Shamu, Marriage and Behaviorism

This charming article, on Shamu, positive reinforcement, and the malleability of men, has been one of the NY Times' most emailed articles for the last 10 days. (Is that some kind of record?) The basic message is very straightforward:

The central lesson I learned from exotic animal trainers is that I should reward behavior I like and ignore behavior I don't. After all, you don't get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same goes for the American husband.

The article goes on to detail how the author used "approximations" - rewarding small steps toward a whole learned behavior - and eventually got her husband to pick up his clothes, clean the dishes, stay away from her in the kitchen, and find his keys by himself. I've got a few parrots myself so I'm well aware that positive reinforcement is a powerful learning tool. But why has this article has been so popular for so long? After all, Pavlov discovered the limits of nagging and the power of praise over a century ago.

My own theory is that people are naturally entranced by behaviorism. We still dream of Skinnerian utopias where every husband is like Shamu and a bit of positive reinforcement can cure all our ills. It's mind-control from the outside, black-box determinism. And even though neuroscience has moved on - cognitive pschology replaced classical conditioning - society remains wedded to a vision of the mind as a reflex machine, capable of being shaped by a few morsels of reward. When Freakonomics talks about finding the right mix of "incentives," or politicians use tax-policy to encourage marriage, or parents are told to ignore the wails of their newborn, Skinner secretly smiles to himself. His scientific revolution petered out, but his utopian dream lives on.