On Responsibility and Punishment
Abstract
The litany of social dysfunction is now familiar. The rates of violent crime are higher
than they have ever been: Americans kill and maim one another at per-capita rates
an order of magnitude higher than other industrialized nations. The rate of marriage
has been generally declining and the rate of illegitimacy hits new highs each year.
Tens of thousands of children have no fathers and no family member or close acquaintance
who has a regular job. This pattern is now repeat-ing into a second and third generation...
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/5944Citation
Staddon, J. (1995) On responsibility and punishment. The Atlantic Monthly, Feb., 88-94.
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John E. R. Staddon
James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience
Until my retirement in 2007, my laboratory did experimental research on learning and
adaptive behavior, mostly with animals: pigeons, rats, fish, parakeets. We were particularly
interested in timing and memory, feeding regulation, habituation and the ways in which
pigeons and rats adapt to reward schedules. The aim is to arrive at simple models
for learning that can help to identify the underlying neural mechanisms. I continue
to do theoretical and historical work on the power law in
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