Info-psychology : Part 1 Chapter 19

Operant conditioning studies behavior which bears little resemblance to the genetically pre-programmed behavior that is normally elicited by the reinforcing stimulus (i.e. salivation is the dog's normal response to food but rolling over is not). B. F. Skinner, the founder of the school of operant conditioning, distinguishes between respondent and operant behavior.

'Respondent behavior is directly under the control of the stimulus, as in the unconditioned reflexes of classical conditioning: the flow of saliva in the mouth, the constriction of the pupil to a flash of light on the eye, the knee jerk to a tap on the patellar tendon. The relation of operant behavior to stimulation is somewhat different. The behavior often appears to be emitted; that is, it appears to be spontaneous rather than a response to stimulation... When operant behavior becomes related to a stimulus (as when I answer the ringing telephone), the ringing telephone is a discriminated stimulus, telling me that the telephone is answerable, but it does not force me to answer. Even though the ringing telephone is compelling, the response to it is operant and not respondent behavior.

'The word operant derives from the fact that operant behavior "operates" on the environment to produce some effect. Thus going to where the telephone is and raising the receiver from the hook are operant acts that lead to the telephone conversation.

'To produce operant conditioning in the laboratory, a hungry rat is placed in a box... The inside of the box is plain, except for the protruding bar with the food dish beneath it.

'...the experimenter attaches the food magazine, so that every time the rat presses the bar a pellet of food falls into the dish. The rat eats and soon presses the bar again. The food reinforces bar pressing...

'With this illustration before us, we are ready to consider the meaning of conditioned operant behavior. As indicated above, it "operates" on the environment; the rat's bar pressing produces or gains access to the food. In classical conditioning the animal is passive; it merely waits until the conditioned stimulus is presented and is followed by the unconditioned stimulus. In operant conditioning the animal has to be active; its behavior cannot be reinforced unless it does something.

'A large part of human behavior may be classified as operant - turning a key in a lock, driving a car, writing a letter, carrying on a conversation. Such activities are not elicited by an unconditioned stimulus of the Pavlovian type. But once the behavior occurs it can be reinforced according to the principles of operant conditioning.'

'...[operant] behavior is sometimes called instrumental behavior because it produces effects just as a tool or other instrument does. Hence operant conditioning is also known as instrumental conditioning.' - Hilgard and Atkinson, ibid.

We have considered these definitions and principles because operant conditioning and behavior modification are becoming popular and politically potent aspects of the current behavior-control movement. An increasing number of psychologists are employing conditioning techniques to "shape" the behavior of people who are judged to be disturbed or anti-social; these in addition to the legions of psychologists who attempt to manipulate the behaviors of others in advertising, education and mass media propaganda.

Neurologic may help people to understand what conditioning psychologists are trying to do and why they are doomed to failure.

Conditioning psychologists are behaviorists. They are concerned with observable, measurable movements in space-time. Behaviorism developed in the 1920's as a reaction to "introspective," "faculty" psychology which explained human nature in terms of invisible emotional and mental states attributed to the conscious "mind." Behaviorism, unhappily, chose to model itself after Newtonian mechanistic visible physics just at the point when Einsteinian concepts and invisible states were emerging. In the last half century we have seen an increasing "interiorization" of physics and genetics. The significant (and significantly overlooked) fact about the new micro-sciences is that functions, meanings, lawful regularities have been located in internal structures invisible to the naked eye which are, in many cases, similar to the spiritual faculties assigned by psychoanalysts, theologians and philosophers to metaphysical entities within the human "soul" or "psyche." Ancient Hindu theories about the unity of consciousness, for example, now find empirical confirmation in descriptions of the nervous systern as an interconnected network of thirty billion cells. Ancient Vedic concepts of the unit of life are confirmed by the discovery that there is only a slight difference in the amino acid configuration which makes up the genetic material of all living entities, plants and primates. The theories of physicists like Jack Sarfatti and John Aichibald Wheeler bring consciousness back to the center of the nuclear and quantum-mechanical stage.

When we review the work of conditioning psychologists from the perspective of a seven-circuit (plus one) nervous system, we can see precisely where and why behaviorism is limited. Operant conditioning is concerned with the behavior mediated by the social brain. Learned instrumental actions. Skinnerism is the crowning philosophy of the Third Circuit society, the mechanical civilization which began in the neolithic and which climaxed in Henry Ford's assembly lines. Skinnerism is the final philosophic statement of the puritanical protestant-ethic manipulators who dominated the world for 400 years up to Hiroshima. In this context let us reconsider the ominous surgical implications of the standard definition: "The word operant derives from the fact that operant behavior 'operates' on the environment to produce some effect... To produce operant conditioning... a hungry rat is placed in a box... A large part of human behavior may be classified as operant - turning a key in a lock, driving a car..." This is the third brain at work.

During World War II Professor Skinner was in charge of a War Department Project to train pigeons to peck at panels which would home unmanned bombers into "enemy" targets.