Webinar Series: How the Internet Became the Most Advanced Operant Chamber Ever Built, January 2026
Abstract: What if the most sophisticated operant chamber ever built was not in a laboratory, but in your pocket? In this webinar, we will explore how the Internet has evolved, from the static Web 1.0 to the AI-embedded modern architectures of the internet, and how these algorithm-driven contingencies of reinforcement select and shape human behavior on a global scale. Drawing on the principles of operant conditioning and cultural selection, we will analyze how digital platforms (such as social media, search engines, and large language models) arrange contingencies, deliver reinforcement, and precisely register user behavior. In the twentieth century, behavioral scientists designed operant chambers to study behavior in different animal species; in the twenty-first century, humans interact daily with a digital environment explicitly designed to record behavior and deliver personalized content. Based on the presenter’s experimental work with animal models of creativity and applied research on disinformation at Brazil’s Supremo Tribunal Federal (Federal Supreme Court), this presentation argues that behavior analysts are uniquely equipped to interpret, study, and intervene in the digital environments shaping modern life. However, new methodological challenges must be addressed. This is both a scientific opportunity and an ethical imperative for behavioral scientists worldwide.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of the presentation, participants will be able to:
- Describe how major shifts from Web 1.0 to modern AI-embedded digital platforms changed the arrangement of antecedents, responses, and consequences in everyday online behavior and how this individually shaped behavior can have cultural impacts,
- Analyze features of social media, search engines, and large language models as systems that arrange reinforcement, stimulus control, and register user behaviors at large scale,
- Assess ethical risks and benefits associated with algorithm-driven media and technology (e.g., privacy, vulnerability, fake news and disinformation) using a behavior-analytic framework.
Instruction Level: Intermediate.
Target Audience: The webinar is designed to be accessible to an international audience of students and researchers with basic and intermediate experience with single-subject experimental design and behavioral processes.
CE Available: BACB/IBAO Ethics
Date: Tuesday, January 13th.
Time: 10:00 AM EST