Irving Rosenfeld tells how, as a boy, he broke windows so his father's glass business would have work. It is his first con, and it works. From there to fake loans, forged art and million-dollar scams there is a long road, but of a single logic: every deception that goes well teaches the next one. For Skinner's operant conditioning, Irving is not a villain by vocation; he is a learned trade, shaped by decades of reinforcements.
// The theoryCrime too is learned through its rewards
Skinner showed that complex behaviors are built through shaping: reinforcing successive approximations until, step by step, arriving at something elaborate. Irving's con is exactly that—a professional skill built on thousands of small reinforced victories. There is no moment when he «decides» to become a swindler; there is a life in which swindling was, again and again, what worked to get money, respect and survival. Crime, here, does not express a prior character: the reward keeps building it.
The film underscores this by showing him as a meticulous professional, almost a craftsman: he studies his marks, minds the details, takes pride in his technique. It is the signature of a behavior learned thoroughly, not of an impulse. Skinner would say Irving is no different from an expert in any trade; only that his was reinforced on the wrong side of the law.
Negative reinforcement: escaping the aversive
Alongside positive reinforcement (gaining something good), Skinner described negative reinforcement: a behavior is strengthened because it allows escaping or avoiding something unpleasant. Much of Irving's con falls here: he swindles to flee poverty, irrelevance, ruin. When the FBI catches him, he keeps conning—now to avoid prison. Negative reinforcement explains why the behavior persists even without a big reward: it is enough that it lets him dodge something worse. It is the silent engine of much survival crime: the aim is not to win, but not to lose.
Get the map of theories for free
Subscribe to the criminal archive —one case a week, no spam— and I'll send you The map of theories: the great currents of criminology on a single sheet.
// The subjectThe swindler who thinks himself honest
Irving has a telling trait: he considers himself, in his own way, a man of integrity—«at least I know what I am». His line, «we all con someone to survive», is the perfect rationalization of a behavior so reinforced that it now feels natural. Skinner would not need to speak of morality to explain it: when a behavior has paid off throughout an entire life, it stops being lived as a choice and comes to be lived as an identity. Irving does not believe he is a criminal; he believes he is a survivor doing what has to be done, because that is exactly what reinforcement has taught him.
Irving Rosenfeld
// The crackNeither "good guy" nor puppet of his environment
The film is clever enough to make Irving likable, and that is its trap: his charm and his own code do not erase the victims of his frauds. That the con was a behavior learned by reinforcement does not exonerate him: explaining how he became a swindler does not dissolve his responsibility for whom he swindled. But neither is he a will-less puppet of the environment: Irving chooses, negotiates, betrays and protects as it suits him. Operant conditioning illuminates the history of his behavior; it does not cancel his agency in each new con.
The honest reading holds him whole: a man shaped by decades of reinforcements and responsible for what he does with what he learned. Understanding the trade does not forgive his victims.
Reinforce another way out first
If the con is learned because it works, prevention is that something else works first. The boy Irving breaking windows to give his father work is one step from branching off: had his first needs—money, security, recognition—found a legitimate reinforcement as immediate as deception's, the chain would have begun elsewhere. Effective programs with career criminals do not bet only on punishing an already-consolidated trade; they try to reinforce legal ways out before crime becomes the only skill the person masters. With an adult Irving it is far too late; the moment was the first broken pane.
Irving Rosenfeld is neither a monster nor a poor devil: he is a trade. The story of how it was learned is the story of everything that, over a lifetime, paid him to deceive and never paid him enough not to.
// The other subjectThe victim is also in Skinner's box
In a con there are two learners at once. One is Irving. The other is his mark. David W. Maurer—whose The Big Con is the reference book for this file—documented that the great con does not improvise: it follows a fixed choreography with a decisive piece he called the convincer. Before fleecing the victim, the swindler lets her truly win once: he puts real, hard cash in her hand. That early reward is not generosity, it is the shot that fixes the behavior. Someone who has just been paid no longer weighs a deal coldly; she repeats a response that just paid her, exactly like the pigeon that pecks again at the lever that released food.
From there the con operates as a shaping aimed at the victim. Each step asks a little more trust—a signature, an advance, a shared secret—and reinforces it with signs that everything is going as promised. Her credulity is shaped by successive approximations, just as Skinner sculpted a complex behavior by rewarding each approach, until handing over her savings seems the logical next step and not a leap into the void. The swindler does not deceive all at once: he educates. And when the payments begin to space out, they no longer all need to be sustained, because the most stubborn mechanism in Skinner's repertoire has come into play.
The convincer and resistance to extinction
Skinner showed that a behavior reinforced only sometimes—intermittent reinforcement—is far harder to extinguish than one always rewarded. The con exploits this deliberately: after the convincer, payments turn unpredictable, and that uncertainty is precisely what keeps the mark inside, throwing good money after bad. That is why so many victims do not report while they still could: they do not feel they are being swindled, they feel they are going through a rough patch that may turn on the next move. Operant conditioning here describes not the con man but the psychological hook he sets. And it offers the best practical defense: when a stranger lets you win first, it is worth asking what behavior is being shaped in you.
Three key takeaways
- Irving is the con as a learned trade (Skinner): a skill shaped by decades of small reinforced scams, not a prior villain's calling.
- Much of his crime is negative reinforcement: he swindles to escape poverty and, later, prison. The behavior persists because it lets him avoid something worse, not only to win.
- Reinforcement explains his history, it does not cancel his agency or exonerate his victims. Prevention was reinforcing a legitimate way out before deception was his only skill.
Sources · further reading
- Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and Human Behavior. Macmillan.
- Maurer, D. W. (1940). The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man. Bobbs-Merrill.
- Jeffery, C. R. (1965). «Criminal Behavior and Learning Theory». J. of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science, 56(3).
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es Irving Rosenfeld?
Irving Rosenfeld («el timador») es un villano de American Hustle, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. He started breaking glass to sell glass.
¿Por qué Irving Rosenfeld (el timador) se convierte en villano?
Irving Rosenfeld and operant conditioning: the con man who learned his trade the way any behavior is learned—one small scam reinforced after another—until deception became his way of surviving.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Irving Rosenfeld?
El caso de Irving Rosenfeld se analiza desde la Teoría del condicionamiento operante. Skinner's operant conditioning explains how complex behaviors are shaped by reinforcing successive steps. Irving Rosenfeld, from American Hustle, is the con as a trade: a man who learned to swindle because swindling worked for him from childhood, chaining together ever-larger deceptions. His case shows crime as behavior learned through its consequences, not as a villain's calling.
