Operant Conditioning

A topic within Behavioural Psychology, itself one of 9 topics in that field and part of Psychology.

Reading on Operant Conditioning

2 works

Book1911

Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in Animals

Edward L. Thorndike

From 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.

link checked 17 Sept 2026Notes on this copy

Psychology · Behavioural Psychology

FreeAdvanced

Paper1970

On the Law of Effect

Richard J. Herrnstein

Reformulates Thorndike's law of effect as a quantitative relation between response rate and reinforcement rate, showing behaviour allocates itself across available responses in proportion to the reward each one pays.

Psychology · Behavioural Psychology

FreeAdvanced

Reading on Operant Conditioning

Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in Animals

On the Law of Effect

Other topics in Behavioural Psychology