Skinner’s Quote of the Day

"In spite of our lip service to freedom, we do very little to further the development of the individual. How many Americans can say that they are doing the kinds…

"We know how to solve many educational problems with programmed instruction and good contingency management, saving resources and the time and effort of teachers and students. Small communities are ideal…

"We could solve many of the problems of delinquency and crime if we could change the early environments of offenders." (p. 62)

"If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers. It should be easy to…

"In a series of small communities . . . everyone would have a job because work, as well as wages, could be divided among workers. And good incentive conditions—for example,…

"Simply by dividing the total amount of wages Americans receive each year by the number of people who want jobs, we arrive at a perfectly reasonable annual wage for everyone.…

"The basic research has also shown how important it is for everyone, young and old, women and men, not only to receive goods but to engage in their production." (p.…

"In an experimental community contingencies of reinforcement which encourage unnecessary spending can be corrected. As for pollution, small communities are optimal for recycling materials and avoiding wasteful methods of distribution."…

"The experimental analysis of behavior has clearly shown that it is not the quantity of goods that counts (as the law of supply and demand suggests) but the contingent relation…

"If we want to find out how people can live together without quarreling, can produce the goods they need without working too hard, or can raise and educate their children…

"From the very beginning the application of an experimental analysis of behavior was different . . . Behavior could be changed by changing its consequences—that was operant conditioning—but it could…

"Applied psychology is usually a mixture of science and common sense, and Freud regarded therapy as a minor contribution of psychoanalysis." (p. 59)

"In anthropology, sociology, and psychology the preferred formulations are those that do not dictate action. A thoroughgoing developmentalism, for example, almost denies the possibility of effective action." (p. 59)

"In Behavior of Organisms, published seven years earlier [than Walden Two], I had refused to apply my results outside the laboratory. “Let him extrapolate who will,” I had said. But,…

"Men and women have never faced a greater threat to the future of their species. There is much to be done and done quickly, and nothing less than the active…

"The age-old mistake is to look for salvation in the character of autonomous men and women rather than in the social environments that have appeared in the evolution of cultures…

"I would define a humanist as one of those who, because of the environment to which he has been exposed, is concerned for the future of mankind. A movement that…

"The neglect [of the importance of the social environment] has meant that better practices for building self-knowledge and self-management have been missed." (p. 52)

"What distinguishes the human species . . . is the development of a culture, a social environment that contains the contingencies generating self-knowledge and self-control. It is this environment that…

"Do I mean to say that Plato never discovered the mind? Or that Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, and Kant were preoccupied with incidental, often irrelevant byproducts of human behavior. Or that…

"We cannot fill the gap between behavior and the environment of which it is a function through introspection because, to put the matter in crude physiological terms, we do not…

"Knowing requires special contingencies of reinforcement that must be arranged by other people, and the contingencies involving private events are never very precise because other people are not effectively in…

"Each of us possesses a small part of the universe within his own skin. It is not for that reason different from the rest of the universe, but it is…

"An omniscient physiologist should be able to tell us, for example, how a person is changed when a bit of his behavior is reinforced, and what he thus becomes should…

"There are gaps in time and space between behavior and the environmental events to which it is attributed, and it is natural to try to fill them with an account…

"Why does the Ervin Committee not consider constitutional safeguards against the power which a person can amass by accumulating money? We have minimum wage laws and other laws restricting some…

"In retrospect, much of this [behavior modification] often seems to be simply a matter of common sense, but people have had common sense for thousands of years, and it has…

"The “good life” is not a world in which people have what they need; it is one in which the things they need figure as reinforcers in effective contingencies." (p.…

"Like everything else, operant conditioning can be misused." (p. 43)

"The mistake [concerning “rights”] is to generalize from those who cannot help themselves to those who can. For the latter, a much more fundamental right—the right to live in a…

"Behavior modification, properly defined as “the applied analysis of behavior,” is precisely what is needed to correct . . . shortcoming[s] of institutional life, because it is concerned with establishing…

"The term [behavior modification] was introduced . . . to refer to certain applications of the experimental analysis of behavior, particularly through the arrangement of contingencies of positive reinforcement. Behavior…

"[Industrial workers] differ from slaves only in the nature of the “punishment” they receive for not working. They are subject to negative reinforcement, a condition obscured by the uncritical use…

"It is often supposed that industrial workers work to get a reward, rather than avoid punishment. But as Marx and others have noted, they work because to do anything else…

"What they (who are said to lack initiative, to show little strength of character, to have weak wills, to lack spiritual strength, to have egos that are not well developed,…

"... Carl Rogers has suggested that the help given by the therapist (and one could also say teacher or friend) should be made carefully noncontingent on the behavior of the…

"Therapists, like teachers, must plan their withdrawal from the lives of their clients. One has most effectively helped others when one can stop helping them altogether." (p. 35)

"By giving too much help, we postpone the acquisition of effective behavior and perpetuate the need for help. The effect is crucial in the very profession of helping—in counseling and…

"Comenius made the point nearly 400 years ago when he said that “the more the teacher teaches, the less the student learns.”" (p. 35)

"... we may not really help others by doing things for them." (p. 34)

"No matter how free we feel, we are never free of our genetic endowment or of the changes which occur in us during our lifetime." (p. 32)

"When we act because we have been positively reinforced, we feel free and do not try to escape or countercontrol. The mistake is to believe that we are then actually…

"It is possible that we shall act more consistently with respect to the future when we see the possibility of building a better world rather than merely fending off disaster."…

"Unfortunately, physical and biological technology alone cannot guarantee that its solutions will be put into effect. To solve the major problem we need an effective technology of behavior. We need,…

"Many species show innate imitative behavior, although its existence in man is still debated. In any case, there are contingencies of reinforcement, rather like those of survival, which induce people…

"A basic process, imitation, may be part of the human genetic endowment." (p. 22)

"It is easy to show that a reinforcer which follows a response but has no other relation to it is effective; what we call superstition is an example." (p. 20)

" In spite of the difference in time scale, operant conditioning bears a striking resemblance to natural selection. It builds an adaptation or adjustment to the environment." (p. 19)

"The individual organism is also affected by consequences. The process evolved through natural selection, but it operates on a very different time scale. It was foreshadowed by philosophies of hedonism…

"Only that future is “taken into account” which resembles the past." (p. 19)