Write up

Discussion (findings)

Hypothesis of positive rienfocment icnreaisng the likelhiood of indiviudals using a desired coloured pen to draw a hosue compared to being provided with no consequnece was supproted. This was shown where psoitive reifnrocment had a higher mean frequnecy for using the red pen of 2.8 out of the 5 trials compared to the no consequnece group having a mean freuqnecy of 1.3 out of the 5 trials.

Discussion-operant conditoning overview

Likelihood of learning a voluntayr behaviour is determined by its cosnequences

Discussion-past research

Lambert et al (2025) invesitgated whether psoitive reinfrocment on a users reddit posts will increase the frequency of posts per day compared to no consequnece. They found that the group that recevied positive reinforcement had a higher frequency of reddit posts daily compared to the group who received no consequqnece for posting.

Discussion-similatires

-Both investigated whether positive rienforcment or no consequnece would increase the likelihood of leanring a voluntary behaviour

-Both were between subjevts design where particpants were seperated into 2 different groups of psoitive riefnrocment and no consequence

Discussion-Differences

-behaviour measured where craig et al measured freuqnecy of red pen to draw a house whereas reddit study measured frequency of daily posts on reddit.

-Craig et al had much smaller sample of people from melbourne whereas lambert et al had much larger of 11 million reddit users across multiple countries

Disucssion-our research

Craig et al experiment investigated whether positive reinforcement or no consequence would increase the frequency of choosing a red pen out of three different coloured choices to draw a house. The results illustrated that the group provided with positive reinforcement had a higher frequency of using the desired pen compared to those who received no consequence.

-This highlights operant conditioning where being provided with a pleasant stimulus can make an individual more likely to preform and learn a behaviour,

Discuss-COnfounding variable 1

attractiveness of the pen where if the red pen was visually unappealing and chewed on it will make pariticpants less liekly to use the unappealing pen regardless of reinforcment. This would artifically decrease the dv of the red pen frequnecy where the selction would be based off physical desirbaility opposed to positive rienforcment or no consequence.

Discussion-confounding variable 2

Positioning of red pen furhter away. Make pariticpants mroe liekly to choose closest pen and therefore reudce lieklihood of them using the red pen regardless of psotiive rienforcment. This leads to reduction in frequnecy of using desirable pen regardless of positive rienfrocment or not

Dicussion-Source of error

A random error of participants talking to others and being distracted where they couldn’t hear the positive reinforcement clearly. This has an unpredictable variation on the measurements where positive reinforcement will have a reduced effect on increasing the frequency of using a red pen as they are distracted.

Internal validity

Refers to measuring what we itnended to measure and estbaloshing a cause and effect between the iv and dv. The classes exepriemtn was high as we measured what we intended to measure of where positive reifnrocment was shown to have a greater icnrease than no consequnece on the lieklhiood of learning a volunatry behaviour.

External valdity (conclusion)

Whether the resutls are generalisable to the wider population. The classes experiment had low external valdiity due to a small sample size of melbounre individuals which cannot be generalised to the wider society.

Repeatabiity

Where the same researcher conducts the same method with the same pariticpants and achieves the same results. The classes experiment has high repeatability high as there were standardised instructions that are easy to follow and repeat to gain same results.

Reproducibility

Acheiving the same reuslts when using the same method but with a different researcher and participants. The classes experiment would have high reproducibility due to having standardised instrucitons that a different researcher can clearly follow and conduct the same expeirment and sitll get similar results.

Conclusion (hypothesis supported/not)

Hyptohesis of positive reifnrocment having a greater increase on the frequency of indiviudals using a red pen to draw a house comapred to no consequence was supported. This was shown through the reuslts where the group who received psotiive reifnrocmetn had a higher mean frequnecy of using the red pen of 2.8 out of 5 trials compared to those who received no consequnece having a mean frequency of 1.3 out of 5 trials.

Communication statement

Craig et al had high internal validity where the experiment showed that positive reinforcement has a greater increase on the likelihood of using a desired red pen to draw a house compared to being provided with no consequence.

Recommendation for future research

Increase understanding of operant conditioning by comparing a different type of consequence such as positive reinforcement and positive punishment to measure what consequence has the greatest increase on the likelihood of learning a voluntary behaviour