Operant Conditioning - The Law of Effect
- The law of effect basically states that responses that produce a satisfying effect in a particular situation become more likely to occur again in that situation, and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to occur again in that situation.
- The work of E. L. Thorndike on comparative psychology and the learning process led to the theory of connectionism and helped lay the scientific foundation for modern educational psychology.
- Thorndike meant to distinguish clearly whether or not cats escaping from puzzle boxes were using insight. Animals using a more ordinary method of trial and error in his experiments would show gradual curves. His finding was that cats consistently showed gradual learning.
- In his book The Mentality of Apes (1917) Wolfgang Köhler described observations of chimps using sticks to retrieve bananas outside of their cages. He concluded that their problem-solving method was not arrived at by trial-and-error but rather that the chimps had learned the method through insight.
![Edward Lee Thorndike](/image_psych_archive/0504000301000000010.jpg)
Initially, the cat’s responses were largely instinctual, but over time, the pressing lever response was strengthened while the others were weakened