The goal of Chapter 5 is to demonstrate how entrenched these norms are in most workplaces and to explain why this entrenchment exists. I first provide a history of many of the most common structural norms, including hours, shifts, and attendance policies, before demonstrating just how entrenched these norms are. Finally, this chapter briefly discusses the work-from-home experiment courtesy of COVID-19.

This chapter analyses how the ecumenical synods contributed to the organisation of the festival network. It first discusses their involvement in the organisation of individual agones. The sources indicate that there was a broad spectrum of synod involvement: the old, well-established agones probably did not require a lot of organisational assistance, whereas the organisation of some newly founded agones was entirely outsourced to one of the synods. Between these two extremes, synod involvement varied according to specific circumstances. Second, this chapter investigates how the synods helped maintain the festival network as a whole. Due to the combined experiences of their travelling members, they had a unique overview of the agonistic circuits and as such could provide valuable input when the festival calendar was reformed. Communication went the other way around as well: for instance, they communicated changes in schedules and imperial decisions to their members. In sum, the synods were the lubricant that kept the agonistic machine running. The synods were thus not simply a by-product of the ‘agonistic explosion’ of the Principate but rather a key factor that made it possible.

A wide variety of events can function as reinforcers. The Premack principle provides a useful guide; activities that individuals engage in when given a free choice will probably be effective reinforcers. One factor is the delay between the response and reinforcer; we discount, or give less value, to rewards that are delayed. Effectiveness also depends on the schedule of reinforcement; partial reinforcement (reinforcing only some responses) produces greater persistence in extinction. Effectiveness also depends on how the reinforcer contrasts with past reinforcers—we value a reinforcer less if we are accustomed to more attractive reinforcers—and how long we have been deprived of it. The stimuli present during reinforcement are also important; we are more likely to repeat a response if we are in the same environment where we obtained it previously. Which elements of that environment will be important, though, can be difficult to predict, depending in part on attention and perceptual learning (with practice we can become better at distinguishing elements of a situation). The chapter ends with an application involving shaping—when a behavior is difficult to train, start by reinforcing the response closest to it, and then gradually reinforce closer approximations.

Chapter 4 introduces the twentieth century’s most radical behaviorist: Burrhus Frederic Skinner. “We always called him Fred,” said Mrs. Gribbin, who apparently knew him well, explaining that his was a radical behaviorism not because he campaigned vigorously against established psychological orthodoxies, but because Skinner sought to get at the very roots of the discipline: The word radical has to do with the basic, fundamental nature of a thing. Skinner believed that to be a truly reliable science, psychology had to abandon its preoccupation with private mental events and concentrate instead on public events such as observable behaviors and their consequences. The chapter presents a detailed explanation of Skinner’s operant conditioning accompanied by illustrations of how Skinnerian findings relating to different types of reinforcers, schedules of reinforcement, aversive behavioral contingencies such as negative reinforcement and punishment, shaping, chaining, generalization, and discrimination are being applied in business, education, and day-to-day life. Mrs. Gribbin points out that Skinner is second only to Freud in terms of current recognition as a psychologist.