REWARD AND PUNISHMENT IN HABIT FORMATION 233 



obtain food as a reward. There are two very serious objections to the 

 use of the desire for food as a motive in animal behavior experiments 

 objections which in my opinion renders it almost worthless in the 

 case of many animals. These are the discomfort of the animal and the 

 impossibility of keeping the motive even fairly constant. However 

 prevalent the experience of starvation may be in the life of the animal, 

 it is not pleasant to think of subjecting it to extreme hunger in the lab- 

 oratory for the sake of finding out what it can do to obtain food. Satis- 

 factory results can be obtained in an experiment whose success depends 

 chiefly upon hunger only when the animal is so hungry that it constantly 

 does its best to obtain food, and when the desire for food is equally 

 strong and equally effective as a spur to action in the repetitions of the 

 experiment day after day. It is easy enough to get almost any mammal ? 

 into a condition of utter hunger, but it is practically impossible to have j 

 the desire for food of the same strength day after day. 







But the use of punishment as a motive for the performance of a 

 required act did not escape adverse criticism. Watson (10) says, 



It is not fair to talk of the cruelty and inhumanity of keeping the ani- 

 mals hungry, as has been done by several writers, until there is some 

 factual support for the charge. There is not the slightest difficulty in 

 keeping the animal in perfect condition and at the same time hungry 

 enough to work properly. We have found no animal which does not 



work well when food is used as the general stimulus We 



repeated the maze experiment on the dancer with food as a stimulus. 

 So far as we could judge the method was as satisfactory, from the stand- 

 point of the rapidity of learning and from that of the well being of the 



animal, as the punishment of Yerkes This punishment 



method has not worked any too well. It has been criticised by Hamilton 

 who found that it made his dogs restless and hesitant, by Lashley, who 

 found it made rats, where association was difficult, after a time refuse 

 to work. 



In spite of the difficulties of using reward and punishment as 

 stimuli for the performing of any desired act, there are many 

 valuable experiments in animal behavior for which one or both 

 of these are not'only desirable but almost absolutely necessary 

 for the performance. This being true, it is very profitable that 



