Social Traps

JOHN PLATT Mental Health Research Institute University of Michigan 1

A new area of study is the field that some of us the problem of competitive extermination of the are beginning to call social traps. The term refers last great whales. to situations in society that contain traps formally A converse type of situation might still be re- like a fish trap, where men or organizations or garded as a generalized trap, but perhaps is more whole societies get themselves started in some di- accurately called a countertrap. The considera- rection or some set of relationships that later tion of individual advantage prevents us from doing prove to be unpleasant or lethal and that they see something that might nevertheless be of great bene- no easy way to back out of or to avoid. fit to the group as a whole. It is, so to speak, a Two recent descriptions of traps of this kind social fence rather than a social trap. have already become widely quoted and discussed. A famous, or infamous, example of this kind The first is Garrett Hardin's (1968) article en- was the Kitty Genovese murder in New York City titled "The ." The a few years ago, in which a girl was raped and title refers to situations like that of the Commons, killed in an areaway while more than 30 neighbors or public grassland, of the old New England vil- watched out the windows—and none of them called lages, where anyone could graze his cows freely. the police. This apparent failure of concern and Since this is a "free good" for the owners of cows, action produced a national wave of horror, as well every owner can make money faster by increasing as much recrimination afterward among those in- the number of cattle that he grazes there. But as volved. Yet, in such a situation, it is clear that everyone's number of cattle increases, the grass there is a certain individual barrier against calling gets scarcer until finally it is destroyed entirely, the police. Not only must you tear yourself away and the owners collectively wind up with a loss from the spectacle, but you face the probability of rather than a gain. The trap is that each individ- having to testify in court and even a chance of ual owner continues to do something for his in- being hunted down by the murderer or his friends. Each observer may have felt a strong prick of dividual advantage that collectively is damaging to social conscience at the time, but simply hoped the group as a whole. that someone else would make the troublesome Hardin saw this as the prototype and formal phone call first. analogue of the world population problem, where Many contrasting cases of this kind have been each family may find pleasure and advantage in discussed in a fascinating article by Thomas more babies; and the problem of competitive con- Schelling (1971), "The Ecology of Micromotives." sumption of nonrenewable natural resources; and Schelling cataloged several dozen type situations where individual actions or inactions controlled by immediate personal goals or self-interest, even 1 This article is a report of research in progress by rather weak self-interest, produce long-range so- John Cross, Mel Guyer, Gardner Quarton, and the author, all of whom are affiliated with the Mental Health Research cietal effects which are to almost no one's self- Institute of the University of Michigan. The article was interest. an invited address presented at the annual meeting of For example, he demonstrated how a population the American Psychological Association, Honolulu, Hawaii, September 1972. of red people and green people distributed at Requests for reprints should be sent to John Platt, who random over a chessboard who move from time to is on leave for the 1972-1973 year. His address is Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 202 Juni- time to new sites can become sharply segregated pero Serra Boulevard, Stanford, California 94305. by color very quickly even if the individuals have

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • AUGUST 1973 • 641 only a mild for neighborhoods of the menter or the environment creating a situation same color. or stimulus, S, in which an organism or subject Another example is the decay of railroad service, emits some behavior, B, which is followed by some as people begin to prefer using their cars. As the or result, R. We find it helpful to railroad begins to go downhill, still more people write this S-B-R formulation on two lines, as prefer cars. The process is self-accelerating, end- follows: ing up with no one riding the trains, while there are traffic jams on the highways in which everyone B B B S R . . S R . . S R involved would prefer—too late—to be using the railroad. The process of inflation is likewise self- where the top line represents the actions or outputs accelerating, with every increase in inflation pro- of the organism and the bottom line represents the ducing new demands for raises in wages and actions or inputs of the environment, with an on- profits, which drive up inflation faster. When we going transactional relation between organism and begin to look at such examples, we see that many environment. The S-B-R sequence, even if writ- of our really troublesome social and political prob- ten only once, is thought of as being repeated over lems today are made difficult, not by stupidity or and over again in learning or maintaining behavior. avarice or immorality but by a certain trap com- A positive reinforcement or result, R+, is defined ponent of this kind. as an environmental consequence that makes an Our group at the University of Michigan be- initial behavior, B, more probable when that par- came interested in these questions in the course of ticular type of S occurs again. An aversive conse- studying Skinnerian mechanisms of reinforcement quence or a negative result, R", is one that makes of behavior, examining how they apply to personal a given B less probable the next time S occurs. self-control and to social transactions. We were This is equivalent to a feedback formulation, trying to make formulations of the behavioral re- in which S is an input field to the organism, B is sults that might be applicable to several disciplines, the motor output from the organism back to the my own interest being that of general systems environment, and R is the "reafferent stimulation," theory; John Cross, an economist, was concerned or change of input field from the environment with microeconomics and bargaining; Mel Guyer, which gives the changed "error signal" to the or- a game theorist, was interested in the locked-in ganism and closes the feedback loop, as seen in conflict and cooperation modes of non-zero-sum Figure 1. games; and Gardner Quarton, a psychiatrist, was A frequent objection to the Skinnerian formula- interested in the explanatory and therapeutic pos- tion is that the definition of reinforcement or of a sibilities of behavioral reinforcement. positive reinforcer is "circular," as in saying, "be- After reading the Hardin article and later the havior is made more probable by positive reinforce- Schelling article, we suddenly saw that a number ment." But this is very similar to the useful Dar- of their social trap and countertrap situations winian phrase, "the survival of the fittest," which could be formalized in a reinforcement language. This quickly led to a useful classification of dif- Organism ferent kinds of traps, with interesting parallels between what had seemed to be very different /B problems. This formulation led in turn to several S' 1 R suggestions of personal and social methods of self- control for getting out of these traps. Here I Environment want to outline some of these new findings.

Reinforcements and Behavior First, however, it may be helpful to describe our FIG. 1. Feedback loop where S = input field to the organism, B = motor output from the organism back way of formalizing the Skinnerian results showing to the environment, and R = the change of input field the effects of reinforcement on behavior. Skinner from the environment which gives the changed "error uses a three-term formulation, with the experi- signal" to the organism and closes the feedback loop.

642 • AUGUST 1973 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST is likewise a circular definition of fitness. In Here, the immediate punishment (or its expecta- fact, Skinner seems to think of the evolution of tion after some experience) tends to block behavior behavior in an organism from childhood as in- B, even though there would be a long-run reward. volving a similar "natural selection" of behaviors In these formulations, we have a behavioral defi- that "work" and therefore "survive" in a given nition of the exact traditional meaning of the words stimulus situation, presumably because there are trap and fence. internal neurophysiological loops of response that A similar concept of reversal oj reinforcers can are reinforced while others are eliminated. He be applied to individual-group traps, where it is sees the evolution of a repertoire of behaviors in not a question of shorter and longer times so much an organism as like the evolution of species by as the fact that the personal reward or punishment, survival in an ecosystem. "Reinforcers" are in RP+ or Rr-, is in opposition to the collective or + fact defined much better than the Darwinian "fit- group advantage or disadvantage, RG or RG~. ness" of species, and reinforcers such as food, Again we can have traps or fences depending on water, sex, petting, praise, and random jackpots whether the initial personal result is positive or of food or money operate similarly and predictably negative. over a wide range of organisms. What we realized when we began to consider Types of Traps our various social traps from this reinforcement point of view was that the trap depends on the Using these ideas, our group has now studied some difference between the personal or short-term re- 40 cases and subcases and examples of various inforcements for a given B and the group conse- sorts, where the relation between Rs and RL, or quences or long-term consequences of that B. RP and RG, differs in one way or another. In this Skinner has always emphasized that behavior is article, I discuss only the broadest general types. shaped more by its rapid consequences, within one There seem to be three major classes: the one- second or a few seconds, than it is by what happens person traps or self-traps; the group traps of the in five minutes or an hour—or at the end of the Kitty Genovese type or missing-hero type, where quarter when the student receives his grades. Im- one person is needed to act for the group; and the mediate reinforcement singles out some particular group traps of the Commons type, where the com- recent behavior, while long-run reinforcement is mon pursuit of individual goods leads to collective ambiguous, not indicating which of thousands of bads, because of scarcities, overcrowding, and the previous behavioral acts is responsible for it. like. There can be both traps and countertraps in In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton all three classes, although only a few of the pos- likewise emphasized as a central problem in de- sible subcategories will be illustrated here. signing a governmental structure the fact that For clarity and simplicity, the different cases men's behavior is more affected by immediate con- will be identified here by fairly abstract formula- siderations of personal advantage than by the long- tions and type anecdotes or mnemonic labels. run public interest. However, I think in each case the reader will be A social trap occurs, then, when there is an op- able to see that these designate the trap aspect position between the highly motivating short-run of several real social problems. + reward or punishment, Rg or Rs", and the long- ONE-PERSON TRAPS run consequences, RL* or RL~. In our notation, a trap then has the following form: We thought it was important to study the various one-person traps first, to get their main features Trap: B straightened out before going on to the group S Rs traps. The most important subgroup of one-person traps seems to involve the simple reversal of rein- Conversely, a countertrap or a fence would be forcers after a time delay. written as follows: Such delayed reversals, where Rs+ changes to Fence: B Rr7, are exemplified in the smoking of cigarettes, where there is both a biochemical reinforcement (countertrap) S Rs- . . Rr,+ and perhaps a social reinforcement in the short

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • AUGUST 1973 • 643 run, but which may lead to lung cancer in the long THE MISSING HERO run. Similarly with overeating, where there are + When group profit, RG , is blocked by RP- for any the pleasures of the food and perhaps of a mother's personal action, we have the missing-hero trap. approval in the short run, but an increased risk A type case is the mattress problem, which is en- of heart attacks in the long run. tertainingly described in Schelling's (1971) article. Countertraps of this type, with simple delayed + Consider the situation, on a summer Sunday eve- reversals, where Rs~ changes to RL in the long ning, when thousands of cars are coming back run, are exemplified by the difficulty of saving for from a Cape Cod weekend on a two-lane road and Christmas, or for old age, because of the depriva- a mattress falls unnoticed from the top of a station tion of present pleasures—even though the savings wagon and lies in the northbound lane. All of the can eventually lead to a considerable reward, with cars behind, being uncertain, go around the mat- interest. tress, waiting for the cars in the southbound lane A second subgroup of the one-person traps is to go by, and the result is a traffic jam that backs that in which the problem is not simple delay, but up for miles. rather ignorance of the unexpected or reversed Now who moves the mattress? The answer is, outcome. The fish swimming into the fish trap generally, no one. People far back in the line do does not know that he cannot get out. In the not know what the trouble is and cannot help. long run, ignorance is as lethal as evil. This is the And the drivers close to the mattress are thinking case of the man handling a gun who shoots himself only of how to get around it quickly—and after or his friend because he "didn't know it was they have spent so long in line they are damned loaded." if they will spend another several minutes, per- Another subgroup is that of sliding reinf&rcers. haps endangering themselves, to stop to move the These are rein forcers that change steadily as you thing. Those who have gone past, of course, no go on repeating a behavior, so that it becomes less longer have any incentive for moving it. and less rewarding and in fact punishing. Yet you In such a situation, it is true that sometimes a may go on for a long time with the habit, or you hero does come forward. Once, when I told an may keep trying, in the hope that the results will Englishman this story, he said, "Hah! That's only sometime again be as good as they once were. a problem for Americans! If there had been a This is one aspect of drug addiction, where the single Englishman in that line, he would have original kick and the fun you had with your gotten out and moved the mattress, because we are friends turn into a frightful necessity which you trained in childhood to take leadership in a case regret for most of your waking hours. like that." This reminded me of another group The general public has a similar problem in the that also would not have had such a problem—the deterioration of old pleasures, such as the taste of Mormons. I was once at Utah State University in food. Bacon these days has a label that reads a snowy February, and we went to an under- "artificially smoked"; but it doesn't taste like graduate party in the mountains. The students, who were mostly Mormons, almost automatically smoked bacon to me, and I might never have formed a 14-car caravan up the icy winding road. gotten in the habit of breakfast bacon if it had They kept looking up and down the line to see if tasted like that SO years ago. they were still together, and the whole caravan Today our global changes are confronting us stopped several times with all the men getting out with many sliding reinforcers. Once, large fami- to push a car that had lost traction or was sliding lies with more babies were good for survival, and off the road. So perhaps a Mormon would also they were a delight, but now excessive babies have have moved Schelling's mattress. turned into an expense and have contributed to These examples immediately show the role overcrowding for everyone. At one time, more played by moral or ethical training in preventing consumption of natural resources and of electric or getting out of this kind of group trap. Never- power gave us consumer goods and liberation, but theless, the willingness even of people of great now we see them turning into a destruction of our goodwill to come forward and play the hero in natural heritage, with pollution and overheating. such a case obviously depends a great deal on the

644 • AUGUST 1973 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST level of personal difficulty or danger. We see this sentence, while if his partner makes the mistake in the reluctance of anyone, either in Sicily or of cooperating, the first man gets off with a re- America, to testify against the Mafia. The Kitty ward. Yet if both cooperate with each other by Genovese case, which belongs in this missing-hero not talking, they do much better than if they both category, may not indicate so much a lack of defect. So individual rationality is at odds with character in Americans as a different perception of collective rationality. personal hazard in "getting involved." We need What do human beings do in such a situation? continuing positive reinforcers for brave and in- In our Institute, we have had thousands of such telligent initiative to help keep up our "character" non-zero-sum games played by student volunteers in cases of this kind: combat ribbons and awards for real money with various payoff matrices. for valor on the civilian front, so to speak. (If Sometimes pairs or groups of students play against it is not the Star of the Order of Lenin, perhaps each other repeatedly for hundreds of trials, and it could be the Star of John Lindsay!) sometimes they play without knowing it against a stooge or a computer which is programmed to Individual Goods and Collective Bads respond in one regular pattern or another. Gen- erally, in prisoner's dilemma situations, it is found The third major category is that of purely collec- that the opposing players tend to lock into either tive traps, like the Tragedy of the Commons, steady cooperation or steady conflict with each where RG" follows only because of the excessive + other. Which pattern is obtained seems to depend number of RP practitioners. The problem cannot critically on the outcome—or should we say the be solved by one or two heroes volunteering not ""?—of the first few plays. Some- to graze their cows on the commons, although such times a pattern of cooperation is quickly experi- a course is frequently advocated by men of good- enced as mutually profitable and is kept. But if will. And the problem is not the result of any such a pattern is not started early, it seems to be single person doing anything that is unethical or almost impossible for anyone to continue to cooper- bad, for if the number of persons involved were ate when his opponent is continually defecting kept small, one can imagine that the collective good on him and making money at his expense. It is would be well served by the sum of all the per- + + hard to keep working for RG when the other sonal RP rewards. It is when the number is ex- party's behavior keeps turning it into Rp~ for you. cessive that the difficulty arises. As Rapoport (1971) has emphasized, this di- A famous type problem which can be fitted into lemma and these alternative outcomes are remark- this classification is the Prisoner's Dilemma. This ably parallel to some aspects of international rela- is one of the types of two-person non-zero-sum tions in the non-zero-sum situations of either mu- games which Anatol Rapoport (1966) has studied tual economic dependence or mutual nuclear threat. so extensively for many years. The type situation The United States and Canada have had locked-in is that of two prisoners who have been caught by cooperation; the United States and Russia have the police in some misdemeanor but who are sus- had 25 years of locked-in hostility and arms es- pected of worse crimes. They are held incom- calation. municado from each other and each is questioned. Another example of individual goods leading to The police offer a pattern of rewards such that if collective bads, which can also be fitted mathe- they both "talk" or "defect" on each other, they matically into this same classification, is the Sell- get the standard sentence for their crime; if they A-Dollar game, which was invented by Martin "cooperate" with each other, so that neither talks, Shubik a few years ago. This has some formal they get off lightly for their misdemeanor; but if one talks and the other does not, the first gets a resemblance to the Prisoner's Dilemma, but it has reward and goes free, while the second gets a an additional escalation feature. At a dull party, doubly severe sentence. just to make things lively, I offer to auction off a In this situation, the payoff matrix is designed dollar. You may laugh at this as absurd, for why by the police so that each man benefits by de- should I auction it off for less than a dollar, and fecting, no matter what his partner does. If his why should anyone pay more? But you agree to partner defects, the first gets only the standard play just to see what will happen.

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • AUGUST 1973 • 645 + However, to keep the game interesting, I make little RP whose influence outweighs that great some simple rules. The first is that bidding starts big long-run RP- you are steadily losing, as well at a nickel. The second is that bidding must go as the RG- that your family and society are losing, up by 50 per bid. The third is that bidding too. must not go over $50. (Everybody laughs.) The The Sell-A-Dollar game also throws further light fourth and last rule is that since you will all try on the escalation aspects of the international arms to get my dollar for so little, I want the two high- race. As Rapoport (1971) has pointed out in his est bidders both to pay me their bids, although recent book The Big Two, the military-industrial only the highest bidder will get the dollar. (And complexes of the United States and Russia are that is where the kicker is.) like two con men, who are actually working to- So the bidding starts—and when it gets up to gether in "selling a dollar" to our two govern- about 25$, you begin to wonder how high it ments—only the governments are raising their bids will go. In a short time, you know. For there by $10 billion each time, instead of a nickel. The are two moments of truth in the game. The first immediate reinforcers of the bidding situation one is when the bidding passes 500, Someone has continue to be reinforcing to each group, thereby bid 500, you have bid 450. And if you go on to producing and maintaining behaviors of both coun- bid 550, then this SOB with the dollar (me) will tries which are extremely damaging to both of be getting back more than the dollar. But if you them in the long run, not only in expense and in don't raise, you will lose 450. So you raise. terror, but finally, all too likely, in annihilation. The second moment of truth is when the bidding I hasten to say that there are ways you can passes $1. The other fellow has bid a dollar, prevent getting into, and can sometimes get out of, while you have bid 950. And if you raise to $1.05, the sell-a-dollar traps. One first thing that can even if you win, you will lose money. But if be done is to tell everybody about the game, so you don't raise, you will lose a lot more. So you that people will be less likely to get into this kind raise. of trap. A little preeducation and dramatic warn- At this point, of course, I can lean back and ing always help. In addition, the process of see- watch you two clobber yourselves to death. The ing the game as a whole—getting a metapicture, only limit on how high the bidding goes depends so to speak, of the competitive processes and the on how much money you have, or what your wife outcome—helps prevent a person from becoming will think, or how furious you are with yourself. quite so entrapped by the immediate reinforcers It is a dangerous game to play, because this series of each bidding step. of escalating reinforcements and pressures can But what is most important is to see that it is change the friendships or the relationships of possible to change the character of the game with everybody involved, perhaps permanently. I side agreements and side payments. When the would not play it with children, even for pennies. bidding passed 250, if you had said to your op- The only case I know where the bidding has ponent, "You take the dollar and split the profit been actually tested was when Layman Allen with me," you would both have made money, if played Sell-A-Dollar with play money, with some he had had the sense to do so. The United States of the people in his academic games groups. In and Russia made a side agreement of this sort one of his tests, the bidding for the dollar went up with the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty, which has to $4 before they tired of it. been to the advantage of all of us for 10 years now. Why describe this theoretical game in such de- tail? The reason is that it appears to represent LOCKED-IN ASPECTS OF COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR in simplified monetary form some of the escalation It is worth digressing for a moment to note the aspects of such problems as drug addiction. The locked-in behavior that is characteristic of many first little injection with your friends—the first of these social traps. Immediate small reinforce- bid—starts off easy and light, as a game, but the ments, or lack of them, lead to self-maintaining bidding then gets higher and higher until you are or stereotyped behavior in the mattress problem, losing more than you are gaining. Yet with in the conflict and escalation games, and in many every shot you are getting again and again that other social situations.

646 • AUGUST 1973 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST Of themselves, of course, locked-in social be- temperature of the ropm or whether to go to the haviors and relations are not inherently either good show early or late. Eric Berne (1964) has dis- or bad. A working society requires thousands of cussed various locked-in networks of this kind in them to maintain the behavioral patterns that sup- his book Games People Play. In his game of "al- ply food or goods, just as a biological organism re- coholic," for example, he shows how the alcoholic quires thousands of locked-in and repetitive enzyme is trapped in a self-maintaining game with three or cycles to maintain its metabolism. We are used four other people, such as the long-suffering wife, to such contracts and networks, but what is sur- the best friend, and the corner bartender, with prising to us is the unexpected locked-in patterns each of their responses reinforcing the others for that appear to arise from the free interactions of their responses. many independent individuals. And we still need Over a lifetime, our originally accidental roles in to learn how to produce helpful ones and how to many such chains, beneficial and damaging, may prevent or correct damaging ones in these collective come to create and maintain the responses that relationships. finally appear as our personal or social "character." There are three distinct types of locked-in pat- The self-maintaining character of federal bureaus terns in collective behavior that need much more or of the military-industrial complex come from study from a reinforcement point of view to see large-scale invisible chains of the same sort. A the microstructure that gives rise to a kind of social careful analysis of such spontaneous lock-ins could thermodynamics. The first type is what Adam be crucial today. Smith referred to as the invisible hand of the mar- ketplace. He used this term to emphasize the Ways Out absence of any overt or mechanical causal mecha- nism in the stabilization of prices or wages around It is to be emphasized that this type of formal some median value in a free economic market of analysis, classification, and explanation of many competing individuals. A similar invisible hand social problems as arising from reversal of rein- tends to equalize and centralize the political parties forcers and the like is radically different from the in systems with majority (rather than proportional usual explanations by moralists and social philos- representation) elections. ophers. For example, it is more immediate and The second type might be called by contrast the practical than the explanations of some anthropolo- invisible fist, where the competition of numerous gists and ethologists who imply that our social individuals does not produce agreement on a median problems of conflict and disorganization are due value, but instead runs away from the median, with to our evolutionary inheritance of "aggression" or of either escalation or elimination past some point of a "territorial imperative" (ignoring the fact that no return. This happens with Gresham's law in some societies have orders-of-magnitude of less economics, where "bad money drives out good." aggressiveness or territorial demands than others). Several of our current crises have this characteristic, It passes by the explanations of therapists who as with the escalation of arms races or unrestrained interpret our personal and social problems as due pollution or the elimination of good railroad service, to childhood frustrations or the Oedipus complex as we have noted. The urban crisis is made almost or to our cultural quest for power or the denial of unsolvable by multiple complex escalations of this love or the death wish. It is more behavioral and kind, as slum clearance drives slum dwellers else- realistic than the countercultural claim that the where, and the poor are migrating into the city to locking in of our economic system to technology get welfare money, while the rich are moving to and consumerism and the increasing use of power the suburbs to escape taxes. and resources is due to Bacon or to "Newton's The third type of locked-in pattern could be single vision" and the ignoring of Blake's fourfold called the invisible chain. This signifies a loop of vision. transactional relationships among two or more Others have looked for explanations of social people, forming self-maintaining systems that are problems within the individual psyche. Koestler sometimes very damaging and very hard to get out (1968) sees our problems today as basically due to of. Married couples frequently get locked into a conflict between the lower instinctive brain and repetitive disagreements over sex or money or the the recently evolved higher rational brain, and he

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • AUGUST 1973 • 647 has called for some drug which we could take to SOLUTION BY CHANGED harmonize the two. Kenneth B. Clark (1971) has REINFORCEMENT RELATIONS seriously recommended that antiaggressiveness In contrast to these usual prescriptions, the reversal- drugs be given to presidents and public officials, of-reinforcers approach suggests a number of spe- although he did not discuss who will control the cific changes of reinforcers or policies that can get injections. us out of various social traps and that are already These two-level "mind-body" individual ap- in effective use today for solving one problem or proaches to problems are like those of St. Paul. another. Some of these methods have been in use Like the other Judeo-Christian moralists, Paul in- for hundreds or thousands of years, and much of terpreted lack of self-control and conflict and our fashionable despair today comes from a kind catastrophe as due to sin, or to the "old Adam" of willful blindness to the methods that society de- inside: veloped long ago. For example, the Tragedy of the Commons is The good that I would, I do not; the evil that I would essentially a problem of the allocation of scarce re- not, that I do ... I see another law in my members, sources. And a half-hour's thought will turn up a warring against the law of my mind. ... Oh wretched man dozen mechanisms that we use every day for dealing that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? . . . with the mind I myself serve the law of God; with such problems. In various societies, scarce but with the flesh the law of sin [Romans 7:19-25]. resources of various kinds may be allocated by force, by tradition, by inheritance, or by election. This mind-body dichotomy is what has led to the When they are to be distributed to many people, antisex attitudes and the asceticism and self-flagel- they may be distributed by lot, or to the loudest lation of Christianity, in its attempts to control and voices, or by first-come-first-served, or by auction, punish the lower members and drive out the devil. or by selling tickets, as to a World Series baseball Niebuhr (1932) is not far from this same tradition game. Fish and game commissions are set up, often in seeing social problems as being due to a kind with the support of the fishermen and hunters themselves, to sell licenses, set bag limits, and limit of collective rather than individual wickedness. the hunting season so as to maintain the ongoing But it is clear that Paul's "good" and "evil" resource undiminished. Hardin (1968) made out could also be formalized as long-range or social + his New England cattle owners to be a good deal consequences, RL or RL", of behavior which his more stupid than they actually were. The prob- "lower members" push him into doing or not doing lem is not a problem of thoughtless competition, but because of the immediate gratification aspects of rather the problem of setting up a superordinate + Rg- or Rs . And it is clear that a change in the authority to handle the reinforcement mechanisms relationship between Rs and RL to prevent this re- —the tickets and bag limits—for getting out of versal of reinforcers can create easy self-control, or these traps. a society in which it is "easy to be good" without In fact, when we look at possible reinforcement self-flagellation or repression. In spite of all of our changes, we can make a fairly exhaustive formalism serious problems and traps today, the poor are of ways to prevent or get out of various social traps. Five major ways stand out immediately: more or less fed, the children are taught, and the garbage is disposed of almost automatically by the 1. Change the delay to convert long-range con- reinforcements and feedback mechanisms of our sequences into more immediate ones. Or, as Skin- society without the Christian effort and charity that ner (1969) put it, "Bring the consequences to bear were once necessary to solve such problems. We on behavior." This is part of what we do when we put warning labels on cigarette packages, or have learned to convert long-range social goods + when, in "deconditioning" methods to stop smoking, into daily wages, RS , for social workers, teachers, we put unpleasant-smelling transparent tape around and garbage collectors. Paul's view of the human each cigarette. condition turns to punishment and actually blocks On a larger scale, the highways of Indiana and this planned conversion of reinforcers that can give Ohio were once jammed and ugly, and the problem improved self-management or the correction of seemed hopeless until some social entrepreneurs per- social traps. suaded the legislatures to set up toll road corpora-

648 • AUGUST 1973 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST tions, which sold bonds and paid the construction 3. Change the nature of the long-run conse- companies and the workers to build new highways. quence, RL'. One way to do this is by new inven- The short-range pay and return on invest- tions. Once upon a time it was a sin to make love + ments, Rs , was a conversion of the eventual bene- to a girl you were not married to, and God would + fit, RL , that would accrue to the state and all of punish you, both with syphilis and with a baby the drivers—who were indeed glad in the end to that would kill her in childbirth. Edward Gibbon + pay the toll for their immediate pleasure, Rs , in noted the injustice of God in not giving the Romans driving on the improved highway. This method of syphilis for their immoralities; and the Victorian solving the unsolvable highway problem was novels as well as Hollywood movies until recently much easier and more successful than any direct have had this theme of necessary punishment for attempt to change the old highways by the laborious sexual sins (though not other sins). But with the methods of appeals to goodwill or unpaid com- invention of penicillin to stop syphilis, with anti- munity spirit or coercion, all of which are full of septic methods to stop childbirth fever, and with Rs". Obviously a superordinate authority or cor- easy contraceptives to prevent having a baby in poration was a useful intermediate step. The well- the first place, suddenly it is no longer a sin to established investment mechanism is a powerfully make love. State legislatures are decriminalizing effective device for getting over any short-run bar- extramarital intercourse, and even many religious riers, Rgf, of habit or conflict or complexity be- leaders are now emphasizing the sacred value, cause it brings the long-range benefits closer in the rather than the sin, of lovemaking. form of an RS+. There are many large-scale social problems where Education is another mechanism that gives an improved design and planning is what can change immediate payoff to the student—at least when it the nature of the long-range consequences. Today, is good education—in the form of attention or because of thought and design, social security is grades or job-training pay or intellectual satisfac- made a law; new cities are designed and built; an tion, RS+, all to make the large long-run payoffs international monetary system is set up; and a more immediately visible and effective. (This is hundred old problems are transformed. + separate from the question of education in general 4. Add Rs for competing behavior, which will as a method of avoiding social traps. It is obvi- not lead to the bad long-range consequences. Drink ously a good and needed method for anticipating all a diet cola with saccharine instead of fattening our social problems, but our modern problems in a sugar; smoke a pipe instead of cigarettes. This is high-education society demonstrate clearly that an essential component in the Skinnerian methods education is not enough, unless it is combined of self-control. To avoid the card games every with, or used to design, specific reinforcement night in the dormitory, give yourself goodies for mechanisms in each case.) studying instead: for example, some treat such as 2. Add counterreinforcers, such as social incen- candy or a phone call to your girl friend only after tives or punishments, to encourage or discourage be- so many pages of study, or a mark on your chart + haviors by their immediate Rs or Rg~. This is when your study alarm clock rings after every six supposed to be the main function of punitive laws, hours of work, with 10 of these marks entitling you but they obviously have little preventive effect in to have an afternoon in the woods or a dinner out many areas, except in things like traffic control, in your favorite restaurant. If one reinforcer doesn't work, another one may, and so progress where the probability of detection is high and pay- can indeed be made, until the larger reinforcements ment is relatively quick. The incentives provided of grades or parental approval or the "natural by administrative law and contract law are much reinforcers" of your own growing competence begin more effective in large-scale problems (as might be to maintain regular study habits. expected from the Skinnerian effectiveness of posi- Such methods have been used with considerable tive reinforcement), and a combination of taxes success to improve school performance and family and incentives for institutions and corporations is relations of delinquent children in Tharp and rapidly changing such problems as pollution, civil Wetzel's (1969) study, Behavioral Modification in rights, and women's rights in the United States the Natural Environment. Larger social examples today. would include the revitalization of an ailing auto

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • AUGUST 1973 • 649 assembly plant by new management methods (par- just an outside therapist. They represent the demo- ticipatory reinforcements) (see Guest, 1962). cratic creation of new superordinate authority able 5. Get outside help in changing the reinforcement to manage and correct social traps that were lead- patterns of locked-in loops. This is the main new ing to collective bads. component of Tharp and Wetzel's (1969) methods. This has happened over and over in human The delinquent child gets reinforced for his be- history, as in the creation of the European Com- havior by the attention he gets in being scolded, the mon Market; the Special Drawing Rights, the new excitement of being chased by the police, or the international money managed by an international admiration of his friends; and the teacher, parents, commission; and the International Whaling Com- police, friends, and the child are caught together in mittee, even though it does not have any teeth in an invisible chain of self-maintaining reinforcement it at the moment capable of controlling the Rus- transactions. Tharp and Wetzel tried to find sian and Japanese competition for the last remain- "mediators"—a teacher or adult friend who could ing whales. It may be easier to set up super- see the child's daily behavior and give him immedi- ordinate authorities when there are many ate reinforcers, such as marks in a book for in- competitors than when there are only two or three, creased attention or reading, with so many marks because the special pleading or self-interest of a entitling him to extra television viewing or horse- strong individual can be more easily dealt with by back riding on weekends. As the child's behavior the rest of the group when they are numerous. began to change within a few weeks, teacher, police, Nevertheless, the process is never very easy, and and parents changed their attitudes, and his friends it would be important to make theoretical and his- began to admire him for different things (and were torical studies to see for what kind of social traps reinforced by the network for their change of values superordinate authorities can and should be set up also). At this point, Tharp and Wetzel, as the and how it can be done most easily and effectively. outside "therapists," were able to withdraw because the system had been flipped to a new self-main- Nested Traps taining mode. In many of our personal and social traps, we can- Finally, it is important to note that there are mixed not easily see or change the locked-in reinforcer traps and, in particular, nested traps that are much network ourselves, and a skilled outsider can help harder to solve than any of the simple traps we start the change to a new pattern. Our "lower have discussed so far. Traps of this kind include members," for example, our taste buds, get immedi- the locked-in violence of United States communica- ate rewards from the cookies; and it takes our tions media, books, and drama; delinquent gang higher cortex to examine the situation and to put behavior; and drug and alcohol addiction. the cookies in the refrigerator instead of leaving In the United States media, the methods and them on the table. Likewise, it is easier to save habits of violence and violence as a community for Christmas if the local bank, as the outside excitement are demonstrated daily and weekly "therapist," has made a contract with you to de- many orders of magnitude more often than, say, posit your Christmas savings every month and to human affection, or daily problem solving, or even write it in your book. Industrial safety laws, in- (horrors!) sexual love. The media are in the surance, and social security deductions all repre- invisible fist of the competition for more sales or sent outside agencies that we have called in to higher audience ratings, so as to get more adver- protect improvident man. tising or profits. (The invisible fist is proven by 6. Set up superordinate authority to present en- the self-accelerating elimination of hundreds of trapments, to allocate resources, to mediate con- leading newspapers and magazines over the last 20 flicts, and to redirect immediate reinforcement pat- years.) This media violence locks in, in turn, to terns to more rewarding long-range goals. The or- a multiplication of violent acts and violent indi- ganization of fish and game commissions against viduals in the community. Headline reports of the exhaustion of the game, the Sherman Anti-Trust hijackings or any other special type of crime pro- Act against the escalation of monopolies, and a duce immediate imitations. In addition, it locks sheriff system with mayors and courts in a western in the children and the older consumers to the self- frontier town all represent something more than maintaining idea that this is the only important

650 • AUGUST 1973 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST kind of news or drama, and conversely that the traps, the individual alcoholics come to be like violence of real war is just another television spec- traffic casualties, which can be reduced in number tacular. No cure of these nested lock-ins to violence but not eliminated if our society is to continue to in our society may be possible without a super- function in the only way it knows how. ordinate authority that can change all three of these But whatever solutions may eventually be found self-maintaining loops simultaneously. in these more complex nested cases, it is clear that Gang behavior is also locked in at several levels. the approach by analysis of reinforcements and re- Each member of the gang is reinforced by his gang inforcement loops offers important new clarifying partners, as a subsociety, for slashing tires or taking explanations and new tools for any amelioration drugs or escalating to more daring things. In addi- that may be possible. Social traps are not the only tion, the gang entity is reinforced by the non- kind of social problems, of course. For example, zero-sum conflict situation with other gangs or the traffic accidents are not traps, nor are many fights excitement of avoiding the police. It is also often and conflicts of interest, or business failures where tacitly supported by an adult neighborhood sub- there was an expectation of risk from the begin- culture that protects the members and applauds ning. But the social traps represent all of our their daring and sees them as expressing suppressed most intractable and large-scale urban, national, resentments against the larger society. And finally, and international problems today. And it seems the gang, with growing experience, makes contact possible that the study of social traps from this with and comes to be supported by, and locked reinforcement point of view may be opening the into, the larger criminal subculture, which is in door on a whole new discipline that could do more turn serving needs and demands of the larger so- than almost any other academic study to illuminate ciety. All of these loops would have to be inter- and solve these locked-in collective problems. rupted and changed to produce any general change in the gang problem. It may not be possible, ex- REFERENCES cept through an ideological revolution, or a total BERNE, E. Games people play. New York: Grove, 1964. change in city and neighborhood structures and CLARK, K. B. The pathos of power: A psychological per- legal-criminal relationships. spective. American Psychologist, 1971, 26, 1047-1057. GUEST, R. H. Organizational change: The effect of suc- Likewise for drug and alcohol addiction. The cessful leadership. Homewood, 111.: Irwin, 1962. alcoholic, for example, is locked in first by his own HARDIN, G. The tragedy of the commons. Science, 1968, biochemical need for alcohol. He is also caught in 162, 1243-1248. the invisible chain of reinforcements with family KOESTLER, A. The ghost in the machine. New York: Mac- millan, 1968. and friends, as illustrated in Games People Play NIEBUHR, R. Moral man and immoral society. New (Berne, 1964). In addition, he is an important York: Scribner's, 1932. cog in the network of the corner bar and the com- RAPOPORT, A. Two-person : The essential ideas. petitive liquor industry. And finally the liquor Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966. RAPOPORT, A. The big two, Soviet-American perceptions industry itself—producing a certain percentage of of foreign policy. Indianapolis: Pegasus, 1971. alcoholics—is serving a cultural need which our ScHEHtNG, T. The ecology of micromotives. Public civilization can probably no longer do without, with Interest, 1971, No. 25, 61-98. SKINNER, B. F. Contingencies of reinforcement: A theo- our social contacts and meetings and most of our retical analysis. New York: Appleton, 1969. major business and government and military de- THARP, R., & WETZEL, R. Behavior modification in the cisions being lubricated by alcohol. In this nest of natural environment. New York: Academic Press, 1969.

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • AUGUST 1973 • 651