A Tale of Two Rats: The Backstory of a Clever Cartoon
The famous two-rats cartoon is a quick way to remember that your clients control you as much as you control them.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Lattal (2023) tells the story behind a famous cartoon. The drawing shows two rats in a cage. Each rat is both experimenter and subject.
The paper is a short history, not an experiment. It explains how the picture became a symbol for reciprocal control in ABA.
What they found
The cartoon is more than a joke. It reminds us that the client shapes our behavior at the same time we shape theirs.
When a child mands, you deliver a reinforcer. That delivery then reinforces your own future timing and choice of item.
How this fits with other research
Morris et al. (2024) surveyed clinicians and found most switch reinforcers on the fly when kids mand or reject items. Their data show the same loop the cartoon draws: child cue → staff change.
Martens et al. (1989) tracked a girl’s on-task and disruptive minutes. The matching law fit the data. Rates of teacher attention and child behavior moved together, just like the two rats.
Lord et al. (1997) doubled staff praise and cut resident disruptions in half. Again, staff behavior and client behavior locked together in a two-way feed.
Shpall et al. (2026) trained BCBAs to spot assent withdrawal. The training worked because clinicians learned to let client cues control their next clinical move.
Why it matters
You are not outside the contingency. When a client leans, glances, or protests, those cues change what you do next. Track those moments. Write them down. Then ask: did my change feed back and alter the client’s future cue? Seeing the loop helps you plan better interventions and avoid burnout.
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Count how many times you change reinforcers after a client mand or rejection; chart it for one day to see the loop in action.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
A well-known cartoon among psychologists and behavior analysts depicts two rats in a Skinner box, leaning over a response lever as one says to the other, “Boy, do we have this guy conditioned, every time I press the bar down he drops a pellet in.” Anyone who has ever conducted an experiment, worked with a client, or taught someone can relate to the cartoon’s message of reciprocal control between subject and experimenter, client and therapist, and teacher and student. This is the tale of that cartoon and its impact. It begins mid-20th-century at Columbia University, then a hotbed of behavioral psychology, which bears an intimate connection to the cartoon’s appearance. The tale expands from Columbia to follow the lives of its creators from their undergraduate days there to their deaths decades later. The infusion of the cartoon into American psychology begins with B. F. Skinner, but, over the years, it also has appeared in introductory psychology textbooks and in iterative form in mass media outlets such as the World Wide Web and magazines like The New Yorker. The heart of the tale, however, was stated in the second sentence of this abstract. The tale ends with a review of how reciprocal relations like those depicted by the cartoon’s creators have influenced research and practice in behavioral psychology.
Perspectives on Behavior Science, 2023 · doi:10.1007/s40614-023-00372-3