ABSTRACT
Skinner’s interest in research with animals was analogical. He had little interest in phylogeny and species-specific behavior, the topics studied by ethologists like Lorenz and Tinbergen. For Skinner, as for the biomedical community, animals were simply convenient preparations with which to demonstrate effects that have human analogues. His approach was to take experimental results (rather than theoretical principles) from the animal laboratory and extrapolate them persuasively to human behavior. The so-called superstition experiment is an illustration of the process. By invoking the reader’s empathy with the pigeon in an “as-if” account, Skinner was able to convince his audience that many human superstitions, and many puzzling effects in the operant laboratory, simply reflect the ubiquitous effects of operant reinforcement.
The superstition experiment is interesting for two reasons: first, because it illustrates Skinner’s rhetorical subtlety and, second, because it was a focus for a series of experiments and theoretical developments that eroded the early simplicities of reinforcement theory.
The response of Skinner and others to these developments was increased emphasis on the Darwinian metaphor, the analogy between reinforcement and natural (or artificial) selection. Skinner emphasized the selection aspect. But others were more even-handed and placed equal emphasis on the selective action of reinforcement and the limiting role of behavioral variation in providing material on which reinforcement can act.
