A METHOD OF MAINTAINING AN ARBITRARY

DEGREE OF HUNGER
B. F. SKINNER
University of Minnesota

Received April 2, 1940

In comparing groups of animals with respect to such processes

as extinction or discrimination, it is important to maintain com-
parable states of drive. The standard practice of feeding a pre-
scribed amount of food or of allowing each animal to eat for a
prescribed period cannot be counted upon to produce the same
degrees of hunger in all members of a group. In fact there is
usually a very considerable variation in the degrees obtained.
Balanced groups may sometimes be arranged by selection or by
interchanging individuals, but where the groups are determined
and distinguished in advance this is not always possible. Some
direct manipulation of the conditions responsible for the drive is
then called for. An arbitrary level of drive must be selected and
the feeding of each animal adjusted accordingly.
Many experimental techniques supply no convenient measure
of drive, but where the principal datum is a rate of responding,
and where this is recorded in a form which permits immediate
inspection (3), it is frequently possible to estimate the relative
degree of hunger of each animal with considerable accuracy. The
best case is that of the rate maintained under periodic reinforce-
ment, which varies very sensitively with the conditions of feeding.
A few preliminary days under this reinforcement are often used
to stabilize behavior, and an opportunity is offered to adjust the
drive and to match the levels of two or more groups. The rate
of responding under other conditions may also be used, although
somewhat less conveniently.
In the experiment to be described, an attempt was made to
hold the mean drives of two groups of rats at an arbitrary and
140 B. F. SKINNER

rather high level. The twelve rats in each group were members
of strains separated on the basis of maze performance (2). They
had previously been used in an experiment designed to compare
the rates of extinction of the two strains. The dull group had
shown a lower degree of drive than the bright group on the same
feeding schedule, as measured by the rate of responding (pressing
a lever) under four-minute periodic reinforcement. The present
experiment attempted to compare the extinction curves of the
groups by eliminating the difference in drive through experimental
control rather than by applying a correction to data obtained at
different drives.
The rather high rate of 450 responses per hour was arbitrarily
chosen. On the day preceding the first day of the experiment
each rat received a ration of 10 grams. Thereafter the ration
(fed immediately after the experiment) depended upon the level
of hunger exhibited under periodic reforcement during the first
half hour of the experimental period. When this rate was too
high, the previous ration was increased; when it was too low, the
ration was reduced. In determining the magnitude of the change
the excursion of each writing point in recording 450 responses
was divided into eight equal units, and the position of the pointer
at the end of one-half hour was read to the nearest half unit. If
this position indicated that the rat was maintaining the correct
rate, no change in ration was made. If the position deviated
from the required position, the deviation was squared, and a
number of grams of food corresponding to the square was added
to or subtracted from the previous ration for that rat. The use
of the square was based upon the assumption that slight devia-
tions were due to chance and should call for little or no adjust-
ment while large deviations indicated a need for a relatively
drastic revision in the feeding schedule. If, for example, the
pointer was read at one unit above the required fourth unit, 1
gram of food was added to the previous ration of this rat. The
rate of responding on the following day was expected to be lower
because of this additional food. If the pointer was read at 2 |
units below the required position, 6J grams were deducted from
the previous ration, and the expected effect was a sharp rise in
 MAINTAINING AN ARBITRARY DEGREE OF HUNGER 141

hunger on the following day. As a matter of convenience, the

maximal ration was set at twenty grams, which exceeded the
normal capacity of the rats. When a rat had received no food
for two or more days and appeared too weak to maintain the
required rate, a bonus of five grams was given.
With this program in effect for fourteen days, sixteen out of
twenty-four rats closely approximated the required rate and
continued to receive fully adequate rations. Several of these
reached the 20-gram limit at one time or another and at least
six continued to receive rations which must have been very near
their maximal capacity. Of the remaining eight rats six reached
a zero ration at some time but recovered after receiving a 5-gram
bonus and continued at apparently adequate, though relatively
low, rations for the duration of the experiment. Two rats
dropped to zero rations twice and showed no indication of being
able to maintain the required rate.
There are at least two conditions of the experiment to which
these results must be related. The first is the arbitrary rate.
This was considerably above the level usually observed under
the standard practice of feeding for one and one-half hours daily
after each experiment, but it was not above the level character-
istically reached by rats of the same strains when deprived of
food for several days. Under complete deprivation, all rats
should have reached this value, and it would appear that a slow
starvation will in some cases produce a state of inanition before a
high rate of responding has been reached. A more uniform
result might have been obtained with a lower arbitrary rate.
The second important condition is the relation of the change in
ration to the deviation from the required rate. Some higher
power than the square might have prevented the slow drifting
toward a zero ration by sharply increasing the hunger before
inanition had set in. The magnitude of the units used in meas-
uring the deviations and in adjusting the rations must, of course,
also have been involved. On the other hand, the use of 10 grams
as the original ration, the top limit of 20 grains, and the bonus
of 5 grams appeared to be unimportant conditions, having little
or no effect upon the result.
142 B. F. SKINNEB

In spite of the failure of some rats to respond to the feeding

program in the expected way, the mechanically recorded mean
curves for the groups are satisfactorily uniform. The exceptional
individuals gave low rates, and the effect was to reduce the mean
but not to modify the shape or regularity of the mean curve
from day to day.
In adjusting the drive during a process which involves a chang-
ing rate, special difficulties are met. No arbitrary value can be
selected without prejudicing the course of the change, and it is
necessary to estimate deviations from the group means. I t

500
H - * - -
400

900

JOO C.-bta«^-—-
IE

•s
i>
.a

Z / ^S ^ X S Dull

/ / I ! 2 3 4 5
Daily Periods of One Hour
FIG. 1

would also appear to be necessary to modify the relative magni-

tude of the adjustment in ration since a given level of drive pro-
duces a different rate of responding and absolute differences in
rate do not always reflect the same differences in drive.
In the present experiment the rations were adjusted during
four days of extinction (yielding five one-hour records) immedi-
ately following the fourteen days under periodic reinforcement
just described. The group means were used in calculating the
deviations, but no change was made in the relation of the mag-
nitude of the adjustment to the absolute deviation in rate. This
was to some extent justified, since the drives had become fairly
well stabilized, and since only four rations had to be calculated.
 MAINTAINING AN ARBITKAKT DEGREE OF HUNGER 143

The means were determined for the bright and dull groups sepa-
rately, since otherwise any difference between the groups would be
concealed by a differential adjustment in drive.
The resulting mechanically averaged curves obtained with the
Summarizer (2) are shown in figure 1. The vertical distances
between the origins at the left have been duplicated with short
dashes at the right, using the combined curve as a point of
reference. The dull curve slightly exceeds the combined curve
in height, while the bright curve falls an equal distance below it.
The total curve for the dull group contains 7 per cent more
responses than that of the bright, but a similar difference (5 per
cent) prevailed during the preceding periodic reinforcement. The
shapes of the curves are not significantly different.
It is difficult to see how the procedure of adjusting the ration
could have affected either the shape of the curves or the com-
parison of the groups. The mean ration of each group remained
practically the same, the only change arising from squaring ex-
treme deviations which lay predominantly in one direction from
the mean, and these were rare. Each group determined its own
adjustments and would have been free to describe any kind of
curve in complete independence of the other group-
It would be possible to compare the individual curves for those
rats which responded to the feeding schedule in a satisfactory
way, and to answer the question of a difference between the
strains somewhat more rigorously. However, this would in-
volve the selection of cases in a manner not completely inde-
pendent of the point of the experiment. Since the experimental
adjustment of the drive was not wholly successful, it seems ad-
visable to confine any conclusion to the method alone. A suc-
cessful adjustment of the drive during periodic reinforcement
and extinction may be claimed for about 90 per cent of the cases.
The exceptions seem to be due to the selection of too high an
arbitrary degree of hunger, and it is reasonable to expect a uni-
form result with a lower value.
A further question is raised by an experiment of this sort.
Whether we have actually equated the hungers of these two
groups may depend upon whether hunger is measured relatively
144 B. F. SKINNER

by the observed rate or absolutely. In dealing with the rate of

repetition of any bit of behavior the importance of the nature or
character of the response must be recognized. We should not
expect responses of different complexity or difficulty or responses
requiring different amounts of time to be repeated at the same
rate, even though they are reinforced by the same stimuli and
exist at the same strength. With one organism and one type of
response, no difficulty need arise, and in the same organism it
should be possible to determine the relative rates of repetition of
different types of response under the same state of strength.
But in different organisms, even with the same type of response,
we have no way of knowing in advance that the same state of
strength will lead to the same rate. Between species the problem
involves gross anatomical differences as well as the relation of
the response to innate, or at least characteristic, behavioral
repertoires. Within a single strain of rats there may be ana-
tomical differences affecting the difficulty or complexity of a
response, as well as some sort of individual difference in "general
activity," which may stand between the metabolic state of the
organism to which hunger is clearly related and the behavior in
which it is exhibited.
The present experiment might be criticized by saying that some
rats may have pressed the lever at a high rate even when not
very hungry, and others at a low rate, even when hungry. But
such a statement obviously involves a definition of hunger which
must be made explicit. We can define hunger in several ways—
in terms of (a) the recent history of the ingestion of food, as when
we say that an organism is well-fed or starved, (6) the nutritive
condition of the organism, as when we say that an organism is
fat or impoverished, or (c) the strength of behavior leading to
the ingestion of food, as when we say that an organism is sated
or ravenous. These various "hungers" are related, although not
necessarily in any simple way. The ingestion of food is respon-
sible (though not wholly) for the nutritive state; and the latter
is presumably responsible for the strength of behavior (although
again there is no simple relation). If we take the metabolic
state as our criterion of hunger, it may be true that some rats
 MAINTAINING AN ABBITRARY DEGEEE OF HUNGEB 145

press rapidly when not very hungry. In the present experiment,

of those rats which maintained the required rate, some did so
when receiving nearly maximal rations daily, and others while
barely maintaining their weight. If some independent measure
of bodily need were available, we should probably find no exact
correspondence between the state of nutrition and the state of
strength of ingestive behavior. But this merely indicates the
greater need for precision of reference in the definition of hunger,
since the term cannot then refer to both of these conditions.
The contention has been made (3) that in a science of behavior
a state of drive is most conveniently defined in terms of the
strength of behavior appropriate to the drive. Hunger, in this
sense, is a readiness to eat or to execute any response leading to
the ingestion of food. What we observe is that in some rats the
ingestive behavior is strong and in others weak. If this does
not correspond to a difference in metabolic state, then the actual
correspondence is a further fact to be ascertained. It is hunger
in the sense of the strength of ingestive behavior which has been
equated in the present experiment.
SUMMARY

Where some simple measure of hunger is available, the hunger

of an individual rat may be held close to an arbitrary value from
day to day, and the mean hungers of experimental groups may
be closely matched. The described procedure was effective in
controlling hunger during periodic reinforcement and extinction
in about ninety per cent of the cases. The exceptions appear
to be due to an arbitrary condition of the experiment, which
could easily be corrected.
REFERENCES
(1) HERON, W. T., AND SKINNER, B. F.: The rate of extinction in maze-bright
and maze-dull rats. Psychol. Rec, 1940, 4,11-18.
(2) HERON, W. T., AND SKINNER, B. F.: An apparatus for the study of animal
behavior. Psychol. Rec, 1939, 3, 166-176.
(3) SKINNER, B. F.: The Behavior of Organisms. New York: D. Appleton-
Century Co., 1938.