In studying such [operant] behavior we must make certain preliminary decisions. We begin by choosing an organism—one which we hope will be representative but which is first merely convenient. We…
The behavior through which the individual deals with the surrounding environment and gets from it the things it needs for its existence and for the propagation of the species cannot…
Not so long ago the expression “a science of behavior” would have been regarded as a contradiction in terms. Living organisms were distinguished by the fact that they were spontaneous…
The organism whose behavior is most extensively modified and most completely controlled in research of the sort I have described is the experimenter himself. (p. 129)
When behavior shows order and consistency, we are much less likely to be concerned with physiological or mentalistic causes. A datum emerges which takes the place of theoretical fantasy. (p.…
When we have achieved a practical control over the organism, theories of behavior loose their point. (p. 127)
We are within reach of a science of the individual. This will be achieved, not by resorting to some special theory of knowledge in which intuition or understanding takes the…
There is perhaps no field in which behavior is customarily described more indirectly than psychiatry. (p. 125)
In choosing rate of responding as a basic datum and in recording this conveniently in a cumulative curve, we make important temporal aspects of behavior visible. Once this has happened,…
When you have the responsibility of making absolutely sure that a given organism will engage in a given sort of behavior at a given time, you quickly grow impatient with…
If I engaged in Experimental Design at all, it was simply to complete or extend some evidence of order already observed. (p. 119)
Of course, I was working on a basic Assumption—that there was order in behavior if I could only discover it—but such an assumption is not to be confused with the…
I never faced a Problem which was more than the eternal problem of finding order. I never attacked a problem by constructing a Hypothesis. I never deduced Theorems or submitted…
Since I do not wish to deprecate the hypothetico-deductive method, I am glad to testify to its usefulness. It led me to apply our second principle of unformalized scientific method…
I can easily recall the excitement of that first complete extinction curve. . . I had made contact with Pavlov at last! Here was a curve uncorrupted by the physiological…
Now, as soon as you begin to complicate an apparatus, you necessarily invoke a fourth principle of scientific practice: Apparatuses sometimes break down. I had only to wait for the…
Psychologists have adopted cumulative curves only very slowly, but I think it is fair to say that they have become an indispensable tool for certain purposes of analysis. (p. 116)
A third unformalized principle of scientific practice: Some people are lucky. (p. 115)
... a second unformalized principle of scientific practice: Some ways of doing research are easier than others. I got tired of carrying the rat back to the other end of…
... a first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it. (p. 112)
I had the clue from Pavlov: Control your conditions and you will see order.
So far as I can see, I began simply by looking for lawful processes in the behavior of the intact organism. Pavlov had shown the way; but I could not…
It had been said of Loeb, and might have been said of Crozier, that he “resented the nervous system.” Whether this was true or not, the fact was that both…
When I arrived at Harvard for graduate study, the air was not exactly full of behavior, but Walter Hunter was coming in once a week from Clark University to give…
I had had no psychology as an undergraduate but I had had a lot of biology, and two of the books which my biology professor had put into my hands…
... it is a mistake to identify scientific practice with the formalized constructions of statistics and scientific method. These disciplines have their place, but it does not coincide with the…
An experimental situation is required in which frequency may be studied. When this is arranged, important processes in behavior are revealed in a continuous, orderly, and reproducible fashion. Concepts and…
Complex activities are not always “responses” in the sense of repeated or repeatable events. They are composed of responses, however, which are repeatable and capable of being studied in terms…
What we transfer from our experiments to a casual world in which satisfactory quantification is impossible is the knowledge that certain basic processes exist, that they are lawful, and that…
For example, we determine the shape of the cooling curve with the aid of the physical laboratory. We have little doubt that the same process is going on as our…
Laboratory experimentation is designed to make a process as obvious as possible, to separate processes one from the other, and to obtain quantitative measures. These are indeed the very heart…
One of the most promising achievements has been an analysis of the effects of punishment, which confirms much of the Freudian material on repression and reveals many disadvantages in the…
Frequency of response is also a useful datum when two responses are being considered at the same time. We can investigate “choice” and follow the development of a preference for…
... frequency of response is a valuable datum just because it provides a substantial basis for the concept of probability of response—a concept toward which a science of behavior seems…
. . . we must not forget the considerable advantages of a datum which lends itself to automatic experimentation. Many processes in behavior cover long periods of time. The records…
. . . frequency of response provides a continuous account of many basic processes. We can follow a curve of extinction, for example, for many hours, and the conditions of…
When we extend an experimental analysis to human affairs in general, it is a great advantage to have a conceptual system which refers to the single individual, preferably without comparison…
The usual uniformity of the results encourages us to turn—not to sampling procedures—but to more rigorous experimental control. (pp. 104-105)
If the essential features of a given curve are not readily duplicated in a later experiment—in either the same or another organism—we take this, not as a cue to resort…
. . . the frequency of response is an extremely orderly datum. The curves which represent its relations to many types of independent variables are encouragingly simple. Second, they are…
I am concerned here with demonstrating that frequency of response, so recorded [in cumulative records], is a useful and significant datum in the experimental analysis of behavior—that it is a…
If our experiment is to be automatic—and we shall see that there are many advantages in making it so—our response must operate an apparatus. The behavior should not require much…
It is possible to study probability . . . by designing a laboratory situation in which frequency of response may be easily examined. There are certain considerations to be observed.…
The basic facts about behavior can be discovered only by examining behavior during appreciable intervals of time. (p. 102)
The practical problem of taking probability as a basic datum may not be as difficult as we suppose . . . The mistake we seem to have made is in…
We are dealing here with a question of probability—specifically, the probability that an organism will emit behavior of a given sort at a given time. But probability is always a…
A science must achieve more than a description of behavior as an accomplished fact. It must predict future courses of action; it must be able to say that an organism…
The behavior of an organism is not an easy thing to describe. It is not an object which may be held still for inspection. It is a process, a continuous…
Beyond the collection of uniform relationships lies the need for a formal representation of the data reduced to a minimal number of terms. A theoretical construction may yield greater generality…
Theories are fun. But it is possible that the most rapid progress toward an understanding of learning may be made by research which is not designed to test theories. (p.…