Adaptation, teleology, and selection by consequences.
Reinforcement works like natural selection—variation first, then the environment keeps the winners—so keep your explanations environmental, not mental.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ringen (1993) wrote a theory paper. He asked: is reinforcement a mechanical push-pull, or is it more like Darwinian selection? He argued the latter. Reinforcement is not a little force inside the head. It is the environment selecting responses the way nature selects finches.
The paper defends radical behaviorism. It kicks out leftover mentalistic words like "purpose" or "intention." In their place it puts selection by consequences, plain and environmental.
What they found
The author found no new data. Instead he showed that selection logic already fits every corner of our field. Extinction bursts, novel shapes of response, even creativity all look like variation first, then environmental pruning.
The payoff is a clean, post-Darwinian vocabulary you can use with parents, teachers, and payors without sneaking in ghost-in-the-machine talk.
How this fits with other research
Koegel et al. (1992) set the table one year earlier. They used the same selection analogy to explain extinction bursts and creative leaps. Ringen (1993) widens the lens to all reinforcement, making the idea the core of radical behaviorism.
Stahlman et al. (2024) carry the baton further. They apply selection logic to both hard-wired reflexes and everyday habits, showing the same rulebook spans evolutionary and learning time scales. Donahoe (2017) bridges the gap with neuroscience, mapping selection to synaptic change. Together they turn a 1993 thought into a cross-disciplinary theme.
Ortu et al. (2019) stretch the idea into memory. They treat recognition as operant selection acting on neural response strength. The same mechanism that strengthens a bar press now strengthens a "yes, I saw this before" response.
Why it matters
When a parent asks "Why did my child start screaming again after we ignored it?" you can skip mentalistic guesses. Say: "His behavior is varying; the environment is about to select quieter forms. Let's stay consistent and speed up the pruning." The selection story is quick, parent-friendly, and keeps the explanation where it belongs: in the environment, not inside the skin.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This paper presents and defends the view that reinforcement and natural selection are selection processes, that selection processes are neither mechanistic nor teleological, and that mentalistic and vitalistic processes are teleological but not mechanistic. The differences between these types of processes are described and used in discussing the conceptual and methodological significance of "selection type theories" and B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorist view that "operant behavior is the field of intention, purpose, and expectation. It deals with that field precisely as the theory of evolution has dealt with another kind of purpose" (1986, p. 716). The antimentalism of radical behaviorism emerges as a post-Darwinian extension of Francis Bacon's (and Galileo's) influential view that "[the introduction of final causes] rather corrupts than advances the sciences" (Bacon, 1905, p. 302).
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1993 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1993.60-3