Dead Poet Society

There are 5 needs to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and they are physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs.

       The very first need is eating and drinking or any physical need of survival thus is the most basic. An example from the movie “Death Poet Society” is at the beginning of the movie, after Mr. Keating gave his second day lesson (the ripping lesson), Mr. Keating and I believe the professor called “Josh” the teacher who caught Mr. Keating’s student ripping were at the dinner eating food. That is one of the most common needs of physical.

       The second need is the safety need; safety need is the need to feel that the world is organized and predicable; need to feel safe, secure, and stable. Richard Cameron the red headed student, he is the character that needed most security. Unlike many of his contemporary, Richard live with the rules, he feels awkward without rules. At the very beginning of the movie, Richard is the one who held the flag that has “tradition” written on it, and when Mr. Keating asked the class to tear the introduction, he was the one that showed the most uncertainty, even after he started to tear, he used ruler to tear. He also responded the first class with Mr. Keating with the comment of “weird.” All of the above indicated that he needs rule, needs things to be organized and predictable. At the end of the movie, he was also the first to tell the administration, because he wanted the sense of security.

       The third need is the belongingness and love needs, that is the need to love and be loved, to belong and be accepted; need to avoid loneliness and alienation. There are two characters that best portrait this need, and they are Knox and Todd. Todd received the same gift “desk” that he had received from last year, for his birthday from his parents. This indicates that his parent does not care much about him, and his is definitely not pleased with this. Knox fell in love with Chet’s girl friend Christine, and he is not giving up just because she has a boy friend. Knox tried to win her in three scenes; first, he kissed her in the party; second, he went to her school and read poem to her, and third, Knox asked Christine to go to the play with him.

       The forth need is the esteem needs, the need for achievement, competence, and independence; need for recognition and respect from others. Todd definitely fit into this. He has the talent and passion of becoming a writer, but was forced to live in his brother’s shadow to become a lawyer, and his parents is apparently not giving him the recognition of being himself, and care more about his brother and his progress in catching up with him. The examples in the movie are the birthday present, the recognition of talent from Mr. Keating and the last scene in the movie, when he found his self-esteem and stand up to do what he wanted.

       The fifth need is the self-actualization need; the need to live up to ones fullest and unique potential. Neil is the character that would fit into this need. Neil’s life had been written scrip which his father is the author of his life, and everything is father ask and son does format until Mr. Keating came into his life, and he was first time asked to think for him self, and to seize the day. To live up to his fullest potential, he participated in a play, which his father had already decline the request. The end result is that his father is going to send him to the military school, not able to accept the fact that his life will be just a script written by someone else, he decided to suicide (and succeeded.)

Skinner Box Game

Skinner Box or the operant chamber is a box that contains a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain reinforcement, and it will be attached to a recorder. The game I played is called "Dungeon and Fighter." The similarity between this game and a skinner box is that it gives reinforcement to keep players oneline (its an online game). The keyboard (especially the X key) is the bar in the Skinner box. The "Level Up," "Weapons," and "New Move." The differences are that if I want improve the ability of my character then I must invest real money to buy the "armours and suits," which Skinner box does not require investment; to be an advance player I will also need to calculate how to spend the "Skill Points" (these points are needed to learn new moves), the Skinner box does not require much thinking.

I believe the reward style is the fixed-ratio schedules. The fixed-ratio schedule is the reinforcement scedule that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses. "Dungeon and Fighter" gives out three "revive coin" that brings the character back to life on every log on. The leveling up is also based on how many experiences a character has and that is mostly "calculatable" therefore I can expect to level up my character after I slaughter a certain amount of monsters.

Secondary reinforcer is naturally not a reinforcer, but after conditioning, people or an organism associate this object with our natural reinforcers, and thus gives the similar stimuli to our brain as if it is the primary reinforcer. The secondary reinforcer in this game are the game money, weapon, and the skills. The primary reinforcer is to win the game, or to beat other players, but in order to beat other players, I must have all of the things I listed to strengthen my character. To obtain all of the secondary reinforcers will require a large amount of time investment. (that is why I am not an advanced player)

A possitive reinforcement is to add or give a desirable behavior or object. The possive reinforcements in the "Dungeon and Fighter" are the "level up," "new fancy moves" and the social connection (other well behaved players." These reinforcements are probably the only reasons that I was playing this game, especially those very fancy moves and they can be used to implement other moves. A game with no reinforcement is not worth of playing in my opinion.

Negative reinforcement is to take away something aversive. "Dungeon and Fighter" doesn't take away anything in the game that is aversive. If I have to use negative reinforcement to analyze DNF (the abbreviation) then I guess it took away my boring time (usually the time that I should spend on doing the homework)

Achievemnet motivation is the desire for significant accomplishment, mastery of things, people, or ideas, and higher standard. DNF keeps a record of won battles and lost battles, thus people who cares about this report, would try hard to maintain a higher score. I also like to be better at this game (this game is a action game, so it does require some fast finger work), so I can beat others, the sense of winning is very desirable. However to be better at this game would require players to stay longer online to increase the level and other stuffs.