In Skinners system, reinforcement is automatic, almost by definition. Perhaps the most convincing demonstration of the automatic effect of a reinforcer is what Skinner (1948) has called "superstitious behaviour". In this situation, an event known to be reinforcing is presented intermittently without respect to what the subject is doing. But if it is doing anything (and this can be made likely through deprivation, etc.), the response just prior to the delivery of the reinforcer is strengthened, as evidenced by an increase in its rate of emission. The subject comes to "act as if" the response that has been fortuitously strengthened somehow produces the reinforcement. This occurs even though the reinforcer is actually delivered by a mechanical device that is in no way responsive to the subject's behaviour.
The automatic effect of reinforcement is also illustrated in Skinner's effective techniques of shaping behaviour. These procedures could hardly have sprung from a point of view that regarded all behaviour as elicited. But with the organism viewed as "emitting" the varied responses already in his repertoire, it was an easy step to conceive of shaping. If the observer simply controlled the quick presentation of a reinforcer, then he could strengthen any behaviour the organism happened to emit. Responses not in the subject's repertoire could then be built into it by appropriate arrangements of environmental conditions and the successive approximation technique.
According to Skinner, the superstitious behavior of individuals is the outcome of
