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Home›Psychology

How we learn

Conditioning, learning by watching, habits, motivation and what study research supports, with replication debates marked where they exist and this site's own cards as practice.

Progress

About this course

In a study by Yamamoto, Humle and Tanaka (2013), two groups of captive chimpanzees were given juice boxes with straws. One group dipped the straw and licked the end; the other sucked through it and got far more juice. After the dippers watched the suckers, all of the dippers switched. No one trained them, which is a clean example of learning by watching. The course covers how people and animals learn, and marks replication debates where they exist.

The six units are classical conditioning, operant conditioning, observational learning, how habits form, motivation and rewards, and what research says about studying. In classical conditioning a tone before food becomes a conditioned stimulus that gives a conditioned response. Skinner claimed he could turn a pigeon into a pathological gambler with a variable ratio schedule, but OpenStax notes that a 2019 study in rats failed to support the idea that such schedules alone cause problem gambling. For habits, curves rose quickly at first and then levelled off. The median time to reach 95 percent of a person's own plateau was 66 days, and individuals ranged from 18 to 254 days. The everyday scenes are made up for teaching, the research results come from the studies named in the text, and the course is general information only.

The motivation unit includes a result that did not hold up. In 1998 Roy Baumeister and colleagues proposed ego depletion, the idea that self-control draws on a limited resource. In 2016 Martin Hagger and colleagues ran a preregistered replication in 23 laboratories with 2,141 participants, and the effect was d = 0.04. The final unit asks which study techniques work, using reviews by Dunlosky and colleagues rather than what feels productive.

Before you start

Nothing is needed first, though Memory pairs well with the last unit on study methods, since both draw on retrieval and spacing research. Some units report effect sizes such as d = 0.04 and say where results failed to replicate, and each is explained where it appears.

When you finish

You will be able to describe Pavlov's conditioning in terms of stimulus and response, tell reinforcement from punishment in operant conditioning, and name the steps that observational learning needs. You can explain the 66-day median from the 2010 habit study, why the ego-depletion effect is in doubt, and which study techniques the 2013 review rated low utility.

  1. 1Classical conditioningIvan Pavlov was measuring dog saliva to study digestion when he noticed the dogs drooling at the sound of the lab assistants' footsteps.
  2. 2Operant conditioningA car beeps until you fasten your seatbelt. The beep stopping is a reward of a sort psychologists call negative reinforcement.
  3. 3Observational learningChimpanzees that dipped straws into juice boxes switched to sucking through them after watching other chimps do it.
  4. 4How habits formIn a 2010 study, a new daily habit took a median of 66 days to reach 95 percent of its final level of automaticity. The range was 18 to 254 days.
  5. 5Motivation and rewardsA 2016 replication across 23 labs and 2,141 people found an ego-depletion effect of d = 0.04, too small to tell apart from zero.
  6. 6What research says about studyingA 2013 review of ten study techniques rated highlighting and rereading as low utility. Only practice testing and spaced practice were rated high.

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Sources for this course (15)
  • OpenStax Psychology 2e (openstax.org/books/psychology-2e)
  • sections 6.2 Classical Conditioning (Pavlov 1927; Garcia and Koelling 1966; Rescorla and Wagner 1972; Watson and Rayner 1920)
  • 6.3 Operant Conditioning (Thorndike 1911 law of effect; Skinner 1938; reinforcement and punishment; shaping; primary and secondary reinforcers; schedules; Skinner 1953 on gambling; Laskowski et al. 2019; Tolman latent learning)
  • 6.4 Observational Learning (Bandura, Ross and Ross 1961; attention, retention, reproduction, motivation; Yamamoto, Humle and Tanaka 2013; Anderson et al. and Ferguson on media violence)
  • 10.1 Motivation (Deci, Koestner and Ryan 1999; Yerkes and Dodson 1908; Bandura 1994 self-efficacy; Maslow 1943 and its criticism; drive theory and habits)
  • 8.4 Ways to Enhance Memory. Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts and Wardle (2010) European Journal of Social Psychology 40, 998-1009, doi 10.1002/ejsp.674 (96 volunteers, 12 weeks, 82 with enough data, 39 good model fits, median 66 days to 95% of plateau, range 18 to 254 days, missing one opportunity did not materially affect habit formation)
  • Hagger et al. (2016) Perspectives on Psychological Science 11, 546-573, PubMed 27474142 (23 labs, N = 2,141, d = 0.04, 95% CI -0.07 to 0.15)
  • Dang et al. multilab replication, PMC8186735 (12 labs, N = 1,775, d = 0.10)
  • Dunlosky et al. (2013) Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14(1)
  • PubMed 26173288 (10 techniques; high utility: practice testing, distributed practice; moderate: elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, interleaved practice; low: summarization, highlighting, keyword mnemonic, imagery for text, rereading)
  • Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer and Bjork (2008) PSPI 9(3) 105-119, PubMed 26162104. Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) Psychological Science, PubMed 24760141
  • Morehead, Dunlosky and Rawson (2019) Educational Psychology Review replication
  • Urry et al. (2021) Psychological Science direct replication of Study 1. Roediger and Karpicke (2006) Psychological Science 17(3)
  • Card intervals come from this site's own flashcard code (0, 1, 3, 7, 14, 30 days)
  • Everyday scenes are made up for teaching. General information only.

Checked: 2026-10-17