Skinner's Box

This is an experiment created by american pshychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner and Experiments give us opportunity to question the concepts of luck and faith and supersitition that we use in our daily life to put a meaning in the world.

Main Mechanicsm

It is a simple box created to observe the pshychology and behavior of a mice or pigeon. In the inside of box there is a system which gives food to the animals when they push to the buttons. Pigeons don't have hard time to understand this system however they don't understand that there is a relation between pecking and food. Moreover this switch can work totally random , as an instance it can give food in every 10 pecking or it can be adjustable according to time periods. For example if the pigeon pecks periodically in 1/10 fragment of a second it will get rewarded.

Experiment Methodology and Results

When they close the mechacnism completely , It has been observed that the animals that are accustomed to eating from each press of the button have a shorter time to give up than to press the button compared to the occasional food.

After these results Skinner used a different methodology and changed the settings of the device and machine started to give out food in certain intervals. The only thing pigeon needs to do is wait right ? however it didn't happen like that. In 6 of the 8 cases pigeons developed a behavior as if they were being taught a reward mechacnism habit.

However the behavior differs from pigeon to pigeon. One of the pigeons were turning around counterclockwise 2 or 3 times between each
periods of reward. Other pigeon was putting his head above from the rewarding mechacnism and another one was just tossing the reward mechacnism.
All these 6 birds show different behavior in order to get reward which they will get if they only waited.

Video

Eventhough the video is not english it will still give an idea about the behavior.

Eventhough it sounds weird and it can be interpreted in different way Skinner decided to name this behavior as "Superstition" , because the pigeons were behaving like there were some reason result relationship , however there wasn't. When a pigeon get used to a supersitious behavior it may go for hours eventhough the reward mechacnism was closed. Eventhough the results were not really satisfying for me to interpret these behaviors as superstitious it is still a good way to explain these behaviors. However I think that these behaviors might develop from the species natural behavior. It is certain that they are not natural.

Well according to Skinner the same behavioral things got examples in us too , the things we make while we are gambling , wishes , rain dance and sacrificing people. If two independent events occur after one another by luck we beleive that if we do that in same order it will occur again.

However there is an evolutionary reason behind this as human kind we want to observe world and the connections in it. The world is just a more complex skinner box for us. Eventhough we admit that human kind is superior beings it doesn't change the fact that we are still acting with primitive instincts and we are animals.

Sources 1 , 2 , 3

Thanks for Reading & Hasta La Vista