On Operant Conditioning and the Study of Culture

Abstract

Jones (CA 12:171-89) has offered an operant conditioning view of the psychology of learning and its possible application to anthropological problems. It is precisely because the operant conditioning theory of learning is so closely allied to a technology that it has become so popular in psychology and in education. Before anthropologists accept it, however, they should be aware that it involves a particular view of what is learned as well as a particular theory as to how learning occurs. I shall here present this view and an alternative one and outline the consequences of each.1 As Jones indicates, learning occurs when an emitted operant is reinforced, or rewarded. For example, a pigeon will begin to stretch its neck when any upward movement of the head is reinforced (i.e., rewarded by food for a pigeon that weighs approximately 80% of its normal weight), and it will continue to stretch its neck as long as that movement is rewarded. The neck-stretching is the operant, and the food is the reinforcement.2 What has been learned is a connection between the operant (neck-stretching) and its consequence (the food reward). This connection has traditionally been called an association, and Thorndyke (1948), describing what was learned as a function of instrumental conditioning, spoke of it as an associative bond.3 But is what is learned merely a connection, merely a bond or association