Engineering Behavior: Project Pigeon, World War II, and the Conditioning of B. F. Skinner

Abstract

Engineering Behavior: Project Pigeon, World War II, and the Conditioning of B. F. Skinner JAMES H. CAPSHEW During the Second World War the scientific outlook and profes­ sional goals of American psychologist B. F. Skinner underwent a remarkable metamorphosis. Wartime contingencies reshaped his re­ search agenda and converted him to the cause ofbehavioral engineer­ ing. Before the war, Skinner was reluctant to venture very far outside the academic laboratory. He was a scientific purist who resisted extrapolating the results of his animal experimentation to the realm of human behavior. After the war, he attempted to make such connections boldly explicit, arguing that the scientific principles of behaviorism had widespread applicability to human affairs. By the 1950s Skinner had emerged as an advocate of the use of operant conditioning techniques for the control of individual and group behavior in a variety of settings and promoted applications ranging from teaching machines to the design of entire societies. Skinner’s transition from inventive scientist to social inventor can be traced to the circumstances of World War II, which provided him with opportunities to explore the technological ramifications of operant psychology. Years later he noted that three wartime projects had dramatically broadened his intellectual horizons by offering the first evidence that his system of behavioral science could engender a system of behavioral engineering.1 The first was known as Project Dr. Capshew teaches in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and serves as assistant director of the Program on Scientific Dimensions of Society at Indiana University. He gratefully acknowledges the editorial suggestions of Lau­ rence D. Smith, William R. Woodward, Alejandra C. Laszlo, Eliot Hearst, and B. F. Skinner and the encouragement received from audiences that heard earlier versions of this article at Indiana University and at annual meetings of the Air Force Historical Foundation, the Society for the History of Technology (where he was awarded the 1986 Joan Cahalin Robinson Prize), and the Association for Behavior Analysis. lB. F. Skinner, “My Years at Indiana” (paper prepared March 31, 1988, for Indiana University Department of Psychology Centennial Celebration, Bloomington, April 1988), p. 5; a copy is in the personal collection of the author.© 1993 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/93/3404-0001$01.00 835 836 James H. Capshew Pigeon—an attempt to construct a missile guidance system utilizing the conditioned pecking behavior of pigeons. Project Pigeon con­ sumed much of Skinner’s energy during the war, and, even though it was never brought to fruition, it played a pivotal role in reorienting his thinking toward the possibilities of behavioral engineering.2 The second project was closer to home. Faced with the challenges of raising a second baby daughter, Skinner drew on his manual skills and invented the “baby-tender,” a futuristic climate-controlled crib de­ signed to promote the physical and psychological health of infants.3 Featured in the Ladies’ Home Journal shortly following the war, the device was later marketed commercially with little success as the “Aircrib.”4 Skinner’s third novel project was precisely that—a novel. During the summer of 1945 he drafted the manuscript that would be published three years later as Walden Two.' The book was Skinner’s attempt to conceive a utopian human society based on the principles of reinforcement that he had gleaned from his laboratory research on animal behavior. Taken together, these efforts represent Skinner’s initial forays into the realm of behavioral engineering, and they clearly demonstrate how the technocratic ideals embedded in his research practices found expression in the wartime context. Although Skinner’s work was undeniably idiosyncratic, it reflected broader trends in American psychology that reached their fullest expression during the Second World War, with its overriding emphasis on military utility and the virtues of order, control, and effectiveness.1’ Of the three projects, Walden Two became the most famous. It was the first step in Skinner’s public transformation from experimental psychologist to social philosopher, and its description of an entire culture molded along behaviorist lines suggested the scope of Skin­ ner’s ambitions. As important as the novel was, it was only the most visible manifestation of a more fundamental...