Jack Michael’s Motivation
Caio F. Miguel, California State University, Sacramento
Among many of Jack Michael’s contributions to the field of behavior analysis is his behavioral account
of motivation. This paper focuses on the concept of motivating operation (MO) by outlining its
development from Skinner’s (1938) notion of drive. Conceptually, Michael’s term helped us change our
focus on how to study motivation by shifting its origins from the organism to the environment. Michael’s
account also served to stimulate applied research and to better understand behavioral function in clinical
practice.
Key words: drive, establishing operations, Jack Michael, motivation, motivating operations
The topic of motivation is considered of
utmost importance in the field of psychology
(Carter & Seifert, 2013). Even though, a
variety of theories have been proposed to
explain what ‘‘moves’’ people into behaving
in certain ways (e.g., Buss, 1995; Maslow,
1943; Weiner, 1972), they often assume
motivation to be an internal process that
makes people behave. In other words, the
term motivation is used as a hypothetical
construct derived from the observable behaviors
that it is meant to explain. If a child
does not complete her homework for example,
one can infer that she was not motivated
to do so, leading to circular reasoning.
Behavior analysts have traditionally dealt
with motivation by invoking the principle of
reinforcement (Michael, 1993). There is plenty
of evidence suggesting that behavior is a
function of its consequences, so if a behavior
does not occur, it is likely that there is a lack of
positive consequences being produced by it. But
the presence/absence of consequences alone is
not sufficient to explain one’s ‘‘inclination’’ to
behave, as we know that the value of consequences
vary considerably across, and more
importantly, within individuals (Skinner, 1938).
The principle of establishing operations,
which was later renamed motivating operations
(Michael, 1982, 1993) serves, among
other things, to explain the transitory effects
of reinforcing consequences. It does so in a
fairly parsimonious way, by clearly identifying
these motivational variables so they can be
observed, measured, and manipulated. In this
commentary dedicated to the 20th anniversary
of Michael’s (1993) seminal paper ‘‘Establishing
Operations,’’ I will briefly describe the
history of the behavior analytic approach to
motivation,1
beginning with the concept of
drive and ending with motivating operations.
DRIVE
Learning theorists (e.g., Hull, 1943) used
the term drive to suggest a physiological
tension that would motivate action. Lack of
water, for instance, would cause tension in
our system that would drive us to behave in a
way to satisfy the drive (by getting water).
Skinner (1938) also used the term to account
for the response variability observed during
reinforcement. According to Skinner, ‘‘A rat
does not always respond to food placed
before it, and a factor called its ‘hunger’ is
invoked by way of explanation’’ (p. 341).
Differently from his contemporaries, Skinner
was not interested in hypothetical states such
as hunger, which are inferred from observing
the behavior of eating, but with discovering
the variables, such as feeding and fasting,
which are responsible for the variability
observed in this behavior. He applied this
formulation to other drives such as thirst and
activity, suggesting that each would be a
function of different environmental operations,The author would like to thank Danielle
LaFrance and Mark Sundberg for their suggestions
on a previous version of this manuscript.
Address correspondence to Caio Miguel, Department
of Psychology, California State University-Sacramento
6000 J. St., Sacramento, CA
95819-6007 (e-mail: miguelc@csus.edu).
1
I have published a more detailed account of the
history of the concept of establishing operations in
a Brazilian psychology journal (Miguel, 2000).
The Analysis of Verbal Behavior 2013, 29, 3–11
3
such as ingestion/satiation of water or access/
no access to activity.
Skinner (1938) used the term drive as a
hypothetical state interpolated between these
operations and behavior, since what was
being observed and measured was behavior
and not the drive. However, he suggested that
the concept was useful ‘‘as a device for
expressing the complex relation … between
various similarly effective operations and a
group of co-varying forms of behavior’’
(p. 368). It is important to note that despite
using the term drive, Skinner suggested that
it was ‘‘not actually required in a descriptive
system’’ (p. 398). As a matter of fact, in his
later works, Skinner abandoned the term
drive for deprivation, satiation, and aversive
stimulation (e.g., Skinner, 1957).
In their didactic summary of Skinner’s
(1938) work, Keller and Schoenfeld (1950)
defined drive as a descriptor of ‘‘certain
operations … that have an effect upon
behavior which is different from any other
operations’’ (p. 265). In other words, they
emphasized that behavior may be a function
of variables other than reinforcement. Like
Skinner, they suggested that there may not be
a need to infer an intervening state such as
hunger between observable operations (i.e.,
food deprivation) and changes in behavior
(i.e., lever presses), as it would add nothing
to that ‘‘which is contained in the observations
themselves’’ (p. 270). Nevertheless, the
term drive was still used in their analysis of
motivation, but with an emphasis on the
environmental operations (i.e., deprivation,
satiation, and aversive stimulation) that
would establish it. They suggested that the
concept of motivation or drive should be
defined by the concomitant variation between
establishing operations and behavior.
ESTABLISHING OPERATIONS
OF DRIVE
In his book ‘‘Principles of Behavioral
Analysis,’’ Millenson (1967) defined drive
as a relation between a reinforcementestablishing
operation and the reinforcing
value of a class of stimuli. He made an
analogy between the terms drive and reflex,
suggesting that both ‘‘stand for a certain
relationship between variables’’ (p. 366). In
his treatment, Millenson emphasized the
effects of environmental operations on the
reinforcing value of unlearned reinforcers, by
proposing that when holding reinforcement
rates constant, and varying these other
operations, the rate of behavior directly
represents the strength of the reinforcer.
Millenson’s treatment of motivational
variables clearly emphasized the multiple
control of operant behavior, in that both
motivational variables and past conditioning
served to explain the emission of a response.
His book is still one of the few introductory
behavior analysis texts to dedicate a whole
chapter (two chapters, actually) to the topic
of motivation. Subsequent texts omit chapters
on motivation, while referring to deprivation
and aversive stimulation when describing
reinforcement (e.g., Catania, 1979;
Mazur, 1986).
ESTABLISHING STIMULUS (SE
)
Even though the term establishing operation
was already part of the behavior analytic
vernacular (Keller & Schoenfeld, 1950;
Millenson, 1967), Michael (1982) was concerned
that these types of antecedent variables
were not widely recognized as directly
controlling (i.e., evoking) behavior. Thus, in
his 1982 paper, Michael emphasized the
distinction between the motivational and
discriminative functions of stimuli. While
discriminative stimuli (SD
s) are correlated
with the availability of reinforcers,2
establishing
operations (EOs) are correlated with
their effectiveness. Thus, EOs would encompass
all environmental variables that (1) alter
(increase or decrease) the effectiveness of
events as reinforcers (reinforcer-establishing
effect), and (2) evoke (or suppress) behaviors
that have produced such reinforcers in the
past (evocative effect). This later effect is the
same as the one exerted by the SD
, albeit
developed through a different process. Note
that Michael’s (1982) use of EO includes not
only events that establish, but also those that
2
Like Michael (2004), I often use the term
reinforcement and not reinforcer to refer to the
stimulus changes responsible for the increase in
behavior, as I do not consider static stimuli to have
reinforcing value. However, to please the masses,
I will be using the term reinforcer throughout this
paper.
4 CAIO F. MIGUEL
abolish another event as a reinforcer (i.e.,
abolishing operations).
Many of the previously described drive
operations such as food, water, and activity
deprivation, as well as aversive stimulation,
would seem to have the two effects that
define the EO. For example, water deprivation
would increase the value of water as a
reinforcer during operant conditioning and,
after training, increase the frequency of the
operant behavior reinforced by water. Michael’s
taxonomical reformulation allowed
behavior analysts to group all variables with
similar motivational effects upon behavior
under the auspices of the EO. These variables
include not only different forms of deprivation
and aversive stimulation, but also salt
ingestion and temperature changes.
In addition to (re)defining EOs and distinguishing
them from SD
s, Michael (1982)
described how the value of conditioned
reinforcers may also be conditional upon motivational
variables. Although the value of
conditioned reinforcers may depend upon the
EO that has established the value of the
unconditioned reinforcer with which the
conditioned reinforcer has been correlated,
there are some situations in which the
presence of a stimulus (S1) establishes another
stimulus (S2) as a conditioned reinforcer
‘‘without altering the effectiveness of the relevant
unconditioned reinforcement’’ (p. 152).
Michael referred to this antecedent variable
(S1) as the establishing stimulus (SE
).
To illustrate the function of the SE
, Michael
(1982) described the famous electrician example.
In this example, an electrician needs to
remove a slotted screw (S1) to complete his
job. In order to do so, the electrician requires
an appropriate screwdriver (S2) and thus
requests one from his assistant. After receiving
the screwdriver (conditioned reinforcer),
the electrician continues engaging in a
sequence of behaviors that leads to the
completion of the job. According to Michael,
the slotted screw does not evoke the request as
an SD
since a screwdriver (conditioned reinforcer)
is not more available in the presence of
the slotted screw, and less available in its
absence. The slotted screw establishes the
screwdriver as a reinforcer and thus functions
as an SE
evoking the request. The slotted
screw may function as an SD
for other
behaviors such as unscrewing, because the
consequence produced by this behavior is not
available in the absence of the slotted screw.
Michael’s (1982) paper was extremely
important as it introduced an elegant way
for behavior analysts to talk about motivational
variables, and clearly identify the
different processes by which antecedent
stimuli evoke behavior. With this publication,
he re-emphasized that the three-term
contingency is not effective unless there is an
EO in place. In other words, the three-term
contingency is always dependent on another
(fourth) term, the EO. This is also the first
time that Michael fleshed out the notion of a
conditional conditioned reinforcer (i.e., SE
),
later described as the blocked-response CEO
(Michael, 1988), and finally, transitive conditioned
establishing operation (CEO-T;
Michael, 1993) as discussed below.
THE EO AND THE MAND
In 1988, Michael suggested that Skinner’s
(1957) definition of the mand be revised to
include control by the EO. This is because the
terms deprivation and aversive stimulation
used to describe the variables controlling the
mand were not inclusive of other motivational
variables such as salt ingestion or temperature
changes. According to Michael, the term EO
is more comprehensive as it serves to describe
any variable that momentarily alters ‘‘(1) the
reinforcing effectiveness of other events, and
(2) the frequency of the kind of responses that
have been reinforced by those other events’’
(p. 6). His revised definition reads as follows:
‘‘The mand is a type of verbal operant in which
a particular response form is reinforced by a
characteristic consequence and is therefore
under the functional control of the establishing
operation relevant to that consequence’’ (Michael,
1988, p. 7). It is this definition of the
mand that most behavior analysts adhere to
presently (e.g., Bourrett, Vollmer, & Rapp,
2004; Petursdottir, Carr, & Michael, 2005;
Shillingsburg & Valentino, 2011).
In his 1988 paper, Michael also distinguished
between unconditioned and conditioned
EOs (UEO and CEO, respectively) for
the first time. This distinction was based on
whether the reinforcer-establishing effect was
unlearned or learned, since the evocative
effect of the EO always depends on learning.
Otherwise stated, the EO always evokes
JACK MICHAEL’S MOTIVATION 5
behavior that has been reinforced by a
stimulus whose value has been changed by
the EO.
Michael (1988) mentioned two types of
CEOs and suggested that they were previously
identified as SD
s. The first was the
warning stimulus in the avoidance procedure.
Although avoidance preparations that include
the presentation of a warning stimulus (or
conditioned aversive stimulus) have often
been referred to as discriminated avoidance
(Pierce & Cheney, 2008; Sidman, 1954), the
warning stimulus whether unlearned or
learned, is never correlated with the differential
availability of the reinforcer (pain
reduction), but with its effectiveness. An
aversive stimulus alters the effectiveness of
its own removal as a reinforcer (reinforcerestablishing
effect) and evokes all behaviors
that in the past have been followed by this
removal (evocative effect). Thus, according to
Michael, it would be incorrect to refer to the
control exerted by the warning stimulus in an
avoidance preparation as discriminative.
The second form of CEO that could also be
easily confused with the SD
is what Michael
(1982) previously referred to as the SE
. In the
1988 paper, Michael focused on mand responses
whose forms were a direct function of
SE
s, as when someone seeing something that
needs to be written down mands for a
‘‘pencil.’’ In this case the situation establishes
another stimulus (the pencil) as a conditioned
reinforcer, thus evoking the mand (saying
‘‘pencil’’) that has produced the reinforcer in
the past. Michael replaces the term SE
with
blocked-response CEO, possibly under the
influence of Hall and Sundberg’s (1987)
procedure for teaching mands to children with
disabilities referred to as the interrupted chain
procedure.
Although recognizing that there may be
other types of CEOs, the focus of his 1988
paper was on those directly relevant to mand
training. It was not until 1993 that Michael
presented a fully developed behavioral account
of motivation.
THE BEHAVIORAL ACCOUNT
OF MOTIVATION
Twenty years ago, Michael (1993) published,
in my view, one of his most important
articles (possibly one of the most important
articles in behavior analysis), titled ‘‘Establishing
Operations.’’ The purpose of this
paper was to summarize his approach to
motivational variables that had evolved over
the past 10 years or so.
In that paper, Michael (1993) described the
two effects of the establishing operation:
reinforcer-establishing and evocative and,
once again, distinguished between the (evocative)
effects of the EO and the SD
.
Moreover, he described a third effect of the
EO that seems to be often overlooked
(Lotfizadeh, Edwards, Redner, & Poling,
2012), which is that it modifies the evocative
effects of discriminative stimuli. In other
words, by altering the value of consequences
as reinforcers, EOs not only make discrimination
training possible, but also change the
evocative effect that SD
s have upon behavior
(Michael, 1993).
While the distinction between UEOs and
CEOs was reintroduced, Michael (1993) also
provided a detailed description of the different
types of UEOs and CEOs. For UEOs, he listed
deprivation and satiation of food, water,
activity and sleep, temperature changes,
variables relevant to sexual reinforcement,
painful stimulation (escape), and emotional
EOs. All of which would momentarily
increase or decrease: (1) the reinforcer
effectiveness of a stimulus, and (2) all
behaviors that have been reinforced by this
stimulus in the past. When discussing painful
stimulation as an UEO, Michael described it
as establishing its own removal as a reinforcer,
as well as establishing other types of
reinforcers specific to that EO, such as ‘‘signs
of damage.’’ Thus, aggressive behaviors
typically believed to be elicited by aversive
stimulation (Azrin, 1970) could actually be
interpreted as evoked by an UEO like any
other emotional response. For example, the
consequences associated with insulting someone
may become more reinforcing (reinforcerestablishing
effect) in the presence of some
form of aversive stimulation (UEO), which
would momentarily increase the frequency of
this kind of behavior (evocative effect).
Moreover, Michael (1993) described three
types of CEOs: the surrogate, the reflexive,
and the transitive. Both the reflexive and
transitive had been discussed previously
(Michael, 1988) as the warning CEO (also
threat CEO) and the blocked response CEO,
6 CAIO F. MIGUEL
respectively. The new names were proposed
as they seemed to better describe the
processes of (1) establishing its own termination
as a reinforcer or punisher (reflexive),
and (2) establishing the effectiveness of
another event as a reinforcer or punisher
(transitive).
The surrogate CEO was defined as acquiring
its properties through correlation or
pairing with an UEO (and possibly another
already established CEO), in a respondentlike
preparation. Although dated experimental
research on the learned drive may support the
notion of the surrogate CEO (e.g., Calvin,
Bicknell, & Sperling, 1953; Mineka, 1975),
this phenomenon is mostly speculative. However,
it is not difficult to imagine this sort of
control, as when we go to a restaurant for
drinks after dinner and decide to eat again. It is
possible that the restaurant functions as a
surrogate CEO since it has been paired with an
UEO such as food deprivation (we typically
go to restaurants when we are ‘‘hungry’’3
).
Michael’s (1993) detailed account of EOs
highlighted the importance of motivational
variables in the analysis of behavior. His
treatment facilitated the ‘‘identification of
the various factors involved in the multiple
control of human behavior’’ (p. 205). Moreover,
it provided behavior analysts with a
way to manipulate and even create motivational
variables to better predict and control
behavior. In one of the many follow-up
commentaries to Michael’s paper, Sundberg
(1993) predicted that, ‘‘further research on
the EO could lead to many theoretical and
practical improvements in behavior analysis’’
(p. 214). His prediction proved to be
right.
RESEARCH ON EOS
Although only a few basic experimental
studies have been conducted on the role of
EOs on establishing reinforcers and evoking
behavior (McPherson & Osborne, 1986,
1988; Ravagnani & Serio, 2006), there have
been numerous applied studies involving
both UEOs and CEOs. According to Iwata,
Smith, and Michael (2000), there are three
broad categories of applied research on EOs:
‘‘(a) general demonstrations of the influence
of an EO on behavior, (b) the use of EO
manipulations to clarify results of behavioral
assessments, and (c) attempts to improve
(increase or decrease) behavior by incorporating
EO manipulations as treatment components’’
(p. 411). Most notable is the work
evaluating the control of the transitive CEO
on teaching mands to children with disabilities,
which over the past few years, has
become quite sophisticated (e.g., Hall &
Sundberg, 1987; Lechago, Carr, Grow, Love,
& Almason, 2010; Rosales & Rehfeldt,
2007). This shows that the concept of EOs
has undoubtedly become part of the arsenal of
analytical tools of applied behavior analysis
(Carbone, Morgenstern, Zecchin-Tirri, &
Kolberg, 2007; McGill, 1999; Smith & Iwata,
1997; Wilder & Carr, 1998), especially when
it comes to teaching verbal behavior to those
who lack it.
FURTHER CLARIFICATIONS
The increased number of applied behavior
analytic publications on EOs led Michael
(2000) to address terminological implications
that were being ‘‘overlooked or misconstrued’’
(p. 402). The first issue discussed
in his 2000 paper was the nature of the
evocative relation as being independent from
the reinforcer establishing effect. In other
words, the evocative effect is only observed
after behavior has been reinforced by the
consequence whose value was increased by
the EO (the reinforcer-altering effect). Second,
Michael suggested replacing terms such
as deprivation and satiation that usually refer
to periods of restricted access and organismic
states, respectively with the terms establishing
and abolishing operations. Third, he
reminded the reader that behavior reduction
achieved by manipulating EOs is temporary.
Once the EO is again present, problem
behavior would be evoked. Fourth, Michael
argued that despite its possible status as an
unconditioned reinforcer, attention should be
considered a conditioned reinforcer, so a
transitive CEO rather than an UEO (such as
lack of attention) modulates its value.
3
Note that I am using the term ‘‘hungry’’ quite
loosely and would hope that no serious behavior
analyst would consider it as an independent
variable. ‘‘Hunger’’ is solely a tact of a private
event resulting from food deprivation. It has no
causal status.
JACK MICHAEL’S MOTIVATION 7
Following up on his discussion of the
transitive CEO, Michael (2000) described the
different ways to weaken behavior evoked by
this type of establishing operation as his fifth
point. These include extinction of the conditioned
reinforcer, unpairing of conditioned
and unconditioned reinforcers, and undifferential
availability of the reinforcer. He
illustrated these processes with both an
animal and a human example. Sixth, he
emphasized the notion of multiple functions
of stimuli by exemplifying a situation in
which a stimulus, namely shock, can function
as an UEO making pain reduction a reinforcer,
and also as a transitive CEO, making
the sight of the lever that is used to terminate
the shock a valuable conditioned reinforcer.
Seventh, Michael made an analogy between a
demand situation in the applied setting and
the warning stimulus in the cued avoidance
preparation, suggesting that problem behavior
may be evoked by demands functioning
as reflexive CEOs.4
Finally, he described
three ways to reduce behavior evoked by
these types of reflexive CEOs by giving both
an avoidance and demand-escape example.
One way to reduce behavior would be by
omitting the warning stimulus or demand.
Another way would be by continuing to
present the aversive stimulus despite the
avoidance response. A third way would be
by terminating the demand sequence, or
withholding the aversive stimulus at the
offset of the warning stimulus, regardless of
behavior.
In addition to clarifying the issues above,
Michael (2000) concluded his paper by
warning behavior analysts against ‘‘mentalistic
and cognitive interpretations of the EO
phenomena … that surprisingly often slip
into our own behavioral language’’ (p. 409).
This is often seen in the verbal behavior of
untrained ‘‘behavior analysts’’ who may
refer to hunger or thirst as controlling
variables, rather than physiological corollaries
of environmental operations.
REFINED DEFINITION
Despite the widespread use of the EO
concept as a descriptor of motivational
variables in the behavior analytic literature,
Laraway, Snycerski, Michael, and Poling
(2003), identified elements of the terminology
that could ‘‘interfere with applied
behavior analysts’ efforts to predict, control,
and understand behavior’’ (p. 408). One of
these issues was that not all motivating
variables seemed to be described by the term
EO. More specifically, the authors argued
that the term implied an increase in the
effectiveness of a consequence as a reinforcer,
despite many motivational variables
having the opposite effect (i.e., AOs). Using
EO to refer to both EO and AO effects
‘‘seems illogical and may lead behavior
analysts to neglect operations with abolishing
effects’’ (p. 409). The authors also highlighted
the fact that motivational variables not
only affect reinforcers, but also punishers.
So, an event that establishes a stimulus as a
reinforcer, also establishes its removal as a
punisher. Another issue raised by the authors
was the use of evocative to suggest both a
momentary increase or decrease in behavior.
According to the authors, the term abate
should be used as the antonym for evoke, as
in abative and evocative effects (also see
Laraway, Snycerski, Michael, & Poling,
2002).
With the aforementioned issues in mind,
Laraway et al. (2003) proposed that the more
comprehensive term motivating operation
(MO) be used to refer to motivational
variables. According to these authors, MOs
have two defining effects: (1) value-altering,
and (2) behavior altering. The first effect
includes the (a) reinforcer establishing, (b)
reinforcing abolishing, (c) punisher establishing,
and (d) punisher abolishing effects;
while the second effect includes the (a)
evocative and (b) abative effects.
In a relatively recent book chapter,
Michael (2007) described his new taxonomy
in great detail by contrasting not only
the discriminative and motivational function
of stimuli, but also discussing their
evocative and function-altering effects. He
also introduced the new acronyms CMO-S,
CMO-R, and CMO-T to refer to the
surrogate, reflexive, and transitive CMOs,
4
For a detailed analysis of the role of the
reflexive CEO in applied settings see Carbone,
Morgenstern, Zecchin-Tirri, & Kolberg (2007).
8 CAIO F. MIGUEL
respectively. Michael’s (2007) chapter is
probably the most complete and up-to-date
description of the behavioral account of
motivational variables. Despite the fairly
recent change in taxonomy (from EOs to
MOs), behavior analysts have had no
problem adopting the new term (e.g., Call,
Wacker, Ringdahl, & Boelter, 2005; Fragale,
O’Reilly, Aguilar, Pierce, Lang, Sigafoos,
& Lancioni, 2012; Howlett, Sidener,
Progar, & Sidener, 2011).
CONCLUSION
Jack Michael’s contributions to the field of
behavior analysis have been many (Michael,
2004) but one of his most important is the
detailed description of motivation as an
independent variable in the study of behavior.
Ever since his 1982 paper, behavior
analysts have increasingly recognized the
importance of MOs and adopted his terminology
with little hesitation (although see
Catania, 1993; McDevitt & Fantino, 1993;
Whelan & Barnes-Holmes, 2010). It would
be difficult to imagine whether applied
behavior analysts would be as effective in
understanding, predicting, and most importantly,
changing behavior without a complete
understanding of what makes people ‘‘want’’
certain things and then engage in behavior to
produce those things. Thanks to Jack Michael,
we do not have to imagine such a
possibility.
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