STATES OF THE ORGANISM AS OBJECTS OF DISCRIMINATION AND PREFERENCE

Abstract

SUMMARY Experimental criteria for determining whether an organism discriminates between a pair of discriminanda and prefers one of a pair of differential outcomes to the other were offered. These criteria were then applied to the problem of ascertaining an organism's discrimination among its own states and the preference values of such states for the organism. Illustrations from the literature strongly suggest that such an animal as the rat is capable of discriminating between its own states of hunger and thirst and even between two intensities of the state of hunger, and that the state of hunger as produced by hypothalamic electrical Stimulation is desired by the same animals. It was argued that, regardless of the species concerned, a theory of motivation is on a sounder basis if it treats the preference value of states of the organism as an experimental question than if, like “drive theory” it makes the almost certainly incorrect assumption that all motivational states are aversive.