Question

what is shaping in psychology?

Answer 1

Shaping is the process of establishing a behavior that is not already learned or performed by the person (or animal) at present.This concept was developed by B.F Skinner, who is a behaviorist.

The theory involves reinforcing behaviors that are successively closer and closer to the approximations of the desired, or targeted, behavior. Shaping is important because most of the times, it’s not likely that an individual would display the target behavior spontaneously. However, by reinforcing the behavior that is closer and closer to the target behavior, the required behavior can be taught. Examples of shaping are : language development, training a pet, teaching a kid how to walk, etc. The method of reinforcing successive approximations in order to teach a behavior has been found to be effective in both humans and animals.