The Dancing Mouse: A Study in Animal BehaviorYerkes, Robert Mearns
Science
The Dancing Mouse: A Study in Animal Behavior
Yerkes, Robert Mearns
Animal behavior; Dancing mice
In general, the method of punishment is more satisfactory than the method
of reward, because it can be controlled to a greater extent. The
experimenter cannot force his subject to desire food; he can, however,
force it to discriminate between conditions to the best of its knowledge
and ability by giving it a disagreeable stimulus every time it makes a
mistake. In other words, the conditions upon which the avoidance of a
disagreeable factor in the environment depends are far simpler and much
more constant than those upon which the seeking of an agreeable factor
depends. Situations which are potentially beneficial to the animal attract
it in varying degrees according to its internal condition; situations
which are potentially disagreeable or injurious repel it with a constancy
which is remarkable. The favorable stimulus solicits a positive response;
the unfavorable stimulus demands a negative response.
Finally, in connection with the discussion of motives, it is an important
fact that forms of reward are far harder to find than forms of punishment.
Many animals feed only at long intervals, are inactive, do not try to
escape from confinement, cannot be induced to seek a particular spot, in a
word, do not react positively to any of the situations or conditions which
are employed usually in behavior experiments. It is, however, almost
always possible to find some disagreeable stimulus which such an animal
will attempt to avoid.
As it happens, the dancer is an animal which does not stand the lack of
food well enough to make hunger a possible motive. I was driven to make
use of the avoiding reaction, and it has proved so satisfactory that I am
now using it widely in connection with experiments on other animals. The
use of the induction shock, upon which I depended almost wholly in the
discrimination experiments with the dancer, requires care; but I am
confident that no reasonable objection to the conduct of the experiments
could be made on the ground of cruelty, for the strength of the current
was carefully regulated and the shocks were given only for an instant at
intervals. The best proof of the humaneness of the method is the fact that
the animals continued in perfect health during months of experimentation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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