Major Laws (pre-1930)

(1) Law of Readiness: This law refers to the conditions that determine what will act
as satisfiers and annoyers.

(2) Law of Exercise: Responses are connected to situations simply because they
occur frequently in those situations (laws of use & disuse).

(3) Law of Effect: Responses are selected and connected to situations or are
disconnected from situations depending upon the consequences
they produce (satisfiers or annoyers).

Subsidiary Laws (referring to the history of the learner)

Law of Multiple Response: The learner's behavior is not random, he or she comes with a
set of responses supplied by heredity or by past experience.

Law of Attitude or Set: The learner's behavior is influenced by what he or she has been
led to expect of a task and its outcome. This may come from
instructions or from prior experience.

Law of Piecemeal Activity (or Prepotency of Elements): The aspects of a situation that will be noticed depend upon the
learner's species membership and past experience.

Law of Response by Analogy: The learner's behavior will depend in part on the similarity of
the present situation to past situations (also called the identical
elements theory of transfer).

Law of Associative Shifting: A transfer of responses to new stimuli takes place by their
pairing with stimuli already connected to those responses.