Science and Human Behavior

Before you start

FreeAdvancedlink checked 17 Sept 2026

Read these first

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• Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in AnimalsEdward L. Thorndike, 1911From cats learning to escape puzzle boxes, formulates the Law of Effect: responses followed by satisfaction get stamped in and are more likely to recur, the empirical basis later operant conditioning built on.
• Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral CortexIvan P. Pavlov, 1927A neutral stimulus repeatedly paired with an unconditioned one comes to trigger the same reflex on its own, laid out through the experiments that founded the study of learned association.

Groundwork for

Works in the library that name this one as a prerequisite.

• Transmission of Aggression through Imitation of Aggressive ModelsAlbert Bandura, Dorothea Ross & Sheila A. Ross, 1961Children who watched an adult hit an inflatable doll went on to imitate the specific aggressive acts they had seen, evidence that aggression can be learned by observation alone, without direct reinforcement.