Hidden Reinforcers: For Things You Don't Want!

Recently I was appointed to the board of the B.F. Skinner Foundation. The annual board meeting is held in Boston, and usually there's a reception afterwards at the Skinner family home in Cambridge, for members of the board and other people who share an interest in the work of the foundation. At the most recent reception, I was talking to a woman I'd met at the same gathering two years earlier, a museum curator with a special interest in scientific instruments—an interest I share. However, on this particular evening she didn't want to talk about her work, she wanted to talk about her cat.