If you want rats to press a lever, you give them rewards—but not every time. This was Skinner’s brilliant insight, and he demonstrated it in numerous experiments.
You might think that always rewarding the desired action—known as continuous reinforcement—would maximize the targeted behavior pattern. But that’s not true. Skinner showed that variable rewards have a much more powerful impact on rats. And if you really want to keep rats pressing a lever, the rewards should be distributed in a random manner with no apparent pattern.
By pure coincidence, the Las Vegas Strip was taking off at the very same moment that Skinner was doing his breakthrough research. You might say they were both proving the same thing—one with rats, the other with slot machines.
Our body chemistry also contributes to the addictive power of scrolling and swiping. Those dopamine flows that create addictions are more powerful when they are intermittent. Unpredictability adds to our pleasure.
I am not a fan of B.F. Skinner. But that’s not because his experiments don’t work. I will admit that they produce the desired results, at least within certain limits (that’s important and I’ll return to these limits later). My opposition is based entirely on my views of how we should treat people—it’s ethically wrong to manipulate them like rats in a Skinner Box.
When I studied music therapy in preparation for writing my book Healing Songs (2006), I was horrified at how deeply Skinner’s behaviorism had permeated academic writing on the subject. I encountered it again and again, and in ways that deeply disturbed me.
I remember reading a study about how music could be used to help juvenile delinquents. That seemed promising to me—music ought to be part of rehabilitative programs. But the psychologist in charge was obsessed with the idea that incarcerated teens would practice the guitar more often if he gave them cigarettes every time they played the instrument.
The experiment worked—but of course it did. These behaviorist experiments always work in the short term. And if cigarettes don’t do the trick, we just need to substitute chocolate or cocaine or crystal meth. The problem with these initiatives is not that they don’t change behavior, but they only control the surface action, while typically destroying people’s characters and values in the process.
In other words, it’s better not to learn the guitar if you’re only doing it to get cigarettes. That should be obvious. (...)
Wouldn’t it be great if we could grow our music, arts & culture infrastructure as fast as our gambling businesses?
Well, watch out what you ask for. Because that’s exactly what the leading web platforms are trying to do. And, like those pit bosses, they rely on intermittent reinforcement.
The most obvious example is TikTok. There’s a reason why it’s the most downloaded app in the US.
It’s like a Skinner Box on your phone. You will keep pressing the lever. Once you start using it, you will spend more time with TikTok than with family or friends. (...)
I’ve often mocked this platform in the past for its bite-sized videos—the most popular length is 21 to 34 seconds. But the sad truth is that these numbers actually overstate the level of engagement. Most users scroll rapidly through their videos, and don’t wait for the end—even if it’s just a few seconds away.
The situation is so bad that TikTok has talked about a 6-second goal to its advertisers. That’s a big deal because so many users swipe before that point. When 3 million people watched a 6-second Ryanair ad on the platform, marketeers shouted hosannas from the rooftops. This was a huge victory.
And in a Skinner Box, it is a big win. It’s not easy to get rats to wait six seconds to push the lever.
I focus on TikTok, but every major social media outlet is moving in the same direction. Facebook launched its Reels globally last year. Around that same time, Instagram copied TikTok’s full-screen scrolling interface. A few months later, Twitter did the same. YouTube also has its ‘Shorts’ option. And now Spotify—which has such huge impact on our music culture—also aims to be more like TikTok.
In other words, the web is turning into the online equivalent of the Las Vegas strip. As soon as you leave one casino-like platform offering intermittent reinforcement, you walk into another. The games are almost the same everywhere—with the same loser’s payout—but you have an illusion of choice. (...)
Do we want this? It doesn’t really matter, because we’re getting this.
But there’s the bigger question: How will this story end?
You might think I’m pessimistic. But I’m not.
And, unlike some politicians, I don’t think the answer is censoring TikTok. They are only a small part of the scroll-and-swipe doom loop. If we get rid of them, the core audience just shifts to another Skinner Box, run by Mark Zuckerberg or some other technocrat.
But if censorship isn’t the answer, what is?
First let me share some good news: When I studied behavioral psychology, I came to the conclusion that human beings really aren’t like rats. In the short term, you can manipulate them with Skinnerian systems of reinforcement. But over the long run, humans will do something the rats never do—they rebel.
Sure, if you put people in one of those rat mazes, they will figure out how to run through it and find their rewards. But eventually the more independent individuals will decide to destroy the maze.
People will do this even if they kill themselves in the process. They have this strange little thing called human dignity—and they actually believe it exists. The behavioral psychologists can’t understand this because such metaphysical notions don’t fit into their data-driven world view. But that doesn’t really matter, people believe this stuff—they have a sense of their self worth even when put in a box or a maze. They feel it in their hearts and souls, and it actually gets stronger in the face of adversity.
Some individuals might run the maze, but a meaningful number will resist—and they do so as a matter of principle. (That’s another word you won’t hear from the behaviorists. Personal values and core principles don’t show up in their test models—because they can’t be charted. And the Skinnerieans make the same mistake that undermines all radical empiricists: They assume that things that can’t be measured don’t exist—which is a very foolish and dangerous error.)
I believe that most people put their values ahead of those carefully constructed intermittent reinforcement rewards. (...)
That’s why the swipe-and-scroll culture will soon reach its saturation point. You don’t need to outlaw it. You don’t need to censor it.
And you certainly don’t need to imitate it. That’s because the most powerful response is to do the exact opposite—namely, offer deeper and richer entry points into music, arts, and other cultural idioms.
But there’s the bigger question: How will this story end?
You might think I’m pessimistic. But I’m not.
And, unlike some politicians, I don’t think the answer is censoring TikTok. They are only a small part of the scroll-and-swipe doom loop. If we get rid of them, the core audience just shifts to another Skinner Box, run by Mark Zuckerberg or some other technocrat.
But if censorship isn’t the answer, what is?
First let me share some good news: When I studied behavioral psychology, I came to the conclusion that human beings really aren’t like rats. In the short term, you can manipulate them with Skinnerian systems of reinforcement. But over the long run, humans will do something the rats never do—they rebel.
Sure, if you put people in one of those rat mazes, they will figure out how to run through it and find their rewards. But eventually the more independent individuals will decide to destroy the maze.
People will do this even if they kill themselves in the process. They have this strange little thing called human dignity—and they actually believe it exists. The behavioral psychologists can’t understand this because such metaphysical notions don’t fit into their data-driven world view. But that doesn’t really matter, people believe this stuff—they have a sense of their self worth even when put in a box or a maze. They feel it in their hearts and souls, and it actually gets stronger in the face of adversity.
Some individuals might run the maze, but a meaningful number will resist—and they do so as a matter of principle. (That’s another word you won’t hear from the behaviorists. Personal values and core principles don’t show up in their test models—because they can’t be charted. And the Skinnerieans make the same mistake that undermines all radical empiricists: They assume that things that can’t be measured don’t exist—which is a very foolish and dangerous error.)
I believe that most people put their values ahead of those carefully constructed intermittent reinforcement rewards. (...)
That’s why the swipe-and-scroll culture will soon reach its saturation point. You don’t need to outlaw it. You don’t need to censor it.
And you certainly don’t need to imitate it. That’s because the most powerful response is to do the exact opposite—namely, offer deeper and richer entry points into music, arts, and other cultural idioms.
by Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker | Read more:
Image: Skinner Box
[ed. This is something I figured out years ago after a brief experience with Facebook. Hence this blog.]
