Operant conditioning is another approach to the study of associative learning. When you teach a dog a trick, it is hard to specify the unconditioned stimuli that could produce such behaviour before conditioning. Actually, you “got him to do it” as best you could and afterward rewarded him with either approval or food. The approval or food did not produce the behaviour.
The word operant derives from the fact that the operant behaviour “operates” on the environment to produce some effect. Thus going to where the telephone is and raising the receiver are operant acts lead to the telephone conversation.