I want to talk to you today about operant conditioning. You’ve probably bumped into it at one point in your life: it’s the mice in the box pressing levers for food.
The brain is wired to move towards rewards & stay away from punishments. Pretty simple in theory. (crossed cognitive wires is where this gets complex). So B.F. Skinner designed these operant conditioning chambers – now known as the Skinner box – wherein he would administer food to mice in order to see how they behaved, how they learned, & how they unlearned.
Mice were offered food when pressing a lever, on different types of schedules; a Fixed Ratio & Variable Ratio. Fixed ratio responses are pretty easy: every 2nd time the mouse presses the lever, or every 10th time the mouse presses the lever, it gets a piece of food. The learning curve on this is pretty clear. It doesn’t take the mouse long to learn the pattern, because the result is consistent. Once the pattern is learned, the mouse doesn’t need to try as hard. It’s secure in the pattern. Equally important, in unlearning, the mouse knows, in a short timespan, that if the pattern has been broken it’s useless to keep trying.
Let’s look at Variable Ratio. This is a process wherein the reward was given on a numerical average. Meaning that if the variable ratio was 6, the mouse could get the food on the first try and then not again until the 12th – making the average response a ratio of 6. If the ratio was 10, the mouse could receive at random intervals as long as the average was 10. The learning curve for this is MUCH longer – particularly the higher the ratio. Because you NEVER KNOW when the foods going to come. Even worse the unlearning for this is dramatically longer. Because you also never know if the food has stopped coming. It could always be just around the corner.
I’m sure you could see where I was going with this analogy and certainly at some point in our lives we’ve likely bumped into a situation that resembles the latter. The boss that keeps that raise and promotion just around the corner, the hot and cold boyfriend, the inconsistent mother, the city where dreams come true. The American Dream (specifically NY and LA) is based on this hypothesis.
I’m going to add another interesting element to the mix, in research around gambling (which is exactly a variable ratio operant conditioning platform), it demonstrated that our brains light up as much for a NEAR WIN as they do for a win. So even though you have not won, your brain has told you the opposite….so give it another go. This behavior is incredibly addictive. Because if the reward could always be just around the corner, there is never an incentive for you to stop pressing the lever.
Remember that these researchers wanted to see what happens when you stop administering the bait – but the people in our lives don’t. Anyone trying to keep us pressing the lever to get what we want is going to reinforce that behavior as much as they can. But we have something that the poor mice don’t: Consciousness.
We can step back and say…wait a second, how many times have I pressed this lever and what has it given me? I’m not talking about passion projects, or skill based learning where we either do things for the sake of them, or where time & effort shows – clear – incremental growth. I’m talking about the toxic relationship, the toxic job, the toxic friendship, the toxic addiction. Our brain, and the third party, will work together to keep us stuck in that spot. Constantly pressing in the hope of a reward.
We have the ability to stop the game. We have the ability to see the dynamic and opt out of someone’s Skinner Box. Examine the situations in your life that sound like this. Observe them with scientific objectivity. Become the scientist and the mouse and see what happens. Watch what happens when you stop pressing the lever. Remember the cardinal rule of manifestation: you cannot get what you want until you stop accepting (and trying for!) what you don’t.
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