Comments on: Superstitious Pigeon-Guided Missiles

By: roffe

roffe — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 12:03:00 +0000

The Supersition in the pigeon article (http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Pigeon/) may not be the most relevant background article for the present study, as there is nothing superstitious about the training of the guiding pigeons. The pigeons in Skinner's study were trained by operant conditioning.

The article Skinner published about the project is quite an example of how a scientific paper should be written: comprehensive, it outlines the history and background of the project, mentions ethical implications, and is full of Skinner's dry humor.

It's occasionally available on the Web. It can be found in Cumulative Record, which is a collection of Skinner's most noticeable papers.

The project was evnentually closed down and replaced with a competing and more commercially successful project: Radar.

By: Jeremy (PsyBlog author)

Jeremy (PsyBlog author) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:01:00 +0000

Thanks for the correction Bruce.

By: Bruce Abbott

Bruce Abbott — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:31:00 +0000

Jeremy -- A couple of minor corrections: The "pelican" was to be a smart bomb, not a guided missile, and it was to be used against Japanese naval ships, not aircraft. The Japanese had their own smart bombs, which they actually used against American naval ships in the Pacific during WW II. They were flown not by pigeons but by human Kamakazee pilots.

By: Jeremy (PsyBlog author)

Jeremy (PsyBlog author) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:39:00 +0000

Al, useful clarification - thanks.

By: Al Bedard

Al Bedard — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 19:04:00 +0000

In the narrow sense, superstition is the belief in a cause and effect that doesn't exist, and yet is self full-filling. In the case of the pigeons, any random action it did just before the automatic feeding may seem like a cause to it. If it tries the "cause" action again, just before the regular feeding, it responds as if they two are linked. It quickly become self-conditioned to perform this action to "cause" the food to appear. In reality, the behavior of the pigeon does not affect the feeding, but the pigeon now behaves as if it is. This truly is a superstition. The feeding does exist. The pigeon's superstition doesn't cause it.

Likewise, superstition in religion does not mean that God doesn't exist, but that believers have come to associate some non-causal belief with their belief in God, and they will then defend the non-causal belief (the superstition) as strongly as they defend their belief in God, incorrectly associating the belief of the former with the belief in the later.

By: Jeremy (PsyBlog author)

Jeremy (PsyBlog author) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:59:00 +0000

Searching Google, you can see pictures of the prototype warhead.

By: Jeremy (PsyBlog author)

Jeremy (PsyBlog author) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 08:44:00 +0000

Ed - good one!

Dadog - Skinner certainly thought the apparently superstitious behvaviour of pigeons formed the basis of superstition in humans. You'll need a few more factors than just superstition to explain religion though!

By: dadog126

dadog126 — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 22:02:00 +0000

is this how religion began?

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:12:00 +0000

The pigeon-guided missiles are hilarious (although as I understand it, our current 'guided' technology isn't really all that accurate either)
I wonder, if Project Pigeon had got off the ground, would we have seen an arms race, where the pigeon-guided missiles would be shot down by falcon-guided missiles? :-)