LEARNING (GE - 2/Sem.

- 2)
Dr. Souvik Dutta

Dept. of Business Administration, B. B. College, Asansol

INTRODUCTION

In order to explain and predict human behavior, a manger needs to understand how
learning occurs or how people learn. So it is very necessary to know the nature, process
and principles of learning.

According to Robbins, et.al., “learning is any relatively permanent change in behavior

that occurs as a result of experience.”

Important Theories of Learning:

Learning is part of every one’s life. In our life, all complex behavior is learned. Learning
is defined as any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of
experience. Whenever any change occurs learning is taken place in the individual. If an
individual behaves, reacts, responds as a result of experience which is different from
others, a person has encountered some new learning experience in his life. This
definition consists of the following four key elements:

Change process: Learning involves some change in oneself in terms of observable

actions explicitly shown to others or change in one’s attitude or thought process that
occurs with oneself implicitly. Change may be good or bad or positive or negative from
an organization point of view. If a person is happened to experience some negative
incidents, that person will hold prejudices or bias or to restrict their output. On the
contrary, if a person is encountering some good incident, that person is likely to hold
positive attitude.

Permanent change in behavior: Due to whatever exposure a person encounters, the

impact what it generates may be long lasting and permanent. Hence, the change must
be of relatively permanent. If change occurs due to fatigue or alcohol consumption or
temporary adaptation, it may be vanished once the goal is achieved.

Setting behavioral actions: Explicit changes occurring in behavior is the main goal of
learning process. A change in an individual’s thought process or attitudes without any
changes in any explicit behavior will not be considered as learning process.
Need for meaningful experiences: Some form of experiences is necessary for learning.
Experience may be acquired directly through observation or practice. If experience
results in a relatively permanent change in behavior, one can confidently say that
learning has taken place. Theories of Learning: There are three types of learning
theories. These theories are classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social
learning.

Factors the affect learning:

Motivation of the learner ,

Mental ability of the learner,

Nature of Learning Material ,

Practice, and

Environment

Classical Conditioning Theory:

Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov developed classical conditioning theory. When he was
doing a research on the chemical properties of saliva of dog, he noticed accidentally
that the dog started salivating the moment hearing the sound of a door of cupboard
clinging. Based on his observation, he wanted to do some experiment whether the dog
can be conditioned to respond to any neutral stimuli. He used a simple surgical
procedure to operate the salivary glands of a

dog to measure accurately the amount of saliva. Pavlov’s Experiment: Pavlov

conducted his experiment in three stages. Stage I: When Pavlov presented the dog
with a piece of meat, the dog exhibited a noticeable increase in salivation. The meat is
unconditional stimulus and salivation is unconditional response. Stage II: In this stage,
the dog was not given a peace of meat but only exposed to a sound of ringing bell; the
dog did not salivate to the mere sound of a ringing bell. Stage III: Pavlov decided to link
both the presentation of meat and the ringing of a bell one after the other with an
interval of 5 minutes. After repeatedly hearing the bell before getting the meat, the dog
began to salivate as soon the bell rang. There is an association or link between meat
and ringing a bell. After repeating the association between meat and ringing a bell, the
dog started salivating merely at the sound of the bell, even if no food was offered. The
dog is now conditioned to respond to a sound of a bell and started salivating. This is
called classical conditioning process.
Thus, classical condition is defined as the formation of S-R link (Stimulus-Response) or
habit between a conditioned stimulus and a conditioned response through the repeated
paring of conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus.

In this experiment, the meat is unconditioned stimulus, and the expected response that
is, salivating to the meat is called as unconditioned response. The sound of a bell is a
neutral stimulus which does not have any property to elicit salivation, is called as
conditioned stimulus. Although it was originally neutral, if the bell was paired with meat
(unconditioned stimulus) it acquired the same property as meat eliciting the salivation.

The sound of a bell produced salivation when presented alone. This is called
conditioned response, that is, now the dog is conditioned to respond to the sound of a
bell. Learning conditioned response involves building up an association between a
conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus. When the stimuli, one is natural and
the other one neutral are paired, the neutral one becomes a conditioned stimulus and
hence takes on the properties of the unconditioned stimulus.

Application:

Whenever President or Vice-President of Corporate Office visits factory site the

employees in the shop floor will more attentive at work and look more prim, proper and
active in their work life. It is quite natural that top management personnel visit
(Unconditioned Stimulus) evoking or eliciting a desired response- being prim and proper
at work from the employees (Unconditioned Response). The routine cleaning of
windows or floor of the administrative office will be neutral stimulus never evoking any
response from the employees. If the visit of the top management personnel is
associated with such cleaning process, eventually the employees would turn on their
best output and look prim and active the moment windows and floor are being cleaned
up. The employees had learned to associate the cleaning of the windows with a visit
from the head office. The cleaning process (conditioned stimulus) evoked attentive and
active work behavior (conditioned response). Similarly, Christmas Carols songs bring
pleasant memories of childhood as these songs are being associated with the festive
Christmas Spirit. Classical conditioning is passive. It is elicited in response to a specific,
identifiable event.

Operant Conditioning:

Operant conditioned principle is proposed by B.F. Skinner, an American Psychologist. It

is a type of conditioning in which desired voluntary behavior leads to a reward or
prevent a punishment. Operant conditioning principle emphasizes strongly that the
behavior of an individual is a function of its consequences. If the consequences are
pleasant, the behavior associated with such consequences will be repeated again and
again. If the consequences are unpleasant, the behavior will be in extinct. The rationale
behind this theory is that people learn to behave in order to get something they want or
to avoid something they don’t want. Operant condition is learned process. The tendency
to repeat such behaviour is influenced by the reinforcement or lack of reinforcement
brought about by the consequences of the behavior. The proper reinforcement
strengthens a behavior and increases the likelihood that it will be repeated. Skinner’s
Experiment: Skinner developed an apparatus to conduct a series of learning experiment
using rats. He named that apparatus as Skinner’s Box which has certain features

such as a lever, bowl, light, water container etc. A highly deprived rat is placed in the
box. Once a rat nudges or touches or hits the lever attached in the corner of the box, a
piece of food pellet is dropped in the bowl. By trial and error, the rat learns that hitting
the lever is followed by getting a food pellet in the bowl. Skinner coined the term operant
response to any behavioral act such as pressing or hitting or nudging the lever that has
some effect on the environment. Thus in a typical experiment with a skinner box, hitting
or pressing the lever is an operant response, and the increased rate of lever hitting or
pressing that occurs when the response is followed by a pellet of food exemplifies
operant conditioning.

Application:

If a sales person who hits the assigned target of sales quota will be reinforced with a
suitable attractive reward, the chances of hitting further sales target in future will be
exemplified. Skinner argued that creating pleasant consequences (giving attractive
rewards) to follow specific forms of behavior (hitting sales target) would increase the
frequency of that behavior. People will most likely engage in desired behaviors if they
are positively reinforced for doing so. Rewards are most effective if they immediately
follow the desired response. In addition, behavior that is not rewarded is less likely to be
repeated. A commissioned sales person wanting to earn a sizeable income finds that
doing so is contingent on generating high sales in his territory.

Cognitive Learning Theory:

By the term ‘Cognition’ we mean an individual’s thoughts, knowledge, interpretations,

understandings or views about oneself and his/her environment. Based on it cognitive
theory argues that the person tries to form his/her cognitive structure in memory, which
preserves and organizes all information relating to the events that may occur in learning
situation. Here an experiment was conducted on a monkey by Kohler. Kohler presented
two sticks to a monkey in a cage. Both sticks were too short to reach a banana lying
outside cage. This produced an experience, or say, cognition, insight monkey. What
monkey did without any prior exposure

joined both sticks together and pulled the banana inside the cage. Clearly speaking
learning took place inside the mind of monkey. Thus, the learning process involved in
this case is putting or organizing bits of information in a new manner perceived inside
the mind. This type of learning is very important in organizational behavior for changing
attitudes by the individuals.

Social Learning Theory:

People learn through both observation and experience, which is called as social
learning theory. Individual learn by observing what happens to other people and just by
being told about something, as well as by direct experiences. By observing people
around us, mostly from parents, teachers, peers, films and television performers,
bosses, we learn new behavior pattern.

Learning Process:

The following four processes are vital in determining the influence that a model will have
on an individual.

Attention Process: People learn from a model only when they recognize and pay
attention to its critical features. People tend to be most influenced by models that are
attractive, repeatedly available similar to us in our estimation.

Retention Process: A model’s influence will depend on how well the individual
remembers the model’s action after the model is no longer readily available.

Motor Reproduction Process: After a person has seen a new behavior by observing
the model, the watching must be converted to doing. This process demonstrates that
the individual can perform the modeled activities.

Reinforcement Process:

Individual will be motivated to exhibit they modeled behavior if positive incentives or

rewards are provided. Behavior that is positively reinforced will be given more attention,
learned better and performed more often. _______________