Anyone ever heard of this? It was behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner's famous experiment.
He placed a starving pigeon into a box. Every few minutes a pellet of food would come out. One time, the pellet came out just as the pigeon was raising a leg. From that time on, whenever the pigeon was hungry, it would raise its leg, because it believed that this action would result in a pellet. Another time, the pigeon had its leg in the air and its head cocked when a pellet came out. From that time forward, the poor bird stayed in a head-cocked, leg raised position nearly 24 hours a day.
The point of this experiment was to show that, somewhere, ingrained in the DNA of our animal nature is a belief that random rituals will produce desired results. This is the basis of superstition and, some would argue, religion.
I keep on thinking of Skinner's experiment every time I read many of these posts about various pre-and-post shaving techniques and products used. So far, I've tried a bunch of them and none of them really produces the BBS, irritation-free shave I seek. But the minute I find one that does (or develop one of my own), I'll be an evangelist for that method, even if the results might be due more to random factors (the amount of steam in the bathroom, my energy level, how I slept the night before) rather than the method itself.
This isn't to say that any of these methods don't work. Clearly, they do, and the numbers of advocates for certain methods is a good testimonial to their efficacy. It's just that, in the end, all of these things are ultimately rituals of some kind of another, and one man's leg lift is another man's tail shrug.
Jeff in Boston
He placed a starving pigeon into a box. Every few minutes a pellet of food would come out. One time, the pellet came out just as the pigeon was raising a leg. From that time on, whenever the pigeon was hungry, it would raise its leg, because it believed that this action would result in a pellet. Another time, the pigeon had its leg in the air and its head cocked when a pellet came out. From that time forward, the poor bird stayed in a head-cocked, leg raised position nearly 24 hours a day.
The point of this experiment was to show that, somewhere, ingrained in the DNA of our animal nature is a belief that random rituals will produce desired results. This is the basis of superstition and, some would argue, religion.
I keep on thinking of Skinner's experiment every time I read many of these posts about various pre-and-post shaving techniques and products used. So far, I've tried a bunch of them and none of them really produces the BBS, irritation-free shave I seek. But the minute I find one that does (or develop one of my own), I'll be an evangelist for that method, even if the results might be due more to random factors (the amount of steam in the bathroom, my energy level, how I slept the night before) rather than the method itself.
This isn't to say that any of these methods don't work. Clearly, they do, and the numbers of advocates for certain methods is a good testimonial to their efficacy. It's just that, in the end, all of these things are ultimately rituals of some kind of another, and one man's leg lift is another man's tail shrug.
Jeff in Boston
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