Free-operant avoidance in the pigeon using a treadle response

A free-operant avoidance schedule was used to establish and maintain foot-treadle responding by two Homing, one White King, and two Carneaux pigeons. In the absence of responding, the interval between shocks equaled 10 sec. Each time a treadle response occurred the shock was postponed for 32 sec. Pigeons appear to learn the treadle response more quickly and use it to avoid shock more successfully than do rats bar pressing on similar schedules. The treadle response becomes highly stereotyped and interresponse time distributions obtained from terminal behavior appear very similar to data obtained from rats. It is concluded that the difficulty in training pigeons to avoid electric shock is not in establishing avoidance behavior but in attempting to evaluate such behavior with the key-peck response.     

The war and military obligation: Private attitudes and public actions1

The relationship between attitudes toward the Vietnam war and willingness to sign a strongly worded and publicized antiwar resolution was studied in a random sample of 131 male college seniors at a selective liberal arts college. Level of opposition to the war did not fully explain why many strongly antiwar subjects did not sign the resolution. With level of opposition to the war held constant, personality measures and other attitudes differentiated between signers and nonsigners It is hypothesized that the disposition to act publicly in support of private attitudes is a separate variable, which may be independent of the content and intensity of attitudes Studies of “activism” should distinguish more sharply between private attitudes and public actions.