The way that people and animals behave and learn is a subject that has interested many psychologists over the past century. Many have suggested different theories regarding behavioural learning, some psychologists, such as Freud; suggest that behaviour is an inherited characteristic: others suggest that people learn from observing others or getting rewarded. `Operant conditioning' is a theory that describes one way in which organisms learn.

Operant Conditioning is a process of learning by which a response becomes more or less likely to occur, depending on its consequences. Operant conditioning attempts to explain behaviour by what has happened in the past. It was originally studied by Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949), whose experiments and ideas formed the basis of this theory. In his experiments, Thorndike (1911) placed a cat in a puzzle box, and put a fish outside the puzzle box. The cat had to work its way out of the...