Superstitious Behavior

   Imagine this situation. A pigeon is being trained to peck at a lever to receive reinforcement - a typical behavior modification experiment. Let us suppose that in this case the pigeon learns the sequence of desired actions while its head is tilted to the right. The head tilting is not part of the actions the experimenter planned the pigeon to learn, but because of the happenstance of its head's position (when it learned the proper sequence of actions), the pigeon continues to tilt its head to the right whenever it performs the learned behavior.
   The importance of 'superstitious behavior' has been ignored by those basing explanations on behavior modification concepts. Its importance lies in the fact that most human behavior results from actions initiated while only incomplete knowledge was available. E.g. should one save for college? Assessments must be made of which college will accept you, what boarding costs will be in the future, etc. As you can see, indefiniteness creeps into the analysis of almost every human action. This ambiguity, in turn, implies that, from a behavioral perspective, there exists ample opportunity for behavior that has no necessary cause,