Nondiscriminated avoidance of shock by pigeons pecking a key.

Pigeons pecked a small key to avoid mild electric shock. No lights or sounds told them when shock might come. The researchers varied how much time a peck bought before the next possible shock. They also gave some birds amphetamine and others reserpine to see how drugs changed the behavior.

Shorter safe periods kept pecking fast. Longer safe periods let the birds slow down. Amphetamine sped the pecking back up. Reserpine slowed it down even more. The birds learned to work just hard enough to stay safe.

Foster et al. (1979) added free shock-free periods and saw the same drop in pecking. Their work extends this study by showing that extra safety, not earned by the bird, still weakens avoidance.

HAKMCMILLAN et al. (1965) used shock paired with a light to punish pecking. That early paper set up the idea that shock can control bird key-pecks. The 1973 study flips the contingency: peck now avoids shock later.

Weisman et al. (1975) and Corfield-Sumner et al. (1977) both used response-dependent shock as punishment. Their pigeons slowed pecking when each peck produced shock. Here, pecks cancel shock, so rates rise—an apparent contradiction that shows contingency direction matters more than the simple presence of shock.

You can see the same law in human avoidance. A child who asks for help every minute may be on a short ‘safe’ interval. Stretch the interval and the asking drops. Check if ‘problem’ behavior is really avoidance, then test longer safe periods before you add prompts or drugs.