Skinner’s Quote of the Day

"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)

"Although no future ever has an effect on the present, there is a sense in which living things are affected by consequences. An “effect of the future” was first recognized…

"All we can change are the circumstances in which people live, and we want to change them in such a way that people will behave differently. We are on safer…

"Even for the mentalist the problem is to get people to act as if they were thinking about the future." (p. 18)

"In fact, are not the measures we say we take to change minds the very measures we take to change behavior?" (p. 18)

"Is it any easier to get people to think about the future than to get them to act with respect to it?" (p. 18)

"Thoughts, images, knowledge, ideas, and concepts are no explanations at all until they have been explained in turn." (p. 18)

"Human beings, it is said, differ from physical objects or non-human living things because they can think about the future . . . This is a mentalistic explanation of human…

"Final causes were soon ruled out of physics and eventually out of biology, but must we suppose that there is some way in which they function in the field of…

"What does it mean to say that a person “takes the future into account” or acts in a given way “because of” something that will happen in the future? Can…

"How can people be induced to take the future into account? That is a question to which, I think, an analysis of behavior is relevant." (p.17)

"Even the work with other species was relevant to human affairs, because it revealed the extraordinary role played by the environment in the determination of behavior. One did not have…

"I have always stressed the implications of an experimental analysis of behavior, an analysis which was, indeed, first carried out on lower species, but which was eventually extended to human…

"It is often said that in the end the question is who will control the controllers (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?), but the issue is not Who but What" (p. 14)

"The trouble is that any allusion to the control of human behavior evokes the challenge: who will control? – often with the implication that a technology of behavior will naturally…

"A fourth principle is not so widely recognized. Control of the people by people is likely to be disturbed by “noncontingent” reinforcers." (p. 12)

"The student who continues to turn to a teacher has not been successfully taught; the client who continues to consult a counselor has not been successfully counseled. The uncontrived reinforcers…

" There is nothing wrong with contrived reinforcers as such. Teachers and counselors need them to shape and strengthen behavior which the individual will find helpful in the natural contingencies…

"A second principle in improving the control of people by the people is the avoidance of contrived reinforcers. Here, again, there is a long history. We all live in a…

"The very substitution of positive reinforcement for aversive control is, of course, at the heart of the struggle for freedom." (p. 10)

"By “behavior modification” I mean what the term was introduced to mean – changing behavior through positive reinforcement." (p. 10)

"Can we design an environment in which people will treat each other well, keep the size of the population within bounds, learn to work and work productively, preserve and enhance…

"Welfare—either as a social measure or as a political philosophy—raises the problem of the noncontingent reinforcer ..." (p. 7)

"In short, the world has changed, and the processes through which we free ourselves from aversive stimulation, nonsocial and social, have begun to work against the survival of the culture…

"... a vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and…

"The processes through which organisms learn to escape from or avoid various kinds of physical damage have had an obvious survival value, but in what we call a civilized environment…

"No matter how essential to the survival of a species a process may once have been, it can become troublesome or even lethal when the environment changes, and this has…

"When our behavior is positively reinforced we say we enjoy what we are doing; we call ourselves happy." (p. 5)

"It is also easy to learn to treat others aversively because the results are especially quick." (p. 4)

"Aversive action also has a kind of genetic priority. Aggressive repertoires, as well as the capacity to acquire aggressive behavior readily, have had survival value." (p. 4)