Frank Abagnale (el impostor): Every success pushed him to the next

Frank Abagnale does not set out to become the most famous con man of his era. He starts with a bad check, almost out of necessity, and discovers something intoxicating: it works. No one stops him, he gets the money and the thrill is enormous. From there his story is an escalation —checks, a pilot's uniform, a doctor's coat, a lawyer's robe—, each rung bigger than the last. For Skinner's operant conditioning, Abagnale is not a born criminal genius: he is a behavior shaped, rung by rung, by its own rewards.

// The theoryWhat works gets repeated

B. F. Skinner proposed that behavior is governed by its consequences: what is followed by a reward (a reinforcement) tends to be repeated. And he described shaping: complex behaviors built by reinforcing successive approximations, one small rewarded step after another, until reaching something that at first would have been unthinkable. Abagnale is a textbook of shaping. No one plans all at once to pass as an airline pilot; you get there because each minor scam, when it goes well, reinforces the confidence and raises the stakes.

The key is that the reinforcement is immediate —the money, the admiration, the adrenaline arrive at once— while the punishment, if it comes, is distant and uncertain. Skinner warned of it: an immediate, certain reward almost always beats a late, probable punishment. That is why Frank's behavior is not extinguished by the odd scare; the pattern of successes has etched it in deep.

// The subjectThe void the reward came to fill

The story adds a nuance Skinner also considered: what reinforces each person. For Frank, the checks do not just give money; they give the attention, the status and the sense of control of a boy marked by his parents' divorce and the humiliation of poverty. The most powerful reinforcement is not the material one, but the emotional —being someone, being admired, escaping—. That is why the behavior hooks so hard: it does not reward one lack, but several at once. Understanding what reinforces a criminal is half of understanding why he does not stop.

// The flawNeither automaton, nor free of responsibility

The flaw in the operant approach is reducing Frank to an automaton that only responds to rewards, without decision or awareness. The cognitive critique is right: Abagnale chooses, calculates, knows what he is doing. The reinforcement pushes him, it does not compel him. And from there the other point: that his scams were reinforced does not exonerate him. Explaining why he escalated —success calling to success— does not erase the victims of his frauds nor his responsibility for them. To explain is not to excuse. What conditioning offers is not an alibi, but a map of where to intervene.

In fact, the real ending confirms it: when the FBI finally imposes consistent consequences and then offers him a legitimate reinforcement —working for them fighting fraud—, the same skill that served crime is redirected. His talent did not change; the contingencies did.

Catch Me If You Can reads like an adventure, but it is a behavioral experiment: the story of a behavior that the reward inflated to the incredible, and that another, different reward ended up steering back. The carrot made the impostor; a better carrot undid him.