{"id":384,"date":"2012-04-11T19:34:47","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T01:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/?p=384"},"modified":"2012-04-12T13:22:21","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T19:22:21","slug":"let-freedom-ring-and-if-you-make-it-to-the-end-of-this-post-you-will-be-rewarded-with-a-video-of-pigeons-playing-ping-pong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/2012\/04\/11\/let-freedom-ring-and-if-you-make-it-to-the-end-of-this-post-you-will-be-rewarded-with-a-video-of-pigeons-playing-ping-pong\/","title":{"rendered":"Let Freedom Ring! (And if you make it to the end of this post, you will be rewarded with a video of pigeons playing ping-pong.)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLet freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!\u201d Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s words, spoken almost 50 years ago, still inspire me today. But what if freedom couldn\u2019t ring anywhere? What if freedom simply didn\u2019t exist, at least not in the sense that King meant it or that we envision it?<\/p>\n

For B.F. Skinner, a behavioral psychologist, the word \u201cfreedom\u201d is unobservable and therefore a pretty much useless concept. \u201cFreedom,\u201d along with the word is \u201cmentalistic,\u201d existing in the mind, subjective, and lacking scientific merit. Skinner argued that there is no \u201ctrue\u201d freedom. \u201cNo true freedom!\u201d you scoff, \u201cblasphemy! Freedom is the foundation of our lives, of our state, and of our government!\u201d But the guy\u2019s got a pretty convincing case against freedom. In order to understand why freedom is an illusion, however, you have to understand Skinner\u2019s theory of behavioral analysis.<\/p>\n

Everything we do, according to Skinner, is a product of our environment shaping and conditioning us. Skinner himself said, \u201cI did not direct my life. I didn\u2019t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That\u2019s what life is.\u201d We experience both classical conditioning (think Pavlov and his salivating dogs) and operant conditioning. In classical conditioning, a neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus multiple times. In Pavlov\u2019s case, Pavlov rang a bell in front of his dogs. This bell was the neutral stimulus, because the dogs did not have an instinctive response to the bell. As he rang the bell, he exposed the dogs to meat. The meat served as the unconditioned stimulus, because the dogs naturally salivated at the smell. Eventually, after numerous pairings of the neutral stimulus (the bell) with the unconditioned stimulus (the meat), the neutral stimulus alone was able to cause the dogs to salivate (which was previously an unconditioned response but is now a conditioned response). Scarily, classical conditioning is effective for more animals than just dogs. In 1920, pioneer behavioral psychologists John Watson and Rosalie Rayner classically conditioned a 9 month-old dubbed \u201cLittle Albert.\u201d They conditioned the young child to be scared of a white rat by continually pairing the rabbit with a loud and disturbing sound that frightened the boy. Eventually, Little Albert would cry and crawl away after only seeing the rat, even when no sound occurred. His fear generalized to other furry objects\u2014a dog, a fur coat, and some wool\u2014as well.<\/p>\n

Though classical conditioning is important and can certainly affect humans, as in Little Albert\u2019s case, Skinner believed that operant conditioning is the source of most human behaviors. Operant conditioning involves the immediate reinforcement of a response. Reinforcements do not cause actual behaviors, but, true to their name, they reinforce the behavior by increasing the probability of the behavior reoccurring. Last year, I took Introduction to Psychology with Tomi Ann, my current professor in Personality. Intro was awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I decided to become a psychology major. Anyways, in Intro, we were all responsible for training a rat. When I first held my rat, Nimh, I knew he was something special. But still, the task of training a rat to roll a marble down a track and out of a hole, press a lever, and eat a treat (in three and a half weeks, too!) was rather daunting. Operant conditioning, however, enabled my partner and me to train Nimh in a mere seven days.<\/p>\n

We started by \u201cshaping\u201d Nimh. As in most cases of operant conditioning, the desired behavior (rolling the marble, pressing the lever, and eating a treat) was too complex to occur all at once, which is why shaping became a necessity. Shaping is when a behavior that is at all similar to the desired final action is rewarded. To shape Nimh, we first gave him cereal every time he came close to the lever he was eventually supposed to press. Then, we only gave him cereal when he actually touched the lever. Finally, we only rewarded him when he pressed the lever all the way down. And just like that, he had learned part one of his task, all thanks to shaping and operant conditioning.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Gus, another successfully trained intro to psych Rat!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ok, so now that I\u2019ve provided a brief overview of classical and operant conditioning (major tenants of Skinner\u2019s theory), let\u2019s get back to this freedom business. A class handout aptly states what we actually mean, according to Skinner, when we say we desire freedom: \u201cUsually we mean we don\u2019t want to be in a society that punishes us for doing what we want<\/em> to do. Hence, if we pick the right reinforcers, we will feel<\/em> free, because we will be doing what we feel we want!\u201d We are not free; instead, the environment (which includes other humans) shapes everything we do. Everything. If Skinner were to examine my life, he would easily find reinforcers behind all my behaviors. For instance, he might argue that I am taking Personality because last year, when I picked my classes, older friends told me to take the class while at the same time smiling and nodding at me. If I take the class, I will get more smiles! So I took the class with the anticipation of receiving the reinforcer more times. What else? I went for a run today. Did I personally choose to do so? Don\u2019t be silly. I went running because when I have gone running in the past, I have been rewarded with endorphins and a reduction of stress. Since my behavior of running is generally followed by reinforcing, positive stimuli, I have an increased probability of running in the future. So that\u2019s why I went for a jaunt in the Colorado rain today.<\/p>\n

Behavioral analysis can be difficult to accept. We like to believe that we aren\u2019t like the intro to psych rats, easily influenced and manipulated by our environment. We like to think that freedom is real. Skinner\u2019s theory makes us question our own free will and choice by favoring a deterministic stance. You can make up your own mind (or can you, since you\u2019ve probably been repeatedly conditioned to reject determinism and champion free will?) as to the validity of Skinner\u2019s theory, but I leave you with an example of the power of operant conditioning: pigeons playing ping pong!<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vGazyH6fQQ4<\/a>\u00a0 (pigeons!)<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Xt0ucxOrPQE<\/a> (Little Albert\u2014start watching around the one minute mark)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLet freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!\u201d Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s words, spoken almost 50 years ago, still inspire me today. But what if freedom couldn\u2019t ring anywhere? What if freedom simply didn\u2019t exist, at least not in the sense that King meant it or that we envision it? For B.F. Skinner, a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Let Freedom Ring! (And if you make it to the end of this post, you will be rewarded with a video of pigeons playing ping-pong.)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-block7","category-py281","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1RtXj-6c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions\/387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}