# Skinner and the Rabble Criiters

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skinner-and-the-rabble-criiters/196696>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [August 21, 2003, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skinner-and-the-rabble-criiters/196696 "2003-08-21T15:32:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nweissma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/aca169/32.png) [@nweissma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nweissma)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2003, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skinner-and-the-rabble-criiters/196696/1 "2003-08-21T15:32:12Z")

</div>

Re Cecil’s recent BF Skinner article: “Skinner discovered a great many subtleties…training is most effective not when behavior A _always_ produces reward X , but when it does so only intrermittently - the critter won’t give up so quickly when its efforts aren’t immediately rewarded. Through combinations of positive and negative reinforcement, one can shape complex behaviors…”

the question here is a pocket hanger: is there evidence that politicians, military elite, propagandists, demigods, advertising people, lawyers, and other shapers of human Rabble thought, are applying these principles to the Rabble critters, which by their nature are susceptible to such malleability methods?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2003, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skinner-and-the-rabble-criiters/196696/2 "2003-08-21T20:03:53Z")

</div>

Welcome to the SDMB, **nweissma**.

Link to the article:  
[Whatever became of B. F. Skinner?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030815.html)