects they can achieve depending on each separate occasion and the condition of the reinforcing agent, social behavior is much more diverse, as the person is given a wide variety of choices of behavior that he or she can try during a short period of time in order to achieve a desired effect. For this reason, the schedule of reinforcement is rarely fixed, but can rather be either a variable-interval or variable-ratio schedule. Social reinforcement can also change the contingency required for it over time, increasing the demands for a person’s behavior in order for him or her to be reinforced; however, in order for such schedule to work, it needs to be gradually developed, otherwise it will be ineffective and may develop instability in the behavior of a reinforced person (Skinner, 2014, p. 300).
Social stimuli are very important for the learning of a certain behavior and are found in other people. However, according to Skinner (2014), such stimuli can be very hard to investigate, as they can evoke different response or the lack of it depending on the person affected by the stimuli (p. 301). Moreover, the variety of manifestation of a certain stimulus can be very extensive, as well as their interpretation by the stimulated person, making it hard to give a precise definition of any specific social stimulus, especially in the context of its effect on a person’s behavior. The social stimuli are only important and effective when they are affective a behavior of a person, but the effects of a stimulus depend on a social context, in which it is presented, and its effect on a person’s behavior also depends on the culture and personal history of the affected person (Skinner, 2014, p. 302). The example presented by Skinner (2014) is the smile as a stimulus, which can be interpreted as friendly or aggressive by a person depending on his or her personal history and culture, and, thus, cause different behaviors in different people (p. 302).Thus, social stimuli can be correlated with different social reinforcements depending on the social context and personal characteristics of each person. Such phenomena as empathy and intuition can be, thus, explained by a history of reinforcement of a person belonging to a certain social group, whose members have similar histories of reinforcement that have formed a number of response repertoires to various stimuli (Skinner, 2014, p. 309).

References

Skinner, B. F. (2014). Science and human behavior. The B. F. Skinner Foundation.