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In these years—and subsequently—Skinner disciplined not just himself but also rats. The rats, and later pigeons, became the center of laboratory experiments in which he controlled behavior by setting up "contingencies of reinforcement"—circumstances under which a particular bit of desired behavior is "reinforced" or rewarded to make sure it will be repeated. The behavior Skinner demanded of his pigeons was bizarre—for pigeons. He made them walk figure eights, for example, by reinforcing them with food at crucial moments. The process as explained by Skinner: "I watch a hungry pigeon carefully. When he makes a slight clockwise turn, he's instantly rewarded for it. After he eats, he immediately tries it again. Then I wait for more of a turn and reinforce again. Within two or three minutes, I can get any pigeon to make a full circle. Next I reinforce only when he moves in the other direction. Then I wait until he does both, and reinforce him again and again until it becomes a kind of drill. Within ten to 15 minutes, the pigeon will be doing a perfect figure eight."
By a similar process, Skinner has taught pigeons to dance with each other, and even to play Ping Pong. During World War II, he conceived the idea of using pigeons in guided-missile control; three birds were conditioned to peck continuously for four or five minutes at the image of a target on a screen. Then they were placed in harness in the nose of a missile, facing a screen on which the target would appear when the missile was in flight. By pecking at the image moving on the screen, the pigeons would send corrective signals that moved the missile's fins and kept it on target. The missile, called the Pelican, was never used in warfare; the pigeon-aided equipment was so complex and bulky that the missile could carry little high explosive. Furthermore, Skinner mourns, "our problem was no one would take us seriously."
All of these conditioning feats were accomplished with the now-famous Skinner box. It is a soundproof enclosure with a food dispenser that a rat can operate by pressing a lever, and a pigeon by pecking a key. The dispenser does not work unless the animal has first performed according to a specially designed "schedule of reinforcement."
Explains Skinner: "One of the most powerful schedules, the variable-ratio schedule, is characteristic of all gambling systems. The gambler cannot be sure the next play will win, but a certain mean ratio of plays to wins is maintained. This is the way a dishonest gambler hooks his victim. At first the victim is permitted to win fairly often. Eventually he continues to play when he is not winning at all. With this technique, it is possible to create a pathological gambler out of a simple bird like a pigeon."
Venture in Self-Therapy
For a while, that beguiling possibility and others suggested by Skinner left the academic world pretty cold, as did his first book, The Behavior of Organisms, published in 1938. "People didn't reinforce me, but my rats did," Skinner says regretfully, remembering how rewarded he felt every time his