Professors, rats and dolphins
Operant conditioning is a basic part of behavioral psychology and is a modification on classical or Pavlovian conditioning. In operant conditioning you wait until the experimental animal or the animal whose behavior you want to modify (your spouse, your child better still your self) does the desired behavior and you reward it.
It is accepted as the best way of training animals by animal trainers the best of whom only use thr carrot and never the stick.
This is an urban myth about psychology students — it may have actually happened once:
In a psychology department the professor was teaching operant conditioning.
The students decided to use conditioning techniques on the professor. They conspired together to force the professor on the window shelf to the left of the lecture theater.
So next week the students would be attentive whenever the professor would move to the left and would be bored and yawning when he would move to the right.
This started the professor unconsciously to move to the left of the center of the lecture theater. Now the students changed their center of attention moving it all the time to the left. And slowly but surely the professor moved to the left.
Eventually again the students changed their center of attention to the window. Now they paid attention only when the professor was near the window. The professor moved nearer and nearer to the window and eventually before the lecture was done the professor was sitting on the window shelf and completing the lecture from that position.
At this time the student burst out laughing and clapped for the professor as he had unwittingly demonstrated the validity of what he was teaching.
I heard the story thirty seven years ago in England from a psychology student who claimed his class did that.
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