Law of effect

[3] Thorndike's law of effect refutes the ideas George Romanes' book Animal Intelligence, stating that anecdotal evidence is weak and is typically not useful.

[5][6] The modern version of the law of effect is conveyed by the notion of reinforcement as it is found in operant conditioning.

The essential idea is that behavior can be modified by its consequences, as Thorndike found in his famous experiments with hungry cats in puzzle boxes.

He discovered that during the first few trials the cat would respond in many ineffective ways, such as scratching at the door or the ceiling, finally freeing itself with the press or pull by trial-and-error.

Psychologists have been interested in the factors that are important in behavior change and control since psychology emerged as a discipline.

When a person uses a substance for the first time and receives a positive outcome, they are likely to repeat the behavior due to the reinforcing consequence.

In an experiment that Thorndike conducted, he placed a hungry cat inside a "puzzle box", where the animal could only escape and reach the food once it could operate the latch of the door.

Colwill and Rescorla for example made all rats complete the goal of getting food pellets and liquid sucrose in consistent sessions on identical variable-interval schedules.

The positive reinforcement (praise and sticker) encourages the repetition of the behavior (cleaning up), illustrating the Law of Effect in action.