Skinner’s Quote of the Day

... some of the behavior of listening resembles the behavior of speaking, particularly when the listener “understands” what is said. (p. 11)

... a speaker is normally also a listener. He reacts to his own behavior in several important ways. Part of what he says is under the control of other parts…

Once a repertoire of verbal behavior has been set up, a host of new problems arise from the interaction of its parts. Verbal behavior is usually the effect of multiple…

Our first responsibility is simple description: what is the topography of this subdivision of human behavior? Once that question has been answered in at least a preliminary fashion we may…

We seek “causes” of behavior which have an acceptable scientific status and which, with luck, will be susceptible to measurement and manipulation ... The only solution is to reject the…

The impulse to explicate a meaning is easily understood. We ask, “What do you mean?” because the answer is frequently helpful ... But the explication of verbal behavior should not…

... dictionaries do not give meanings; at best they give words having the same meanings (p. 9)

To define a proposition as “something which may be said in any language” does not tell us where propositions are, or of what stuff they are made. Nor is the…

... we must avoid the unnatural formulation of verbal behavior as the “use of words.” We have no more reason to say that a man “uses the word water” in…

It is the function of an explanatory fiction to allay curiosity and to bring inquiry to an end. (p. 6)

When we say that a remark is confusing because the idea is unclear, we seem to be talking about two levels of observation although there is, in fact, only one.…

There is obviously something suspicious in the ease with which we discover in a set of ideas precisely those properties needed to account for the behavior which expresses them. We…

[An idea] is, in fact, often defined as something common to two or more expressions. But we shall not arrive at this “something” even though we express an idea in…

... the ideas for which sounds are said to stand as signs cannot be independently observed. If we ask for evidence of their existence, we are likely to be given…

It has generally been assumed that to explain behavior, or any aspect of it, one must attribute it to events taking place inside the organism. In the field of verbal…

Together with other disciplines concerned with verbal behavior, psychology has collected facts and sometimes put them in convenient order, but in this welter of material it has failed to demonstrate…

What happens when a man speaks or responds to speech is clearly a question about human behavior and hence a question to be answered with the concepts and techniques of…

A science of behavior does not arrive at this special field to find it unoccupied. Elaborate systems of terms describing verbal behavior have been developed. The lay vocabulary abounds in…

The extent to which we understand verbal behavior in a “causal” analysis is to be assessed from the extent to which we can predict the occurrence of specific instances and,…

The basic processes and relations which give verbal behavior its special characteristics are now fairly well understood. Much of the experimental work responsible for this advance has been carried out…

It would be foolish to underestimate the difficulty of this subject matter, but recent advances in the analysis of behavior permit us to approach it with a certain optimism. (p.…

The behaviors of speaker and listener taken together compose what may be called a total verbal episode. There is nothing in such an episode which is more than the combined…

[The behavior of the listener] cannot, in fact, be distinguished from behavior in general, and an adequate account of verbal behavior need cover only as much of the behavior of…

A definition of verbal behavior as behavior reinforced through the mediation of other persons needs, as we shall see, certain refinements. (p. 2)

The term “verbal behavior” has much to recommend it. Its etymological sanction is not too powerful, but it emphasizes the individual speaker and, whether recognized by the user or not,…

“Language” is now satisfactorily remote from its original commitment to vocal behavior, but it has come to refer to the practices of a linguistic community rather than the behavior of…

Unfortunately, the term “speech” emphasizes vocal behavior and is only awkwardly applied to instances in which the mediating person is affected visually, as in writing a note. (p. 2)

Behavior which is effective only through the mediation of other persons has so many distinguishing dynamic and topographical properties that a special treatment is justified and, indeed, demanded. (p. 2)

Behavior alters the environment through mechanical action, and its properties or dimensions are often related in a simple way to the effects produced ... Much of the time, however, a…

Men act upon the world, and change it, and are changed in turn by the consequences of their action. (p. 1)

A better understanding of variation and selection will mean a more successful profession, but whether behavior analysis will be called psychology is a matter for the future to decide. (p.…

Because of its similarity to the vernacular, cognitive psychology was easy to understand and the so-called cognitive revolution was for a time successful. That may have accelerated the speed with…

Cognitive science is the creation science of psychology, as it struggles to maintain the position of a mind or self. (p. 672)

Intelligence, never introspectible, is clearly an inference from the behavior sampled in intelligence tests, and an analysis of different kinds of intelligence is an analysis of different kinds of behavior.…

What, then, are we to make of the fact that for 100 years psychologists have tried to build just such a science of mind? What about the brilliant analyses that…

In a scientific analysis, histories of variation and selection play the role of the initiator. There is no place in a scientific analysis of behavior for a mind or self.…

In face-to-face contact with another person, references to an initiating self are unavoidable. There is a ‘you,’ and there is an ‘I.’ I see what ‘you’ do and hear what…

The attempt to use the apparent references to an initiating mind and to convert the vernacular into the language of a science was ... a mistake. Watson and other early…

Many of the psychologists who have studied behavior have also neglected variation and selection. Thorndike’s Law of Effect came close, but his experiment suggested that variations were trials and consequences…

The role of variation and selection in the behavior of the individual is often simply ignored. Sociobiology, for example, leaps from socio- to bio-, passing over the linking individual. (p.…

[Of the three sciences of variation and selection,] only operant conditioning occurs quickly enough to be observed from beginning to end. For the same reason it is the only one…

It has . . . been said that variation and selection may occur in the brain, but although the brain, like any other part of the body, undergoes variations, the…

Early parts of behavior affect later parts, but it is the behavior as a whole that is the product of variation and selection. (p. 668)

The Greeks are said to have discovered the mind, but it is more likely that they were the first to talk at great length about what they saw within themselves…

Psychologists who are uneasy about the metaphysical nature of mental life often say that what we see through introspection must be the brain, but that is unlikely. We have no…

Although operant control of the vocal musculature is exclusive to the human species, it is seldom if ever cited as its distinguishing feature. The presence or absence of “consciousness” or…

The process of variation and selection has a third fault: Variations are random and contingencies of selection accidental. What evolved is not a single slowly developing species but millions of…

Cultural evolution is not a biological process, but as a kind of variation and selection it has the same faults. The fact that a culture prepares a group only for…

Modeling, telling, and teaching are the functions of the social environments called cultures. Different cultures emerge from different contingencies of variation and selection and differ in the extent to which…

Other species imitate, but if they model behavior to be imitated, it is only as the product of natural selection. The consequence of modeling the behavior of the imitator is…