The Learning Scenario

To illustrate the various learning theories in practice, I chose one of my favorite hobbies, cold-process soapmaking. Making soap has been a craft for almost 3,000 years now, ever since the ancients discovered that dripping animal fat into the ashes of a fire would yield a soaplike substance that could be used to clean plant and animal fibers. It's a fun and useful craft, but virtually impossible to figure out on one's own without some form of education, whether it be in-person training, reading the steps in a book (which is the way I learned to make the stuff), or watching asynchronous demos and videos. I hope you enjoy my breakdown of how to get started making soap from a behaviorist point of view!

The above scenario is, in my experience, not actually the best part of the soapmaking process to demonstrate behavioral learning. We see a few examples above: me asking questions, the learners giving responses, and me providing rewards in the form of verbal affirmation. In retrospect, I wish for the sake of this exercise that I had chosen the step in the process where we actually make the soap. There are ample opportunities for stimulus-response-based learning: the soaper spills lye solution on ungloved hands and learns not to neglect putting on gloves next time; the soaper gets too close to the lye solution as the lye is first dissolving and inhales the lye-water vapor, thus learning to wear a mask or at least not put their face directly above the solution; and other similar mishaps, providing punishment on a small level, or in the case of the lye burn, a severe level! Positive experiences can also provide reinforcement. We soapers have these "happy accidents" occasionally. For example, a certain pigment may change color in certain soap recipes; the stimulus is the unexpected color, the eye perceives it as a pleasant color, and the soaper remembers to try that pigment with that recipe the next time.