6.1 What Is Learning?

Learning and Behavior

Learning is the process of acquiring new knowledge, skills, or behaviors through experience, resulting in relatively permanent changes in how you act or think. It's one of the most fundamental concepts in psychology because it explains how organisms adapt to their environments over time.

This section covers the key distinctions between learned behaviors, instincts, and reflexes, then walks through the major types of learning you'll need to know: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning.

Learned Behaviors vs. Instincts vs. Reflexes

These three categories describe different origins of behavior. The key question is: where does the behavior come from?

• Learned behaviors are acquired through experience or interaction with the environment. Riding a bike, speaking a language, and training a dog to sit are all learned. These behaviors can be modified through conditioning or observation, and they differ from person to person based on individual experience.
• Instincts are innate, unlearned behaviors that are genetically programmed and shared across a species. Birds building nests and cats stalking prey are instincts. They're triggered by specific stimuli but don't require any prior learning. In humans, a newborn's rooting reflex (turning toward a touch on the cheek to find food) is sometimes classified as instinctive behavior.
• Reflexes are automatic, involuntary responses to specific stimuli, controlled by simple neural pathways. The knee-jerk reflex, pupil dilation in response to light, and the startle response are all reflexes. They're present from birth and serve basic survival functions.

Role of Learning in Behavior

Learning is formally defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior or behavioral potential due to experience, practice, or study. That phrase "relatively permanent" is important because it separates learning from temporary changes caused by fatigue, drugs, or mood.

Learning serves several critical functions:

• It enables organisms to adapt to changing environments. Moving to a new city and figuring out the transit system, or adjusting your study habits after a bad exam, are both examples of adaptive learning.
• It allows for social learning and cultural transmission. You learn social norms, cultural practices, and language largely by observing and interacting with others around you.
• It contributes to individual differences. Two people raised in different environments learn different skills, habits, and responses, which is part of why people behave so differently from one another.

Neuroplasticity supports all of this. Your brain can reorganize itself and form new neural connections throughout your life, not just during childhood. This is the biological basis that makes ongoing learning possible.

Types of Fundamental Learning

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning is a learning process where a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a stimulus that naturally triggers a response. After repeated pairing, the neutral stimulus alone can trigger that response.

The classic example is Pavlov's dog experiment: a bell (neutral stimulus) was repeatedly paired with food (which naturally causes salivation). Eventually, the bell alone caused the dog to salivate. At that point, the bell became a conditioned stimulus and the salivation became a conditioned response.

Other examples include taste aversions (feeling nauseous at the smell of a food that once made you sick) and emotional responses to certain songs or places.

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning is a learning process where the likelihood of a behavior changes based on its consequences. There are two main categories: reinforcement (which increases behavior) and punishment (which decreases behavior). Each has a positive and negative form.

Reinforcement increases the likelihood of a behavior:

1. Positive reinforcement adds a desirable stimulus. Giving a dog a treat after it sits makes the dog more likely to sit again.
2. Negative reinforcement removes an aversive stimulus. You buckle your seatbelt to stop the annoying beeping sound. The behavior (buckling up) increases because it removes something unpleasant.

Punishment decreases the likelihood of a behavior:

1. Positive punishment adds an aversive stimulus. A child gets scolded for misbehaving, making the misbehavior less likely.
2. Negative punishment removes a desirable stimulus. A teenager loses phone privileges for breaking curfew, making curfew-breaking less likely.

Observational Learning

Observational learning (also called social learning) is learning by watching and imitating others. It does not require direct experience or reinforcement.

Albert Bandura's research demonstrated this through the Bobo doll experiment, where children who watched an adult act aggressively toward a doll were more likely to imitate that aggression. Everyday examples include learning a recipe by watching a tutorial or picking up slang from your friend group.

Bandura identified four processes required for observational learning:

1. Attention — you have to notice the behavior
2. Retention — you have to remember it
3. Reproduction — you have to be able to physically perform it
4. Motivation — you need a reason to actually do it

Additional Learning Processes

Beyond the three major types, there are several other learning processes worth knowing:

• Habituation is a decreased response to a repeated stimulus. You stop noticing the hum of your refrigerator after a while because your brain filters it out as irrelevant. This is one of the simplest forms of learning.
• Sensitization is the opposite: an increased response to a repeated stimulus, especially when the stimulus is potentially harmful. A loud, unexpected noise might startle you more if it keeps happening at unpredictable intervals.
• Cognitive learning involves acquiring knowledge through thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving rather than through direct conditioning.
• Insight learning occurs when a solution to a problem appears suddenly, without trial and error. Wolfgang Köhler observed this in chimpanzees that suddenly figured out how to stack boxes to reach bananas hung from the ceiling.
• Associative learning is the broader category that includes both classical and operant conditioning. Any time you form a connection between two stimuli or between a behavior and its consequence, that's associative learning.