The Skinner Box. Do You Understand It?

I started listening to a podcast between Zak George and Dr. Edouardo Fernandez – and both are wrong. Fernandez is focused on the Skinner box. And Skinner wasn’t an animal trainer per say – he was getting animals to do abnormal things not through what you know as “reward” – but reinforcements. I’ll get into the Skinner box further down.

When people understand Operant Conditioning – it becomes clear. All society knows of Operant Conditioning is a method of behavioural modification using reward and punishment. That is NOT Operant Conditioning according to the pioneer and father of Operant Conditioning – B.F Skinner.

Operant Conditioning is really about the animals survival and thriving in the environment. Your basic primal “positive reinforcements” or your desires are food, water and shelter. All necessary for the very survival of the animal. Add sex to that – procreation is required for the very survival of the species. This is the very basics of your Operant Conditioning.

It all comes down to the consequences of your actions – positive and negative consequences eventually become the Positive and Negative Reinforcements that shape your behaviour. Child put their hand on a hot stove – the negative consequence of a burn quickly becomes the negative reinforcement that shapes the child to avoid a hot stove.

“Positive Reinforcement” is all about the animals desires for the good things in life – the positives. But it’s also the need to remove the bad things – the negatives. It’s the positive and negative consequences of your actions that become the positive and negative reinforcements that shape your behaviour – your Operant Conditioning.

If you’re scared of spiders, then at some point in your life – you developed a fear of spiders – you were operantly conditioned to fear spiders. You have been operantly conditioned to react to spiders the way you do – fight or flight. It could be a rational fear – you had a bad interaction with a spider – that came with a punishment. Or it can be irrational – a parent repeatedly telling their child “don’t touch that spider” – and they follow it up with the threat of punishment – a possible bite. This is your Operant Conditioning – at some point, the spider became a negative reinforcement. And when you see a spider – your response is going to be “fight” or “flight”. Your reaction is keeping you safe from harm.

That spider – that negative reinforcement – is the environment that is Punishing you – removing your Positive Reinforcement. It’s the punishment that the spider is that shapes your behaviour of fight or flight.

And that very fight or flight response is part of your Positive Reinforcement – to remove the negative reinforcement. So, you can “fight” – kill the spider or throw it outside – that’s removing the negative reinforcement from you – that’s your PR. Or you can run away from the spider – “flight” – remove yourself from the negative reinforcement – that’s your Positive reinforcement.

Skinner would define Positive Reinforcement as the removal of Negative Reinforcement. When no Negative Reinforcements exist for your body to react to – you’re in a calm state – in Positive Reinforcement. That’s a base desire that all animals have, a state where everything is good – nothing bad to react to. No animal wants to live under stress?

If your dog is calm at home – they are in Positive Reinforcement. Take that dog outside – and the dog is scared – you just removed the dogs Positive Reinforcement – and Skinner would call that punishment. You are bringing your dog into an environment that is punishing the dog – creating that stress. That treat in your hand is a Primary Inducement – not Positive Reinforcement – and you are reinforcing/rewarding punishment. That’s clearly not your intention – but it’s reality.

And people are left to wonder why dog training isn’t working? It’s got you working backwards.

So what about that Skinner box? Skinner was actually doing experiments on animals in a lab in order to understand our behaviour – the human animal was the target of his research. Not the dog – Skinner wasn’t an animal trainer – so what was he doing?

Lab animals tend to be generational – generations of mice and such born in a lab with no idea of what the natural world is. Well, the natural world is full of Negative Reinforcements – things that shape our behaviour. Think about that. A lab raised mouse would have no idea that a hungry cat is something to be avoided – something to run from. Nor would a rat. A laboratory environment has no Negative Reinforcements – so Skinner had to come up with some – artificial Negative Reinforcements which are artificial punishments. Shock and hunger were the big ones. And what is hunger but a base primal Positive Reinforcement – required for the survival of the animal right?

One of Skinners’ experiments was on the dog. He hooked up an electrode to a dogs tail and shocked the dog til the dog figured out what it took to turn off the Negative Reinforcement – to stop the pain. The onus was put on the dog to figure out what it took to remove the shock. The dog moved, started to dance – and when the dog lifted its’ front left paw – Skinner turned off the power – he removed the unnatural Negative Reinforcement. And he called that a type of Positive Reinforcement – the removal of negative. Turn the power back on – and the dog will figure out that lifting the front left paw turns it off pretty quick – this is Operant Conditioning. And the act of lifting the paw to turn off the power (NR) is operant learning.

To reiterate – he did these experiments to understand us – we were the target of his research. Skinner proved that the causes of our behaviour is no different from that of a dog. Your body is reacting to excess cortisol loads produced by the adrenal glands. Cortisol is the fight and flight hormone – your bodys fire alarm.

Skinner kept his pigeons hungry and underweight to motivate them to take the food reinforcements. Of course the animal is motivated – but again, it’s created artificially. Skinner would feed the birds on a variable schedule of reinforcements – not rewards. The bird didn’t know the difference – so the bird was left to figure out what they had to do to get the food bin opened – and this created some weird abnormal behaviours. That’s what it was all about. He turned the pigeons into pathological gamblers using food in this way to understand what makes humans want to gamble.

As an example – think about the slot machine. It’s set up for variable schedules of reinforcement. It’s the little wins, the small positive consequences that become the reinforcements that turn you into a gambler.

And today, everyone is looking for that jackpot reward to fix their dog – that magic bullet that fixes everything – and it never comes. Dog trainers have dog owners in a Skinner box – and they are manipulating you in the same way Skinner manipulated his lab animals. Creating artificial behaviours using artificial reinforcements. That’s what you are doing to your dog.

Skinner also held a human practice and he worked with “aggressive” children. He didn’t bring the Skinner box to his human practice – he didn’t need the artificial reinforcements. He wasn’t using food or punishment on the human animal – he put the onus on the human to do better.

I urge you to watch this video. Especially the first part. Watch his team – always calm in the face of chaos. Listen to the parent interview at the 4 minute mark – they punished the heck out of the child – and wanted to rehome him to an asylum. Replace child with dog and you should understand.

Punishment doesn’t work.