Unit 4 · Learning Theory · Reading 10 of 13
Where Conditioning Breaks Down
Before you read
Do you have a lucky shirt, seat, or pregame routine? Where did it come from?
Words you'll own by the end
- Skinner box: an operant conditioning chamber used to study animals' responses to consequences.
- Superstitious behavior: a behavior that happens to be followed by a reward and gets repeated, even though it didn't cause the reward.
- Instinctive drift: animals sliding back toward natural, instinctive behaviors despite conditioning.
- Premack principle: a preferred activity can reinforce a less-preferred one.
- Overjustification effect: rewarding something a person already enjoys can reduce their intrinsic motivation.
1. The Skinner box and superstition
Skinner did much of his work with rats and pigeons in an operant conditioning chamber, or Skinner box. He shaped remarkable behaviors: pigeons playing a version of ping pong, and pigeons trained to guide missiles (never actually used).
He even produced superstitious behavior. When food pellets arrived while a pigeon happened to be doing something, it linked that action to the food and kept doing it, even though the action caused nothing. People do this too. A gambler who wins on one machine by chance may decide that machine is lucky.
Check-in: A player wore the same socks the first time her team won, and now wears them every game. How would Skinner explain this?
2. Limits: instinctive drift
Conditioning has limits. Researchers identified instinctive drift: animals tend to slide back toward behaviors that come naturally, even when those behaviors aren't reinforced. Rats aren't built to push levers, so they may go back to biting, scratching, or sniffing. A dog may keep digging or circling before lying down no matter how often it's scolded. Instinct can override training.
3. Criticisms of the behaviorists
Critics questioned drawing conclusions about humans from rats and pigeons. Harry Harlow (you'll meet him in the development unit) argued that researchers should study primates, which are more like us. Skinner was also criticized for insisting that thinking doesn't matter because it can't be measured. By the 1950s, psychologists like Tolman, Premack, and Rescorla were bringing cognition back into the picture.
4. The Premack principle
What rewards one person might punish another. The Premack principle, named for David Premack, says to find what this person prefers and use it to reinforce something they don't want to do. In his words, a preferred activity can reinforce a non-preferred one. It's sometimes called "grandma's rule": finish your asparagus, then you can play in the sandbox. If you only let yourself go to the game after studying for your math test, you're using Premack.
5. The overjustification effect
Rewards can backfire. The overjustification effect says that rewarding a behavior someone already enjoys can make them like it less. Their intrinsic motivation (doing it because it's satisfying) is replaced by extrinsic motivation (doing it for the reward). Pay kids to read and they will read more, but once the rewards stop, many read less than they did before. So the idea that reinforcement always increases behavior is too simple. Personal, environmental, and cognitive factors all play a role.
Try it: Which idea is this?
Match each example to the concept.
A raccoon trained to drop coins in a bank keeps rubbing them together instead, like it's washing food.
You can play video games only after you finish your chores.
A kid who loved drawing gets paid per picture, then stops drawing when the payments end.
A student who aced a test with a blue pen now uses only that pen for tests.
Am I ready for a pop quiz?
Check a box only if you can say the answer out loud without scrolling up.
Come back to your "before you read" question
Your lucky item or routine: was it followed by success once, by chance? That's Skinner's pigeons.