KNOCK WOOD: SUPERSTITION IN PIGEON In 1948 B.F. Skinner published the article of Superstition in the pigeon. Skinner is the father of radical behaviorism and the skinner box. He believes everything in psychological is behavioral, such as public or private behavior, external and internal events. All behaviors are the result of the environmental consequences and it can be explained by the environmental consequences it produces. Consequence is divided into two groups: reinforcement and punishment. They are referred as operant conditioning. Reinforcer consequences, such as praise, receiving money, fatisfaction from solving a problem, will make the behavior more likely to repeat. Punisher consequence, such as cause an injury to self, feeling embarrassed, will make the behavior less likely to reoccur.
With Skinner’s Superstition of the pigeon experiment stated that humans believe that there is a connection between the superstition behavior and some
reinforcing consequence because the behavior (such as finding a horseshoes is considered good luck) was accidentally reinforced (such as winning the lottery the next day) once, twice, or several times. In reality those two have nothing to do with each other. Skinner referred this as contingent reinforcement. He hd prove this through the pigeon experiment. He used the skinner box,a box that contained controlled food dispenser, to monitor their behaviors. The dispenser will drop food into the tray every 15 regardless of what the bird is doing at the time. Each of the boxes were condition to perform certain behavior. Before putting each pigeon into the box for several minutes each day, he fed the birds food less than what they normally would consume, so they will be hungry and highly motivated to perform the behaviors. After several days, as a result, a pigeon turns counterclockwise two or three times, another one thrust it head into the upper corner of the box and etc. Even their behaviors has nothing to do with them receiving food, but they
behaved as if certain actions produce food, and this is superstitious behaviors. The dispenser drops food into the tray every 15 seconds regardless of what they are doing at the time.
In contrast to human superstition behavioral, Skinner demonstrate student pressing key to receive the reinforcement. The only key that will produce reinforcement is number 3 with a ten seconds delay before producing reinforcer. During that time students would try various key patterns until they press the key with a 10 second delay and then it produces the reinforcement. The ten second patterns, including number 3, they created will become the pattern they will repeatedly use, even though other number has nothing to do with producing reinforcer. The students performed superstition behavior without knowing.