Skinner’s Quote of the Day

As plausible connections with external variables are demonstrated . . . , the need for inner explanations is reduced. An effective scientific analysis would presumably dispense with them altogether. (p.…

Where a scientific analysis shows that we react in a given way because similar actions in our past have had particular consequences, the mentalist may insist that we act because…

. . . where a scientific analysis relates behavior to the physical environment, the mentalist may insist that the mind observes only a none-too-reliable copy of the environment called subjective…

. . . more and more of the behavior of organisms, including man, is being plausibly related to events in their genetic and environmental histories. If other sciences are any…

We cannot predict the success or failure of a cultural invention with the same accuracy as we do that of a physical invention. It is for this reason that we…

There is very little personal reimbursement for the most profitable ideas of modern science. (p. 48)

The scientist is usually concerned with the control of nature apart from his personal aggrandizement. (p. 48)

Our apparatus was designed by the organism we study, for it was the organism which led us to choose a particular manipulandum, particular categories of stimulation, particular modes of reinforcement,…

It is easier for the teacher to control the student by threatening punishment than by using positive reinforcement with its deferred, though more powerful, effects. (p. 46)

The behavior of a child born into a flourishing society is shaped and maintained by variables, most of which are arranged by other people. (p. 43)

By far the greater part of behavior develops in the individual through processes of conditioning, given a normal biological endowment. (p. 43)

In general, the evolution of man has emphasized modifiability rather than the transmission of specific forms of behavior. (p. 43)

Inherited patterns of behavior must have been selected by their contributions to survival in ways which are not unlike those in which the behavior of the individual is selected or…

Contingencies of reinforcement are similar to what we might call contingencies of survival. (p. 42)

The experimental study of reinforcing contingencies is nothing more than a nonteleological analysis of the directed effects of behavior, of relations which have traditionally been described as purpose. (pp. 41-42)

Our present understanding of the so-called “contingencies of reinforcement” is undoubtedly incomplete, but it nevertheless permits us to construct new forms of behavior, to bring behavior under the control of…

We try to gain addi­tional credit for ourselves by concealing the reasons why we behave in given ways or by claiming to have acted for less powerful reasons. (p. 58)

Science naturally seeks a fuller explanation of . . . behavior; its goal is the destruc­tion of mystery. (p. 58)

A scientific conception seems demeaning because nothing is eventually left for which autonomous man can take credit. (p. 58)

It is in the nature of scientific progress that the functions of autonomous man be taken over one by one as the role of the environ­ment is better understood. (p.…

We are likely to object to (and resent) being told that we are imitating an ad­mired person, or repeating merely what we have heard someone say or have read in…

A student protests when we tell him an answer he already knows, because we destroy the credit he would have been given for knowing it. (p. 55)

. . . we do not protest because we feel resentful. We both protest and feel resentful because we have been deprived of the chance to be admired or to…

. . . we react to those who deprive us of due credit by protesting, opposing, or condemning them and their prac­tices. (p. 54)

We stand in awe of the in­explicable, and it is therefore not surprising that we are likely to admire behavior more as we understand it less. And, of course, what…

We do not waste credit on reflexes, because they can be strengthened only with great difficulty, if at all, through operant reinforcement. (p. 51)

When we are concerned with the credit to be given to others, we minimize the conspicuousness of the causes of their behavior. (p. 50)

We magnify the credit due us by exposing ourselves to conditions which ordinarily generate unworthy behavior while refraining from acting in unworthy ways. We seek out conditions under which behavior…

We conceal coercion by doing more than is required: "If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” (pp. 49-50)

We attempt to gain credit by disguising or concealing control. The television speaker uses a prompter which is out of sight, and the lecturer glances only surreptitiously at his notes,…

We acknowledge [a] curious relation between credit and the inconspicuousness of controlling conditions when we conceal control to avoid losing credit or to claim credit not really due us. (p.…

We give credit generously when there are no obvious reasons for the behavior. (p. 47)

We do not give a writer much credit for a potboiler, or an artist for a picture obviously painted to sell in the current fashion. Above all we do not…

The amount of credit a person receives is related in a curious way to the visibility of the causes of his behavior. We withhold credit when the causes are conspicuous.…

There may be a natural inclination to be reinforcing to those who reinforce us, as there seems to be to attack those who attack us, but similar behavior is generated…

Praise and approval are generally reinforcing because anyone who praises a person or approves what he has done is inclined to reinforce him in other ways. (p. 45)

. . . as an analysis of behavior adds further evidence, the achievements for which a person himself is to be given credit seem to approach zero, and both the…

Any evidence that a person's behavior may be attributed to external circumstances seems to threaten his dignity or worth. We are not inclined to give a person credit for achievements…

The literature of freedom . . . has been forced to brand all control as wrong and to misrepresent many of the advantages to be gained from a social environment.…

Man's struggle for freedom is not due to a will to be free, but to certain behavioral processes characteristic of the human organism, the chief effect of which is the…

Although technology has freed men from certain aversive features of the environment, it has not freed them from the environ­ment. (p. 42)

Were it not for the unwarranted generalization that all control is wrong, we should deal with the social environ­ment as simply as we deal with the nonsocial. (p. 42)

The problem is to free men, not from control, but from certain kinds of control, and it can be solved only if our analysis takes all consequences into account. (p.…

We shall see later that in order to maintain the position that all control is wrong, it has been necessary to disguise or conceal the nature of useful practices, to…

It is said that even though behavior is completely de­termined, it is better that a man "feel free" or "believe that he is free." If this means that it is…

Freedom is a matter of contingencies of reinforcement, not of the feelings the contingencies generate. The distinction is particularly important when the contingencies do not generate escape or counterattack. (pp.…

Want­ing is not . . . a feeling, nor is a feeling the reason a person acts to get what he wants. Certain contingencies have raised the probability of behavior…

. . . according to Voltaire, "When I can do what I want to do, there is my liberty for me . . . or in the power to want…

We say that a person behaves in a given way because he possesses a philosophy, but we infer the philosophy from the behavior and therefore cannot use it in any…

What we may call the "literature of freedom" has been designed to induce people to escape from or attack those who act to control them aversively. (p. 30)