In your discussion,

• Select two theories discussed in your required reading, and describe the areas of each theory that you were not previously aware of and why these areas may suggest a need to assimilate, or even accommodate, your own current knowledge.
  • If unclear on the difference between assimilation and accommodation, see the following resource: The Assimilation vs Accommodation of Knowledge (Links to an external site.).
  • For example, did you know there are multiple sub-theories within behaviorism or cognitivism? Do you have previous knowledge about the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model suggested by constructivism?
• Discuss why you think a developed mental understanding about learning is important as a student of psychology. Include all of the following in this explanation:
  • Why is it important to clearly understand the process for acquiring knowledge and then the variables that support effectively processing this knowledge?
  • What myth does stating “we all learn differently” promote to others?
  • Why does a more critical understanding potentially support a learner?
  • How could this understanding affect our success in a career?
  • How might culture (socio-economic, social circle, etc.) affect one’s ability to accommodate or assimilate an expanded knowledge about learning?
• Lastly, compare and contrast your previous knowledge about this content to the more complex analysis of learning that you read about this week in the introduction chapter of your text (see the Writing Center’s Compare & Contrast Assignments (Links to an external site.) for assistance).

Your initial post should be between 350 and 400 words. You must support your discussion by citing, at minimum, the required textbook. Cite all information from your sources according to APA guidelines as outlined in the APA: Citing Within Your Papers (Links to an external site.) resource. List each of your sources at the end of your posting according to APA Style as shown in the sample page of the APA: Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource.1 The Foundations of Behaviorism A mouse running inside a maze. Fergregory/iStock/Thinkstock Learning Objectives After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following: Explain the controversial history and arguments of behaviorism. Describe associative learning. Explain connectionism and the law of effect. Compare and contrast classical and operant conditioning. Identify examples of ratio and interval schedules. Discuss settings where behaviorism, in the area of learning, is applied. Introduction When you were a child, were you ever sent to your room for a bad behavior, a consequence that continued to occur until you changed your behavior? slapped on the hand for touching something that you were not supposed to touch? yelled at if you walked into the street without first looking for cars? given an allowance when you completed your chores? allowed to go on dates but only if you were home by curfew? given a sticker or badge for an assignment when you did well? All of these examples could be categorized as behaviorist techniques for reinforcing learning. A child looking guilty as he draws on a white wall. A parent stands near the child with her hands on her hips. Jacob Wackerhausen/iStock/Thinkstock Making mistakes is part of the learning process. It allows people to modify behavior or thought processes in order to develop knowledge or skills. Learning can refer to the process of developing knowledge or a skill through instruction or study or the process of modifying behavior through experience. Understanding how learning is studied is an important step if you want to successfully apply psychological methods to your own learning or to that of others, whether in a classroom, in the workplace, or even in your role as a parent or grandparent. It is also important to understand that theories have evolved over time and that inaccuracies often exist in the literature that presents behavior and learning studies (Abramson, 2013). Applications of technology and methodological approaches continue to develop researchers’ awareness of possible inaccuracies and alternate approaches. Your journey to a better understanding of learning begins with behaviorism. This theoretical foundation, which was first discussed in this book’s introduction, argues that learning has successfully occurred when the appropriate behavior is observed (Ertmer & Newby, 1993). However, behaviorism is an intricate theory, and its approach to learning cannot be generalized so easily. There are many perspectives related to behaviorism, and such variability makes it critical that you understand behaviorism’s theoretical foundation in more depth. Although new methods are often used in the 21st century, behaviorism still offers the field of learning many relevant strategies for successful learning, educating, and counseling today (Abramson, 2013). In this chapter, we will first discuss the history of behaviorism, as well as its evolution in the scope of learning theory. In addition, the chapter will cover behaviorism’s foundational ideas, including connectionism, the law of effect, principles of conditioning, and modeling and shaping, and explain how behaviorism has been applied within the domains of marketing and education. 1.1 The Evolution of Behaviorism to Behavior Analysis Behaviorism was initially based on the premise that observable environmental variables are the basis of behaviors (Hilgard, 1956; Pierce & Cheney, 2004). The theory itself has numerous frameworks, some of which you read about in section i.2, and continues to evolve today. The excerpts in this section are from Watrin and Darwich (2012). This article reflects upon the evolution of behaviorism. The attention placed on the multitude of beliefs about behaviorism sets the standard for approaching this area of learning psychology with skeptical thought and critical considerations. Watrin and Darwich (2012) introduce J. B. Watson (1913), who redefined psychology as “a purely objective experimental branch of natural science” (p. 158), proposing the “prediction and control of behavior” as its goal, and invite us to follow the path of self-identified behaviorists who continued to reinvent how and what behaviorism is and how it should be applied. With explicit candor, these authors will help you better understand exactly why this framework is often misunderstood and difficult to clearly explain. They also provide you with a foundation that will help you better understand the advances and new reflections that continue to be explored. Excerpts from “On Behaviorism in the Cognitive Revolution: Myth and Reactions” By J. P. Watrin and R. Darwich In the course of history, there is a clear difficulty to define psychology. For a long time, it was treated as the study of mind or human psyche. Some authors, though, saw the emergence of behaviorism as a revolution in psychological science (e.g., Gardner, 1985; Moore, 1999). Starting with J. B. Watson (1878–1958), the behaviorist school flourished in the beginning of the 20th century. It was a remarkable rupture in the history of psychology, once it put the mind aside of scientific inquiry. From then on, behaviorism began a tradition of study of behavior, comprising several—and sometimes even conflicting—theoretical systems (Moore, 1999). In that context, behavior analysis emerged as one of the behavioristic approaches, having been developed from the works of B. F. Skinner (1904–1990). With an emphasis on operant behavior and an antimentalistic position [which rejects the mind as the cause of behavior], it became a forefront system of behaviorism during the 1950s. [. . .] From Behaviorism to Behavior Analysis Behavior analysis constitutes a field and a psychological system devoted to the study of behavior, here defined in terms of functional relations between behavioral and environmental events (Catania, 1998). As a field, behavior analysis has today three fundamental domains: (a) the experimental analysis of behavior, a basic science devoted to empirical research on behavioral processes, especially in the laboratory; (b) applied behavior analysis, a technological domain dedicated to apply behavior-analytic knowledge to solve practical problems; and (c) the conceptual analysis of behavior, which performs theoretical reflections about the subject matter and methods of investigation (Moore, 1999; see also Moore & Cooper, 2003). Those domains are interrelated and based in radical behaviorism, a philosophy of science that lays the foundations of behavior analysis. The history of the field as a whole has its roots in the behaviorist school. In 1913, Watson published the article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.” Attacking the study of consciousness, Watson (1913) redefined psychology as “a purely objective experimental branch of natural science” (p. 158), proposing the “prediction and control of behavior” as its goal. That drastic movement would greatly contribute to the beginning of a new tradition, whose name seems to have been created by Watson himself: “behaviorism” (Schneider & Morris, 1987). Psychologist B. F. Skinner in a laboratory conducting an experiment with a rat. Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Psychologist B. F. Skinner’s experiments showed that behavior could be related to a stimulus and did not have to be only an occurrence inside an organism. One of Skinner’s famous experiments included a rat pressing a lever to then be rewarded with food. In the following decades, several psychologists would be identified as behaviorists. Names such as Clark Hull (1884–1952) and Edward Tolman (1886–1959) became associated with the behaviorist movement, once they developed their own explanatory models of behavior (e.g., Hull, 1943; Tolman, 1932). New forms of behaviorism were thus being shaped and were sometimes at odds with those that already existed (Moore, 1999). In the 1930s, the contributions of Skinner established his place among those developments. Conceiving behavior as a lawful process, Skinner’s experimental works on reflexes led him to new concepts and methods of investigation (see Iversen, 1992). Reflex—and, subsequently, all behavior—was no longer something that happened inside the organism; rather, it was seen as a relation in which a response is defined in function of a stimulus and vice versa (Skinner, 1931). [. . .] In 1938, Skinner published The Behavior of Organisms, in which he summarized many of his positions and refined the concept of operant behavior. Skinnerian behaviorism (see section i.2) was acquiring its shape. Its first developments laid the fundamental concepts and methods of behavior analysis. Because they relied on basic research, they were also the first steps of the experimental analysis of behavior. In the 1940s, the first introductory course based in Skinner’s psychology and the first conference on experimental analysis of behavior took place (Keller & Schoenfeld, 1949; Michael, 1980). In 1945, Skinner wrote The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms, in which, for the first time in print, he defined his thought as “radical behaviorism” (Skinner, 1945, p. 294; see also Schneider & Morris, 1987). The term would designate a philosophy that, on one hand, defines private events (e.g., thinking, feelings) as behavior and, therefore, as a legitimate subject matter of a behavioral analysis, but on the other hand attacks explanatory mentalism, the explanation of behavior by mental events (cf. Skinner, 1945, 1974). Private events usually refer to a mental concept, but they are behavior and, as such, cannot cause other behavior. That antimentalism would become a central feature of radical behaviorism. [. . .] As the prominence of Skinner and his work began to rise and the foundations for applied behavior analysis were laid (Morris, Smith, & Altus, 2005), Skinner would become central to the development of behavior analysis. [. . .] Thus, behavior analysis constituted itself by the gradual establishment of its domains, being consolidated as a field in the late 1970s. Although Skinner became synonymous with behavior analysis, the field exceeded its pioneer. Behavior analysis took on a life of its own. Other people took part in the spreading of the field, such as Fred Keller (1899–1996), Charles Ferster (1922–1981), William Schoenfeld (1915–1996), and Murray Sidman (1923–). They disseminated its knowledge, just as they developed new concepts and methods (e.g., Sidman & Tailby, 1982). Skinner, however, remained as the field’s main spokesman. Schultz and Schultz (2004), for instance, asserted that, “despite . . . criticisms, Skinner remained the uncontested champion of behavioral psychology from the 1950s to the 1980s. During this period, American psychology was shaped more by his work than by the ideas of any other psychologist” (p. 344). [. . .] The Generic (and Misrepresented) Nature of Behaviorism [. . .] Behaviorism became a host of different and conflicting systems, grouped under a single label, as if they all shared the same position. Being vaguely defined, behaviorism is frequently treated as a homogeneous school, as a linear tradition. The term behaviorism, however, refers to a variety of conflicting positions (Leigland, 2003; but see also Moore, 1999). Indeed, after Watson’s (1913) first use, many theories related to the study of behavior were taken as “behaviorists.” Since the term began to be largely used, its ambiguity was soon recognized, seeing that there was no single enterprise called “behaviorism” (e.g., Hunter, 1922; Spence, 1948; Williams, 1931). Woodworth (1924) summarized the problem: If I am asked whether I am a behaviorist, I have to reply that I do not know, and do not much care. If I am, it is because I believe in the several projects put forward by behaviorists. If I am not, it is partly because I also believe in other projects which behaviorists seem to avoid, and partly because I cannot see any one big thing, to be called “behaviorism.” (p. 264) Spence (1948) also noted that the term was mostly used when someone defines his or her oppositions to an effective (or alleged) behaviorism. Even so, later developments were identified with “behaviorism,” such as behavior analysis itself. Therefore, the term would still designate a very heterogeneous set of positions. Its indiscriminate use, on the other hand, overlooks the historical complexity and diversity of the behaviorist school. Moreover, references to a generic behaviorism set biases in the analysis of behavioristic systems. When behaviorism is vaguely defined, it is easier to misrepresent any system by attributing features of other positions to it. Properties of particular systems are ascribed to all. Pinker (1999), for example, says the following: Skinner and other behaviorists insisted that all talk about mental events was sterile speculation; only stimulus–response connection could be studied in the lab and the field. Exactly the opposite turned out to be true. Before computational ideas were imported in the 1950s and 1960s by Newell and Simon and the psychologists George Miller and Donald Broadbent, psychology was dull, dull, dull. (p. 84) [. . .] In spite of the prior disputable use of the word behaviorism, the conventional historiography seems to have taken advantage of the term’s ambiguity to legitimate the idea of a revolution. A generic behaviorism was, then, presented, underlying fallacious arguments. This ambiguous treatment is dangerous for behavior analysis and modern behaviorism, because it creates and strengthens academic folklore (see also Todd & Morris, 1992). Its deceptive character gives rise to misrepresentations. [. . .] Source: Watrin, J. P., & Darwich, R. (2012). On behaviorism in the cognitive revolution: Myth and reactions. Review of General Psychology, 16(3), 269–282. Copyright © 2012, American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission. Understanding the history of a theoretical framework can help us better understand the developments that followed. In this case, behaviorism gave rise to many subset groups that believed that learning was a behavior and that behavior was observable—yet differed in the degree to which they held to these beliefs. As the article’s authors observed, the word behaviorism can often be used as a general grouping for the multiple researchers aligned with this theory. As a lifelong learner, you may find that further questioning this ambiguity in your own studies will help substantiate your understanding of this important area of psychology. 1.2 Theory of Connectionism and the Laws of Learning Edward Thorndike’s theory of connectionism and the laws of learning were two concepts that would emerge as behaviorism matured. The theory of connectionism, also known as the synaptic theory of learning, posits that learning occurs through the habitual associations, or connections, made between stimuli and responses. Examples of behavioral associations include eating because we are hungry and sleeping because we are tired. The laws of learning explain how people learn best through these associations. As just one example, the law of effect asserts that learning is strengthened when it is associated with a positive feeling. As Sandiford (1942) explains in the following excerpts, the theory of connectionism and the laws of learning helped build a more developed understanding of learning and contributed to our more modern applications of today. Conceptual model of the brain with illuminated dots and connectors depicting brain activity. Abracada/iStock/Thinkstock A central theory of connectionism is that learning is conducted through stimuli and responses. Before you begin reading, it is important to understand the importance of what is known as “association doctrine” to Thorndike’s research. Although Thorndike did not introduce his initial three laws of learning until the early 20th century (Weibell, 2011), ideas about behavioral associations began to take shape more than 2,000 years ago. Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE) wrote in his major work on ethics, “For we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.” However, his ideas about associations are most clearly seen in the following passage: When, therefore, we accomplish an act of reminiscence, we pass through a certain series of precursive movements, until we arrive at a movement on which the one we are in quest of is habitually consequent. Hence, too, it is that we hunt through the mental train, excogitating from the present or some other, and from similar or contrary or coadjacent. Through this process reminiscence takes place. For the movements are, in these cases, sometimes at the same time, sometimes parts of the same whole, so that the subsequent movement is already more than half accomplished. (Aristotle, ca. 350 BCE/1930, para. XX) Association doctrine can be explained as the linking of physiological and psychological processes. Important to understanding the points of reference in the excerpts from Sandiford (1942) is that Thorndike’s beliefs about learning were somewhat founded on Alexander Bain’s beliefs about psychology that suggested all knowledge is based on physical sensations (not thoughts or ideas) (Bain, 1873). Bain (1818–1903) founded the academic journal called Mind, the first journal of psychology and analytical philosophy. He postulated an “associationist treatment of higher mental processes” (Wade, 2001, p. 781). Excerpts from “Connectionism: Its Origin and Major Features” By P. Sandiford Features of Connectionism The following outline gives the main distinguishing features of connectionism: Connectionism is an outgrowth of the association doctrine, especially as propounded by Alexander Bain. Thorndike was a pupil of William James, some of whose teachings were derived from Bain and the British associationists. Connectionism, therefore, through associationism, has its roots deep in the psychological past. Connectionism is a theory of learning, but as learning is many-sided, connectionism almost becomes a system of psychology. It is as a theory of learning, however, that it must stand or fall. Connectionism has an evolutionary bearing in that it links human behavior to that of the lower animals. Thorndike’s first experiments were with chicks, fish, cats, and, later, with monkeys. From his animal experiments he derived his famous laws of learning. Connectionism boldly states that learning is connecting. The connections presumably have their physical basis in the nervous system, where the connections between neuron and neuron explain learning. Hence, connectionism is also known as the synaptic theory of learning. Connectionism is atomistic rather than holistic or organismic, since it stresses the analysis of behavior in order to discover the elements that are connected or bonded together. The sum total of a man’s life can be described by a list of all the situations he has encountered and the responses he has made to them. [. . .] The connectionist principle of associative shifting (which suggests that if a response to a stimulus is sustained even if the stimulus is gradually changed, the same response will be likely in a new situation) has relationships with Pavlovian conditioning, which Thorndike regards as a special case of associative learning. Connectionism has also some affinities with Watsonian behaviorism, which suggested that introspection was not observable and thus not scientific, stressing the mechanistic aspects of behavior. Neither one finds it necessary to evoke a soul in order to explain behavior. Connectionism breaks with behaviorism in regard to the stress it places on the hereditary equipment of the behaving organism. Some connections are more natural than others. We grow into reflexes and instincts without very much stimulation from the environment except food and air. In other words, we mature into reflexes and instincts, but we have to practice or exercise in order to learn our habits. These hereditary patterns of behavior (reflexes and instincts) form the groundwork of learning. Most acquired connections are based on them and, indeed, grow out of them. Even such complex bonds as those which represent capacities (music, mathematics, languages, and the like) have a hereditary basis. According to connectionism those things we call intellect and intelligence are quantitative rather than qualitative. A person’s intellect is the sum total of the bonds (associations) he has formed. The greater the number of bonds he has formed, the higher is his intelligence. [. . .] Connectionism, above all other theories of learning, seems to be one that the classroom teacher can appreciate and apply. While the statistics which summarize the experiments have been decried as the products of a mechanistic conception of behavior, nevertheless they have done more to make education a science than all the theorizing of the past 2,000 years. [. . .] Thorndike was such a voluminous writer that it is difficult to summarize his position on any single question, or, indeed, to pin him down to a specific position. In order to remove any doubt the reader may have on the matter, the following recent statement of Thorndike’s position is given: A man’s life would be described by a list of all the situations which he encountered and the responses which he made to them, including among the latter every detail of his sensations, percepts, memories, mental images, ideas, judgments, emotions, desires, choices, and other so-called mental facts. [. . .] A man’s nature at any given stage would be expressed by a list of the responses (Rs) which he would make to whatever situations or state of affairs (Ss) could happen to him, somewhat as the nature of a molecule of sugar might be expressed by a list of all the reactions that would take place between it and every substance which it might encounter. There would be one important difference, however. [. . .] In human behavior our ignorance often requires the acknowledgment of the principle of multiple response or varied reaction to the same S by a person who is, so far as we can tell, the same person. (See Figure 1.1 for a specific example.) [. . .] If John Doe were really the same person in every particular way on 100 occasions he would always respond to S in one same way at each of its 100 occurrences, but he will not be. Even when we can detect no differences in him there will be subtle variation in metabolism, blood supply, etc. [. . .] Figure 1.1: Example of possible reactions to a stimulus Psychologist Edward Thorndike proposed that humans have varied responses to the same incident or stimulus. However, he acknowledged that there are hereditary patterns of behavior such as reflexes. Figure uses an example scenario to illustrate the variability of a stimulus (S) and response (R) connection. In this example, “S” is a stranger yelling at a man, and three different “Rs” are shown: The man smiles at the stranger and then walks away, the man reacts physically by yelling at and hitting the stranger, and the man yells back at the stranger and then storms away. © Bridgepoint Education, Inc. The Associationistic Background Ideas related to associationism date back to Aristotle, although his view differed much from our current understanding (Sandiford, 1942). Hence, there is a large gap in associationism’s history. Table 1.1 is adapted from the writing of Sandiford (1942), and can help put into perspective the maturation of the ideas connected with associationism. Each theorist brought additional perspectives to this model for learning, and although Table 1.1 provides only a broad overview, the timeline demonstrates how the perspectives changed as time moved forward. Table 1.1: Overview of associationistic milestones Theorists Milestones Aristotle (384–322 BCE) Introduced the ideology of associations. Suggested that we could not perceive two sensations as one—that they would combine or fuse into one. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) Suggested sequences of thought could be casual and illogical, as in dreams, or orderly and regulated as by some design. Suggested that hunger, sex, and thirst are physiological needs. John Locke (1632–1704) Suggested “association of ideas”: Representations arise in consciousness. David Hartley (1705–1757) Suggested that sensation (pleasure vs. pain) was generated by wave vibrations in the nerves. David Hume (1711–1776) Noted that the associations in cause and effect are affected when additional objects are introduced. James Mill (1773–1836) Advanced associationism to include more complex emotional states within the pain vs. pleasure sensation model. Thomas Brown (1778–1820) Suggested nine secondary laws that strengthened Aristotle’s laws of association. Understood association as an active process of an active, holistic mind. Alexander Bain (1818–1903) Suggested trial-and-error learning, reflexes, and instincts as the bases of habits, individual differences, and the pleasure-pain principle in learning. Edward Thorndike (1874–1949) Suggested the theory of connectionism. Suggested laws of learning. Adapted from “Connectionism: Its Origin and Major Features” by P. Sandiford, in N. B. Henry (Ed.), The Forty-First Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education: Part II, The Psychology of Learning (pp. 102–108), 1942. Blackwell Publishing. © National Society for the Study of Education. Adapted with permission. Other Backgrounds of Connectionism If Thorndike be regarded as the king-pin of connectionism, then three main streams of influence may be found in his work. The first, that of associationism, has already been traced. Bain influenced Thorndike’s teaching both directly and through William James. [. . .] For experimentation on the learning ability of animals, new apparatus, new devices, new methods had to be invented. Thorndike introduced the maze, the puzzle box, and the signal or choice reaction experiment, all of which have become standard equipment in animal psychology and have been employed in thousands of studies since that day. Figure 1.2 provides an illustration of a puzzle box. Figure 1.2: Thorndike’s puzzle box In Thorndike’s design, a dish of food was placed outside of the box, visible through the slats in the box. Thorndike found that animal subjects placed in the box would eventually locate the release apparatus, and the time before the activation of this response was shorter with each subsequent trial. A drawing of a puzzle box. The box is rectangular, solid at both of the short ends, but with a slatted side making up one of the long ends. A square-shaped door has been positioned in the slatted side. A long, thin chain attaches to the front of this door. Two thin slats hold the door in place. On top of the box, a square of mesh lies in the center. A system of ropes and hooks has been devised, leading to two pins that hold the door in place. Another chain hangs down inside the box. Adapted from Animal Intelligence (p. 30), by E. L. Thorndike, 1911, New York, NY: Macmillan. Thorndike’s Animal Intelligence, completed in 1898 as his doctoral dissertation, not only was the starting point of animal psychology as a science, but also went far toward establishing stimulus-response as the cornerstone of psychology. It is also the source of the famous laws of learning. [. . .] The Laws of Learning Probably the best known of the contributions that connectionism has made to educational theory and practice are the so-called laws of learning. They are not absolute laws, but rather are they to be regarded simply as comprehensive formulations of the rules which learning obeys. The laws usually quoted are those given in Vol. II of Thorndike’s Educational Psychology: The Psychology of Learning (1913). These include the three major laws: effect, exercise or frequency, and readiness. [. . .] These laws grew out of the experiments with animals, coupled with such influences as the writings of Bain, Romanes, Lloyd Morgan, Wilhelm Wundt, and others, and have been modified by further experiments in which human beings acted as the subjects (Thorndike, 1932). New elements injected into the laws of learning are belongingness, impressiveness, polarity, identifiability, availability, and mental system. This shows clearly enough that the laws are not to be regarded as a closed system, complete from the start, but merely as tentative summaries of our knowledge of the way in which learning takes place. They will be discarded or modified whenever experiments disclose that such is necessary or desirable. The Law of Effect [. . .] A modifiable bond is strengthened or weakened as satisfaction or annoyance attends its exercise. With chickens and cats, Thorndike had used as motivating agents in their behavior such original satisfiers as food and release from confinement for the hungry cat, company for the lonely chicken, and so forth. These acted as rewards for certain actions which became stamped in and learned. Thorndike really took the law of effect for granted at first, as so many before him had done. Gradually, however, it became one of his most important principles of education. [. . .] In propounding the law of effect, Thorndike thought that the two effects—satisfiers and annoyers—were about equally potent, the one in stamping in the connection, the other in stamping it out. If a preference was indicated it was toward the side of rewards, although he explicitly asserted that rewards or satisfiers following responses increased the likelihood of repetitions of the

Part 1:

Answer the following questions, from readings, in “answer and question format”:

1. Many campus and advocacy groups are currently involved in struggles for a “living wage.” How do you think a living wage should be calculated?
2. Were you surprised by the casual reactions of Ehrenreich’s coworkers when she revealed herself as an undercover writer? Were you surprised that she wasn’t suspected of being “different” or out-of-place despite her graduate-level education and usually comfortable lifestyle?
3. Many of Ehrenreich’s colleagues relied heavily on family—for housing and help with child-care, by sharing appliances and dividing up the cooking, shopping, and cleaning. Do you think Americans make excessive demands on the family unit rather than calling for the government to help those in need?
4. Nickel and Dimed takes place in 1998-2000, a time of unprecedented prosperity in America. Do you think Ehrenreich’s experience would be different in today’s economy? How so?
5. After reading Nickel and Dimed, do you think that having a job—any job—is better than no job at all? Did this book make you feel angry? Better informed? Relieved that someone has finally described your experience? Galvanized to do something.

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   Praise for Nickel and Dimed “A brilliant on-the-job report from the dark side of the boom. No one since H. L. Mencken has assailed the smug rhetoric of prosperity with such scalpel- like precision and ferocious wit.”

   – Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear “Eloquent … This book illuminates the invisible army that scrubs floors, waits tables, and straightens the racks at discount stores.”

   – Sandy Block, USA Today “Courageous … Nickel and Dimed is a superb and frightening look into the lives of hard- working Americans … policy makers should be forced to read.”

   – Tamara Straus, San Francisco Chronicle “I was absolutely knocked out by Barbara Ehrenreich’s remarkable odyssey. She has accomplished what no contemporary writer has even attempted-to be that `nobody’ who barely subsists on her essential labors. Not only is it must reading but it’s mesmeric. Bravo!”

   – Studs Terkel, author of Working “Nickel and Dimed opens a window into the daily lives of the invisible workforce that fuels the service economy, and endows the men and women who populate it with the honor that is often lacking on the job. And it forces the reader to realize that all the good- news talk about welfare reform masks a harsher reality.”

   – Katherine Newman, The Washington Post “With grace and wit, Ehrenreich discovers the irony of being `nickel and dimed’ during unprecedented prosperity … Living wages, she elegantly shows, might erase the shame that comes from our dependence `on the underpaid labor of others.'”

   – Eileen Boris, The Boston Globe “It is not difficult to endorse Nickel and Dimed as a book that everyone who reads-yes, everyone – ought to read, for enjoyment, for consciousness-raising and as a call to action.”

   – Steve Weinberg, Chicago Tribune “Unflinching, superb … Nickel and Dimed is an important book that should be read by anyone who has been lulled into middle-class complacency.”

   – Vivien Labaton, Ms. “Brief but intense … Nickel and Dimed is an accessible yet relentless look at the lives of the American underclass.”

   – David Ulin, Los Angeles Times

    

    

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   “Unforgettable … Nickel and Dimed is one of those rare books that will provoke both outrage and self-reflection. No one who reads this book will be able to resist its power to make them see the world in a new way.”

   – Mitchell Duneier, author of Sidewalk “Observant, opinionated, and always lively … What makes Nickel and Dimed such an important book is how viscerally Ehrenreich demonstrates that the method of calculating the poverty threshold is ludicrously obsolete.”

   – Laura Miller, Salon.com “In Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich expertly peals away the layers of selfdenial, self- interest, and self-protection that separate the rich from the poor, the served from the servers, the housed from the homeless. This brave and frank book is ultimately a challenge to create a less divided society.”

   – Naomi Kein, author of No Logo “Piercing social criticism backed by first-rate reporting … Ehrenreich captures not only the tribulations of finding and performing low-wage work, but the humiliations as well.”

   – Eric Wieffering, Minneapolis Star Tribune “Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book is absolutely riveting- it is terrific storytelling, filled with fury and delicious humor and stunning moments of the purest empathy with those who toil beside her.”

   – Jonathan Kozol, author of Ordinary Resurrections “Engaging … Hopefully, Nickel and Dimed will expand public awareness of the real- world survival struggles that many faced even before the current economic downturn.”

   – Steve Early, The Nation “Ehrenreich’s account is unforgettable-heart-wrenching, infuriating, funny, smart, and empowering … Nickel and Dimed is vintage Ehrenreich and will surely take its place among the classics of underground reportage.”

   – Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American “Compulsively readable … Ehrenreich proves, devastatingly, that jobs are not enough; that the minimum wage is an offensive joke; and that making a salary is not the same thing as making a living, as making a real fife.”

   – Alex Ohlin, The Texas Observer “Ehrenreich writes with clarity, wit, and frankness…. Nickel and Dimed is one of the most important books to be published this year, a new entry in the tradition of reporting on poverty that includes George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier and Michael Harrington’s The Other America…. Someone should read this book to George W Bush.”

   – Chancey Mabe, Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

    

    

   4 NICKEL AND DIMED

    

   ALSO BY BARBARA EHRENREICH

   Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War

   The Snarling Citizen

   Kipper’s Game

   The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed

   Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class

   The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment

   Re- making Love: The Feminization of Sex (with Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs)

   For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women

   (with Deirdre English)

   Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (with Deirdre English)

   Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness

   (with Deirdre English)

   The Mean Season: The Attack on the Welfare State (with Fred Block, Richard A. Cloward, and Frances Fox Piven)

    

    

    

   5 NICKEL AND DIMED

    

   Nickel — and —

   Dimed ON (NOT) GETTING

   BY IN AMERICA

   Barbara Ehrenreich

   A METROPOLITAN / OWL BOOK

   Henry Holt and Company • New York

    

    

   6 NICKEL AND DIMED

    

   Henry Holt and Company, LLC Publishers since 1866 115 West 18th Street

   New York, New York 10011

   Henry Holt is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

   Copyright © 2001 by Barbara Ehrenreich

   All rights reserved. Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

   Library of Congress Cataloging-in -Publication Data

   Ehrenreich, Barbara.

   Nickel and dimed: on (not) getting by in America / Barbara Ehrenreich. p. cm. ISBN 0-8050-6389-7 (pbk.) 1. Minimum wage – United States. 2. Unskilled labor – United States.

   3. Poverty – United States. I. Title. HD4918.E375 2001 305.569’092-dc21 00-052514 [B]

   Henry Holt books are available for special promotions and premiums. For d etails contact: Director, Special Markets.

   First published in hardcover in 2001 by Metropolitan Books

   First Owl Books Edition 2002

   A Metropolitan / Owl Book

   Designed by Kelly S. Too

   Printed in the United States of America

   3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

    

    

   7 NICKEL AND DIMED

    

   contents

   Introduction: Getting Ready 8

   one Serving in Florida

   13

   two Scrubbing in Maine

   33

   three Selling in Minnesota

   69

   Evaluation 106

   A Reader’s Guide

   123

    

    

   8 NICKEL AND DIMED

    

   Introduction: Getting Ready The idea that led to this book arose in comparatively sumptuous circumstances. Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper’s, had taken me out for a $30 lunch at some understated French country-style place to discuss future articles I might write for his magazine. I had the salmon and field greens, I think, and was pitching him some ideas having to do with pop culture when the conversation drifted to one of my more familiar themes – poverty. How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled? How, in particular, we wondered, were the roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform go ing to make it on $6 or $7 an hour? Then I said something that I have since had many opportunities to regret: “Someone ought to do the old-fashioned kind of journalism- you know, go out there and try it for themselves.” I meant someone much younger than mys elf, some hungry neophyte journalist with time on her hands. But Lapham got this crazy- looking half smile on his face and ended life as I knew it, for long stretches at least, with the single word “You.” The last time anyone had urged me to forsake my normal life for a run-of-the-mill low- paid job had been in the seventies, when dozens, perhaps hundreds, of sixties radicals started going into the factories to “proletarianize” themselves and organize the working class in the process. Not this girl. I felt sorry for the parents who had paid college tuition for these blue-collar wannabes and sorry, too, for the people they intended to uplift. In my own family, the low-wage way of life had never been many degrees of separation away; it was close enough, in any case, to make me treasure the gloriously autonomous, if not always well-paid, writing life. My sister has been through one low-paid job after another-phone company business rep, factory worker, receptionist-constantly struggling against what she calls “the hopelessness of being a wage slave.” My husband and companion of seventeen years was a $4.50-an-hour warehouse worker when I fell in with him, escaping eventually and with huge relief to become an organizer for the Teamsters.

    

    

   9 NICKEL AND DIMED

   My father had been a copper miner; uncles and grandfathers worked in the mines or for the Union Pacific. So to me, sitting at a desk all day was not only a privilege but a duty: something I owed to all those people in my life, living and dead, who’d had so much more to say than anyone ever got to hear. Adding to my misgivings, certain family members kept reminding me unhelpfully that I could do this project, after a fashion, without ever leaving my study. I could just pay myself a typical entry- level wage for eight hours a day, charge myself for room and board plus some plausible expenses like gas, and total up the numbers after a month. With the prevailing wages running at $6-$7 an hour in my town and rents at $400 a month or more, the numbers might, it seemed to me, just barely work out all right. But if the question was whether a single mother leaving welfare could survive without government assistance in the form of food stamps, Medicaid, and housing and child care subsidies, the answer was well known before I ever left the comforts of home. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, in 1998-the year I started this project- it took, on average nationwide, an hourly wage of $8.89 to afford a one-bedroom apartment, and the Preamble Center for Public Policy was estimating that the odds against a typical welfare recipient’s landing a job at such a “living wage” were about 97 to 1. Why should I bother to confirm these unpleasant facts? As the time when I could no longer avoid the assignment approached, I began to feel a little like the elderly man I once knew who used a calculator to balance his checkbook and then went back and checked the results by redoing each sum by hand. In the end, the only way to overcome my hesitation was by thinking of myself as a scientist, which is, in fact, what I was educated to be. I have a Ph.D. in biology, and I didn’t get it by sitting at a desk and fiddling with numbers. In that line of business, you can think all you want, but sooner or later you have to get to the bench and plunge into the everyday chaos of nature, where surprises lurk in the most mundane measurements. Maybe when I got into the project, I would discover some hidden economies in the world of the low-wage worker. After all, if almost 30 percent of the workforce toils for $8 an hour or less, as the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute reported in 1998, they may have found some tricks as yet unknown to me. Maybe I would even be able to detect in myself the bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform. Or, on the other hand, maybe there would be unexpected costs-physical, financial, emotional- to throw off all my calculations. The only way to find out was to get out there and get my hands dirty. In the spirit of science, I first decided on certain rules and parameters. Rule one, obviously enough, was that I could not, in my search for jobs, fall back on any skills derived from my education or usual work-not that there were a lot of want ads for essayists anyway. Two, I had to take the highest-paying job that was offered me and do my best to hold it; no Marxist rants or sneaking off to read novels in the ladies’ room. Three, I had to take the cheapest accommodations I could find, at least the cheapest that offered an acceptable level of safety and privacy, though my standards in this regard were hazy and, as it turned out, prone to deterioration over time.

    

    

   10 NICKEL AND DIMED

   I tried to stick to these rules, but in the course of the project, all of them were bent or broken at some time. In Key West, for example, where I began this project in the late spring of 1998, I once promoted myself to an interviewer for a waitressing job by telling her I could greet European tourists with the appropriate Bonjour or Guten Tag, but this was the only case in which I drew on any remnant of my actual education. In Minneapolis, my final destination, where I lived in the early summer of 2000, I broke another rule by failing to take the best-paying job that was offered, and you will have to judge my reasons for doing so yourself. And finally, toward the very end, I did break down and rant-stealthily, though, and never within hearing of management. There was also the problem of how to present myself to potential employers and, in particular, how to explain my dismal lack of relevant job experience. The truth, or at least a drastically stripped-down version thereof, seemed easiest: I described myself to interviewers as a divorced homemaker reentering the workforce after many years, which is true as far as it goes. Sometimes, though not always, I would throw in a few housecleaning jobs, citing as references former housemates and a friend in Key West whom I have at least helped with after-dinner cleanups now and then. Job application forms also want to know about education, and here I figured the Ph.D. would be no help at all, might even lead employers to suspect that I was an alcoholic washout or worse. So I confined myself to three years of college, listing my real- life alma mater. No one ever questioned my background, as it turned out, and only one employer out of several dozen bothered to check my references. When, on one occasion, an exceptionally chatty interviewer asked about hobbies, I said “writing” and she seemed to find nothing strange about this, although the job she was offering could have been performed perfectly well by an illiterate. Finally, I set some reassuring limits to whatever tribulations I might have to endure. First, I would always have a car. In Key West I drove my own; in other cities I used Rent-A- Wrecks, which I paid for with a credit card rather than my earnings. Yes, I could have walked more or limited myself to jobs accessible by public transportation. I just figured that a story about waiting for buses would not be very interesting to read. Second, I ruled out homelessness as an option. The idea was to spend a month in each setting and see whether I could find a job and earn, in that time, the money to pay a second month’s rent. If I was paying rent by the week and ran out of money I would simply declare the project at an end; no shelters or sleeping in cars for me. Furthermore, I had no intention of going hungry. If things ever got to the point where the next meal was in question, I promised myself as the time to begin the “experiment” approached, I would dig out my ATM card and cheat. So this is not a story of some death-defying “undercover” adventure. Almost anyone could do what I did – look for jobs, work those jobs, try to make ends meet. In fact, millions of Americans do it every day, and with a lot less fanfare and dithering. I AM, OF COURSE, VERY DIFFERENT FROM THE PEOPLE WHO NORMALLY fill America’s least attractive jobs, and in ways that both helped and limited me. Most obviously, I was only visiting a world that others inhabit full-time, often for most of their

    

    

   11 NICKEL AND DIMED

   lives. With all the real- life assets I’ve built up in middle age-bank account, IRA, health insurance, multiroom home-waiting indulgently in the background, there was no way I was going to “experience poverty” or find out how it “really feels” to be a long-term low- wage worker. My aim here was much more straightforward and objective-just to see whether I could match income to expenses, as the truly poor attempt to do every day. Besides, I’ve had enough unchosen encounters with poverty in my lifetime to know it’s not a place you would want to visit for touristic purposes; it just smells too much like fear. Unlike many low-wage workers, I have the further advantages of being white and a native English speaker. I don’t think this affected my chances of getting a job, given the willingness of employers to hire almost anyone in the tight labor market of 1998 to 2000, but it almost certainly affected the kinds of jobs I was offered. In Key West, I originally sought what I assumed would be a relatively easy job in hotel housekeeping and found myself steered instead into waitressing, no doubt because of my ethnicity and my English skills. As it happened, waitressing didn’t provide much of a financial advantage over housekeeping, at least not in the low-tip off-season when I worked in Key West. But the experience did help determine my choice of other localities in which to live and work. I ruled out places like New York and L.A., for example, where the working class consists mainly of people of color and a white woman with unaccented English seeking entry- level jobs might only look desperate or weird. I had other advantages-the car, for example-that set me off from many, though hardly all, of my coworkers. Ideally, at least if I were seeking to replicate the experience of a woman entering the workforce from welfare, I would have had a couple of children in tow, but mine are grown and no one was willing to lend me theirs for a month- long vacation in penury. In addition to being mobile and unencumbered, I am probably in a lot better health than most members of the long-term low-wage workforce. I had everything going for me. If there were other, subtler things different about me, no one ever pointed them out. Certainly I made no effort to play a role or fit into some imaginative stereotype of low- wage working women. I wore my usual clothes, wherever ordinary clothes were permitted, and my usual hairstyle and makeup. In conversations with coworkers, I talked about my real children, marital status, and relationships; there was no reason to invent a whole new life. I did modify my vocabulary, however, in one respect: at least when I was new at a job and worried about seeming brash or disrespectful, I censored the profanities that are – tha nks largely to the Teamster influence – part of my normal speech. Other than that, I joked and teased, offered opinions, speculations, and, incidentally, a great deal of health-related advice, exactly as I would do in any other setting. Several times since completing this project I have been asked by acquaintances whether the people I worked with couldn’t, uh, tell – the supposition being that an educated per son is ineradicably different, and in a superior direction, from your workaday drones. I wish I could say that some supervisor or coworker told me even once that I was special in some enviable way – more intelligent, for example, or clearly better educated than most.

    

    

   12 NICKEL AND DIMED

   But this never happened, I suspect because the only thing that really made me “special” was my inexperience. To state the proposition in reverse, low-wage workers are no more homogeneous in personality or ability than people who write for a living, and no less likely to be funny or bright. Anyone in the educated classes who thinks otherwise ought to broaden their circle of friends. There was always, of course, the difference that only I knew – that I wasn’t working for the money, I was doing research for an article and later a book. I went home every day not to anything resembling a normal domestic life but to a laptop on which I spent an hour or two recording the day’s events-very diligently, I should add, since note taking was seldom an option during the day. This deception, symbolized by the laptop that provided a link to my past and future, bothered me, at least in the case of people I cared about and wanted to know better. (I should mention here that names and identifying details have been altered to preserve the privacy of the people I worked with and encountered in other settings during the course of my research. In most cases, I have also changed the names of the places I worked and their exact locations to further ensure the anonymity of people I met.) In each setting, toward the end of my stay and after much anxious forethought, I “came out” to a few chosen coworkers. The result was always stunningly anticlimactic, my favorite response being, “Does this mean you’re not going to be back on the evening shift next week?” I’ve wondered a lot about why there wasn’t more astonishment or even indignation, and part of the answer probably lies in people’s notion of “writing.” Years ago, when I married my second husband, he proudly told his uncle, who was a valet parker at the time, that I was a writer. The uncle’s response: “Who isn’t?” Everyo ne literate “writes,” and some of the low-wage workers I have known or met through this project write journals and poems – even, in one case, a lengthy science fiction novel. But as I realized very late in this project, it may also be that I was exaggerating the extent of the “deception” to myself. There’s no way, for example, to pretend to be a waitress: the food either gets to the table or not. People knew me as a waitress, a cleaning person, a nursing home aide, or a retail clerk not because I acted like one but because that’s what I was, at least for the time I was with them. In every job, in every place I lived, the work absorbed all my energy and much of my intellect. I wasn’t kidding around. Even though I suspected from the start that the mathematics of wages and rents were working against me, I made a mighty effort to succeed. I make no claims for the relevance of my experiences to anyone else’s, because there is nothing typical about my story. Just bear in mind, when I stumble, that this is in fact the best-case scenario: a person with every advantage that ethnicity and education, health and motivation can confer attempting, in a time of exuberant prosperity, to survive in the economy’s lower depths.

    

    

   13 NICKEL AND DIMED

   one

   Serving in Florida Mostly out of laziness, I decide to start my low-wage life in the town nearest to where I actually live, Key West, Florida, which with a population of about 25,000 is elbowing its way up to the status of a genuine city. The downside of familiarity, I soon realize, is that it’s not easy to go from being a consumer, thoughtlessly throwing money around in exchange for groceries and movies and gas, to being a worker in the very same place. I am terrified, especially at the beginning, of being recognized by some friendly bus iness owner or erstwhile neighbor and having to stammer out some explanation of my project. Happily, though, my fears turn out to be entirely unwarranted: during a month of poverty and toil, no one recognizes my face or my name, which goes unnoticed and for the most part unuttered. In this parallel universe where my father never got out of the mines and I never got through college, I am “baby,” “honey,” “blondie,” and, most commonly, “girl.” My first task is to find a place to live. I figure that if I can earn $7 an hour-which, from the want ads, seems doable – I can afford to spend $500 on rent or maybe, with severe economies, $600 and still have $400 or $500 left over for food and gas. In the Key West area, this pretty much confines me to flophouses and trailer homes- like the one, a pleasing fifteen- minute drive from town, that has no air-conditioning, no screens, no fans, no television, and, by way of diversion, only the challenge of evading the landlord’s Doberman pinscher. The big problem with this place, though, is the rent, which at $675 a month is well beyond my reach. All right, Key West is expensive. But so is New York City, or the Bay Area, or Jackson, Wyoming, or Telluride, or Boston, or any other place where tourists and the wealthy compete for living space with the people who clean their toilets and fry their hash browns. Still, it is a shock to realize that “trailer trash” has become, for me, a demographic category to aspire to.

    

    

   14 NICKEL AND DIMED