There have always been two orientations to the study of free will in psychology:
A. Trying to prove that free will does not exist;
Free will is a subjective experience of "causality" by people, and people have the need for free will.
But does man have free will? Skinner's box experiment tells you that there is none!
Skinner was a representative of New Behaviorism in the United States and the psychologist who attracted the most infamy and criticism in the 20th century.
In his experiments, he designed Skinner's box to study operational conditioning, cleverly arranged food, control levers and other stimuli, so that rats were hinted at by the situation, and then there was a reaction that was originally considered autonomous, so that the world saw the significant impact of "reward" and "reinforcement" on shaping behavior. Skinner thus argues that human free will does not exist at all. He also advocated training humans or animals through reinforcement to complete assigned tasks.
【Experimental process】
Inside the Skinner box, there is a mechanism, powered by compressed air, composed of various parts and gears, and the rats locked in the box only need to remove the control lever of this mechanism, and the food particles will fall out. At first, the rat just inadvertently stepped on the control lever and found that some food fell out, after which the rat would deliberately step on the lever. That is, in order to get the reward of food, the mouse learned to operate the control lever.
Skinner then adjusted the frequency with which food fell out, and rats had to press the rod 5 times to get the reward. It turned out that the rat adjusted its behavior, and it would press 5 times in one breath. Similarly, if the frequency of food falling out is adjusted to 20 times, the rat will also press the rod 20 times in one breath. The frequency with which rewards appeared changed the way animals responded, and Skinner called the reinforcement of mice an operant reflex.
Skinner again set out to study the reinforcement of the irregularity. He let the pressure bar fall out of the proportion of food, and the frequency is not fixed, the experimental results are unexpected: the way the intermittent food reward is given, but the rats continue to press the rod like an addiction, regardless of whether they can get the reward or not; in contrast, if the fixed reward stops, such as 5 times the pressure bar can get food, the mouse stops responding less time. In situations where the reward interval is irregular, it takes the longest time to eliminate the rat's reaction behavior.