Behavior Principles in Everyday Life

by John D. Baldwin, Janice I. Baldwin

8737F-0, 0-13-087376-4, Baldwin, John D., Baldwin, Janice I., Behavior Principles in Everyday Life, 4/E//--> This book comprehensively introduces the major psychological principles of behavior: operant conditioning, Pavlovian conditioning, social learning theory, and cognitive behaviorism. It closely links these basic abstract principles to relevant, concrete examples from everyday life—showing readers how each behavior principle operates in easily understood settings, and how to apply them in complex natural situations. Chapter topics cover behavior modification; primary and secondary reinforcers and punishers; differential reinforcement and shaping; modeling and observational learning; prompts and fading; rules; schedules; positive and negative control; and thinking, the self, and self-control. For individuals making the transition from adolescence into the various phases of adulthood—seeking a better understanding of their life, and ways to make it more positive.

Genres: Science

416 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1981

About the author

John Denison Baldwin was an American politician, Congregationalist minister, newspaper editor, and popular anthropological writer. He was a member of the Connecticut State House of Representatives and later a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts.
In Ancient America, In Notes on American Archaeology he speculated on the origins of the "Mound Builder" people then believed to have constructed the famous mounds around the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys, suggesting that they had been an aboriginal people who had migrated northwards from Central America or Mexico. He rejected the then-common notion that they had been a lost European, Semitic, or Asiatic people who had been wiped out by the North American Indians, asserting on the contrary that the Mounds were "wholly original, wholly American" and "did not come from the Old World".
He did, however, still subscribe to the idea that these "Mound Builders" were not the same as the American Indian inhabitants of the region at that time, who he believed were a separate race originating in Asia.