Skinner’s Inventions

During the throws of WWII, the military called upon science in hopes of getting a one up on their enemies. It was during this time B.F. Skinner, infamous for his research in behaviorism and the inventions that applied these theories, was called upon to support the U.S. war effort. Skinner with the help of two graduate students, Keller and Marian Breland developed Project Pigeon. The U.S. was desperate to increase accuracy of bombs to target to decrease civilian casualties (Skinner, 1960).

Operant conditioning is a method of learning process that employs reinforcement or punishment to strengthen a behavior. Different from classical conditioning, operant or instrumental conditioning the stimuli is present to control the desired response or behavior while classical conditioning involves pairing stimuli with involuntary often biological behavioral responses (Schultz & Schultz, 2015).

Skinner and his assistants applied operant conditioning in Project Pigeon to train the birds for a desired response. In this case, the pigeons were learning how to guide missiles. The pigeon placed in front of screen and trained to recognize the target and peck at the screen. Their effort was to keep the missile on target and prevent veering off course (Skinner, 1960).

Ultimately the project was only studied and not actually used in the war however the implications remain. The partnering of humans and animals and the benefit of this relationship was only grazing the surface in the mid-20^th century. While this project was cancelled before it could be adopted by the U.S. Military, valuable research was obtained that is pivotal for the history of psychology (Schultz & Schultz, 2015).

Skinner, B. F. (1960). Pigeons in a pelican. American Psychologist, 15(1), 28–37.

Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2015). A History of Modern Psychology (11th Edition). Cengage Learning US. https://capella.vitalsource.com/books/9781285228402