R. J. Herrnstein

Rational Choice Theory Necessary but Not Sufficient

I I I ! I ABSTRACT: A case is presented for supplementing the standard theory of rational choice, according to which subjects maximize reinforcement, with a theory arising from experiments on animal and human behavior. Data from these experiments suggest that behavioral allocation comes into equilibrium when it equalizes the average re- inforcement rates earned by all active response alternatives in the subjects choice set. This principle, called the matching law, deviates from reinforcement maximization in some, but not all, environments. Many observed devia- tions from reinforcement maximization are reasonably well explained by conformity to the matching law. The theory of rational choice fails as a description of actual behavior, but it remains unequaled as a normative theory. It tells us how we should behave in order to maximize reinforcement, not how we do behave.

Preference reversal and delayed reinforcement

Pigeons chose, in a two-key discrete-trial procedure, between 2- and 4-sec access to grain, with the larger amount always presented 4 sec later than the smaller. As the delay between the choice and the availability of the smaller reinforcement was varied from .01 to 12 sec, all subjects reversed preference from the small-early to the large-late reinforcement. The values of delay at which preference reversed were approximately consistent with the matching law as adapted for delayed reinforcement.

Acquisition, generalization, and discrimination reversal of a natural concept.

Pigeons rapidly acquired a discrimination between 40 pictures containing trees and 40 not containing trees. Differential reinforcement did not affect the discriminability of individual instances of trees. Generalization to new instances of tree pictures was better than to new instances of non-tree pictures. The level of discrimination did not depend on whether trees constituted the reinforced or the unreinforced category.

Fish as a Natural Category for People and Pigeons1

Publisher Summary This chapter describes and compares the result of three experiments, one on human subjects and the other on pigeons, and draws conclusions about categorization in light of the results. The chapter establishes rankings of the photographs for human subjects, using reaction time to quantify the discriminability or acceptability of the fish or non-fish in a collection of 35-mm slides. Twelve human subjects responded to 160 underwater photographs to indicate whether they saw a fish or not. Four pigeons rapidly learned to sort underwater photographs being seen for the first time according to the presence or absence of fish in them. For a quasi-concept, a set of instances sorted according to the presence or absence of fish divided randomly, with as many fish in the negative class as in the positive. Pigeons learned to sort 80 stimuli into two categories. They learned quicker when the categories corresponded to fish versus non-fish than when the same stimuli divided into two arbitrary categories. Seven out of seven pigeons in two experiments learned to sort underwater photographs on the basis of the presence or absence of fish.

Behavior, Reinforcement and Utility

The standard economic assumption about human behavior is that it optimizes overall utility. But in many controlled experiments on behavioral allocation, it has been found that organisms allocate their behavior so as to earn equal average rates of reinforcement from all alternatives. Equalizing average rates of reinforcement is a principle of allocation that generically violates the assumption of optimality.

Feedback functions for reinforcement: A paradigmatic experiment

A reinforcement schedule states a rule for obtaining reinforcement as a function of behavior actually emitted and perhaps as a function of additional variables. These functions are here called “feedback functions.” Behavior actually emitted is, in turn, a function of obtained reinforcement. This reciprocal interdependency was quantified for an experiment in which pigeons chose among either three or two alternatives. Shifting from three to two alternatives, and vice versa, produced changes in the distribution of responding which were approximately accounted for by equations that combined the feedback functions with the matching law for reinforced responding. These equations predicted, among other things, a violation of the constant-ratio rule of formal choice theory and an absence of simultaneous contrast effects between response alternatives reinforced on variable-interval schedules. Both predictions were approximately confirmed.

Some Criminogenic Traits of Offenders

Who commits crime? Depending on how broad the brush, the picture we develop of the typical offender may or may not reveal patterns of traits that predispose certain people to break the law. With too fine a brush, only the accidents of single lifetimes become salient; with too broad, it is only general sociological forces that emerge. Between these two pictures—the one too specific, the other too general to be very useful—lies evidence showing offenders, on the average, to be something other than a random sampling of the population at large. This evidence, reviewed here, also makes clear that the distinguishing traits of criminals cannot be fully explained as the result of society’s treatment of them at home, in school, or in the workplace. Nor can they be entirely explained by the operation of the criminal justice system. The average offender is psychologically atypical in various respects, not necessarily to a pathological degree, but enough that the normal prohibitions against crime are in some measure ineffective. In designing public policy, it is helpful to understand that a society that successfully deters crime in 80% to 90% of its citizens may find it hard to deter it in the remaining 10% to 20% for reasons that have more to do with individual differences than with defects in policy.

Is anybody listening

Although extensive research analyzes the factors that motivate European parties to shift their policy positions, there is little cross-national research that analyzes how voters respond to parties’ policy shifts. We report pooled, time-series, analyses of election survey data from several European polities, which suggest that voters do not systematically adjust their perceptions of parties’ positions in response to shifts in parties’ policy statements during election campaigns. We also find no evidence that voters adjust their Left-Right positions or their partisan loyalties in response to shifts in parties’ campaign-based policy statements. By contrast, we find that voters do respond to their subjective perceptions of the parties’ positions. Our findings have important implications for party policy strategies and for political representation. Research on political representation in Europe emphasizes the linkages between parties’ policy positions and their supporters’ policy beliefs. According to this responsible party model of political representation, it is normatively desirable that parties’ policy programmes – and governing parties’ policy outputs – match the views of the party’s supporters, a desiratum that reflects Sartori’s observation that “citizens in Western democracies are represented by and through parties. This is inevitable” (1968, page 471, emphasis in original). Over the past thirty years dozens of studies have analyzed the mass-elite policy linkages that the responsible party model highlights (see, e.g., Dalton 1985; Powell 1989; Iversen 1994). These studies typically report reasonably close matches between parties’ positions and their supporters’ policy preferences, particularly with respect to policy debates over Left-Right social welfare issues (see, e.g., Dalton 1985). In an evolving political environment wherein both parties and voters shift their policy positions, policy correspondence between political parties and their supporters can be maintained through some combination of party elites responding to their supporters and these supporters responding to party elites, i.e., elites may dynamically adjust their policy positions in response to shifts in their supporters’ beliefs, a process we label party responsiveness, and party supporters may dynamically adjust their beliefs in response to shifts in their preferred party’s policy positions, a process we label party persuasion. Alternatively, rank-and-file voters may switch their partisan loyalties in response to parties’ policy shifts, i.e. voters may engage in policy-based partisan switching. The latter two processes both involve voters responding to parties, and we collectively label these as processes of partisan adjustments. We analyze the dynamics of voters’ responses to shifts in European parties’ Left-Right positions. We ask the following questions: When parties shift their Left-Right policy statements, as re1 An alternative representation criterion emphasizes the link between government policies and the median voter position in the electorate (see, e.g., Powell 2000; McDonald and Budge 2005). flected in their election manifestos, do citizens update their perceptions of the parties’ Left-Right positions? And, do we observe partisan adjustments in response to parties’ shifting policy statements, i.e., do citizens respond to parties’ statements by shifting their own Left-Right positions (a persuasion process) and/or their partisan loyalties (partisan switching)? The surprising answer we provide to each of the above questions is no. We find no substantively or statistically significant evidence that voters adjust their perceptions of parties’ Left-Right positions in response to the policy statements in parties’ election manifestos – a conclusion that is striking given that interviews with European political elites that we conducted (discussed below) suggest that parties campaign on the basis of these manifestos. We also find no evidence of citizens’ partisan adjustments in response to parties’ policy statements, i.e., we find no evidence that voters adjust their Left-Right positions or their partisan loyalties in response to these policy statements. This latter conclusion holds both for analyses of national election surveys from five European countries, and for separate analyses of Eurobarometer data from 12 countries over the period 19732002. Simply put, we find that when parties shift the statements in their policy programmes – statements that form the basis for the parties’ election campaigns, according to the party elites we interviewed – there is no evidence that voters respond by adjusting their perceptions of the parties’ Left-Right positions, their own Left-Right positions, or their partisan loyalties. By contrast, we find that European citizens do react to their perceptions of parties’ Left-Right positions, i.e., citizens adjust their Left-Right positions and their partisan loyalties in response to the parties’ policy images. Overall, our findings thereby suggest that Left-Right ideology does matter to 2 The five countries are Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway, the five European polities for which national election survey data are available over a lengthy time period. 3 The twelve countries that are included in the Eurobarometer surveys are Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Luxembourg, Greece, Ireland, Belgium, and Italy.

Die Messung der relativen kognitiven Befähigung: Der IQ

Manche Menschen behalten von einem Lied den Text, andere die Melodie, wieder andere beides oder weder das eine noch das andere. Den einen macht Rechnen Spas, den anderen graut davor. Einen kaputten Automotor zu reparieren, davor haben Sie vielleicht Respekt, oder Sie mogen so etwas als hinderlich empfinden. Kurz, die Menschen unterscheiden sich in psychologischer Hinsicht, nicht nur in physischer. Doch gibt es fur solche Unterschiede Grenzen. Es ist unwahrscheinlich, das Sie einem Mitmenschen begegnen, dessen Seelenleben sich von dem Ihren so sehr unterscheidet, wie das eines Schimpansen, geschweige denn das einer Spinne. Verglichen mit solchen Lebewesen ist uns das Seelenleben unserer Zeitgenossen zum Verwechseln ahnlich.

Einfache mentale Vorgänge

Kann man den menschlichen Geist uberhaupt wissenschaftlich untersuchen? Sicher kann man die Organe, die das Erleben ermoglichen, z.B. das Auge oder Ohr, und gewisse Tatigkeiten untersuchen, die unserem jeweiligen psychischen Zustand entsprechen. Wie aber steht es mit dem menschlichen Geist selbst? Kann die Wissenschaft den Bereich zwischen einstromenden Sinneswahrnehmungen und nach ausen gerichteten motorischen Impulsen erfassen — jenen Bereich, in dem die meisten Menschen ihr Selbst lokalisieren? Wir nehmen unser Selbst weder in den Augen oder Ohren noch in den Muskeln wahr. Es scheint irgendwo kurz hinter dem einen bzw. kurz vor dem anderen zu liegen. „Du“ siehst, was deine Augen entdecken und dann bewegst „du“ vielleicht deinen Arm, um etwas zu beruhren. Was und wo ist dieses „Du“?