Saturday, June 06, 2009

Gambling, free will, and operant conditioning

B.F. Skinner is the type of psychologist a modern, science minded person can relate to. No guilt-based Freudian mumbo jumbo from this guy. Unfortunately, some of his beliefs are a bit depressing, like the one describes late in this video, where he questions the existence of free will in humans.

His observations on gambling are fantastic- variable and infrequent reward schedules create dramatic responses in animals, including humans.