A Conditioned Motivating Operation-Surrogate (CMO-S) is a type of motivating operation where a stimulusStimulus is defined as any change in the environment or for... becomes motivating through its association with another already established motivating operation. In other words, the CMO-S acquires its effect by being paired with another motivating operation that already affects behaviorBehavior refers to any activity or action that living organ....
The CMO-S works similarly to the way conditioned stimuli work in classical conditioning; it takes on the properties of the original motivating operation simply because it has been consistently paired with it.
Example
Suppose that every time it starts raining (an unconditioned motivating operation, or UMO, that makes an umbrella valuable), you hear a specific sound, like thunder. Over time, even when you only hear the thunder (without seeing the rain), the thunder itself may act as a CMO-S, increasing the value of an umbrella, because it has been consistently paired with rain in the past. In this case, the thunder has taken on the same motivating properties as the rain through association.
Another example: A student feels hungry at lunchtime (hunger being an unconditioned motivating operation), but every day before lunch, the teacher turns off the lights to signal lunch is coming. Eventually, the turning off of the lights (CMO-S) may cause the student to feel more motivated to eat, even if they weren’t initially hungry, because the light switch has been consistently paired with the time for eating.