Why do you do what you do?

Throughout the course of the day, you perform many activities. Why?

Procedure

1. Observe and keep careful notes of your behavior on a particular day.
2. You may want to make a chart listing each action, such as “woke to the alarm clock’s ring,” “ate breakfast,” and “yelled at little brother.”

Analysis

1. Beside each behavior you have noted, list what caused your behavior. For example, “I woke up at 7:00 A.M. because school starts at 8:00 A.M., and I hate being late. I ate breakfast because I was hungry.”
2. Using the behaviorist approach, describe how rewards and punishments affected each of the behaviors on your list.

Submission

When you have completed this assignment you must hand in the following components:

• chart of the behaviors you noted and what caused the behavior
• a short written description which describes how rewards and punishments affected each of the behaviors on your list

You can create your submission using a word processing program or some form of presentation software, such as PowerPoint.

Graded out of 25

Adapted from file:///C:/Users/eseidel/Desktop/Glencoe%20-%20Understanding%20Psychology%20(McGraw,%202003)%20(1).pdf