Choice between food and heroin: effects of morphine, naloxone, and secobarbital.
Morphine cuts heroin choice and naloxone boosts it, proving reinforcer value can be dialed up or down pharmacologically.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Rusch et al. (1981) let lab animals pick between food and heroin.
They gave morphine, naloxone, or secobarbital first. Then they watched which option the animals chose more often.
The set-up was a simple concurrent schedule: two levers, two outcomes.
What they found
Heroin became less popular when morphine was on board.
Naloxone did the opposite: animals picked heroin more.
Secobarbital barely moved the needle. The drugs did not change food choices, only heroin ones.
How this fits with other research
Wanchisen et al. (1989) later swapped heroin for pentobarbital. Monkeys still followed the same rule: bigger drug dose, more choices. The basic finding held across drugs.
Millard (1979) showed that a short blackout stops superstitious switching in concurrent chains. R et al. used the same chain logic, proving the blackout trick works even when drug states twist the value of one option.
Green et al. (1999) looked at noncontingent reinforcement and found clients choose to skip problem behavior when free goodies show up. The common thread: change the contingencies and choice flips, whether the reinforcer is food, heroin, or social praise.
Why it matters
You can’t give clients morphine, but you can change the value of their options. If a reinforcer is too strong, add a cost (effort, delay, or a brief blackout) to tip the scale. If you want a new skill to win, preload it with free reinforcers the way naloxone preloaded heroin. The study reminds us that preference is fluid, not fixed.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add a 3-s blackout after each problem-response switch to see if choice moves toward the new skill.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Baboons responded on a choice task on which discrete trials involved choosing between an intravenous injection of heroin (.32 or 1.0 mg/kg) or the availability of food pellets. An intertrial interval of three hours followed the completion of each trial. Under baseline conditions baboons consistently completed the eight available trials each day. Typically, animals chose heroin on three or four trials a day and food on the remaining trials. Animals tended to space the selection of heroin rather than choosing heroin on consecutive trials. A series of single-day experimental manipulations was undertaken to characterize performance further. Manipulation of the heroin dose produced shifts in the relative frequency of choosing the drug option which were inversely related to dose. Manipulation of number of pellets per food trial produced little change in distribution of choices. Noncontingent administration of morphine produced dose-related decreases in relative frequency of heroin choices, and a higher dose decreased the number of trials completed. Noncontingent naloxone produced dose-related increases in the relative frequency of heroin choices. Noncontingent secobarbital had no effect on distribution of choices, and high doses reduced the number of trials completed per day. The results suggest that morphine and naloxone produce shifts in this choice behavior by selectively interacting with the reinforcing properties of the option involving heroin.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1981 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1981.35-335