Skinner’s Quote of the Day

"Internal dialogues . . . are often called thinking, but all behavior is thinking, as I argue in the last chapter in Verbal Behavior (1957)." (p. 46)   Subscribe to…

"Bacon, an early experimental analyst, insisted that books follow science. Hypotheses and theories follow data. The contingencies always come first." (p. 44)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"The mand frees us from making a response. The tact replaces the discriminative stimulus controlling a response." (p. 38)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"Most of my book Verbal Behavior (1957) was about the speaker . . . But if listeners are responsible for the behavior of speakers, we need to look more closely…

"A minor problem is that in using modern English, you find yourself implying the traditional view in the very act of challenging it. Only at special times can you be…

"In a behavioral account, the direction of action is exactly reversed. Speakers do not take in the world and put it into words; they respond to it in ways which…

"Eventually, the body will be more accurately observed in a different way by physiology, especially neurology, but it will then be observed as the product of specifiable contingencies of variation…

"Shall we ever be able to say more about what is felt? Almost certainly not through introspection. We do not have sensory nerves going to relevant parts of the body…

"We are said to have acted rationally when we can give reasons for our behavior, but most of our behavior is not rational in that sense. Contingencies of selection affect…

"A more effective way of restoring belief in oneself [than through reminders of overlooked successes], of course, is to restore successes, perhaps by simplifying contingencies of reinforcement." (p. 31)  …

"A poet “has” a poem in the sense of having written it. It is his poem. Critics will show “influences,” however, and if we knew enough about what the poet…

"Operant modeling, and the self-observation it facilitates, appears to be exclusively human; reinforcement from the behavior of an imitator is apparently too long delayed to reinforce modeling in other species."…

"In a behavioral analysis the environment acts first, in either of two ways. As a consequence it reinforces behavior and an operant comes into existence. As a setting it elicits…

"The English language evolved when it was generally believed that behavior started within the individual." (p. 28)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"Only under special kinds of verbal contingencies do we respond to certain features of our body." (p. 28)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"Chemistry suggests ways in which living things could have emerged from nonliving, and biologists explain the origin of species, including homo sapiens, through natural selection. There is less for a…

". . . we have only begun to construct a science needed to analyze the complex interactions between the environment and the body and the behavior to which it gives…

". . . people’s answers to questions about how they feel or what they are thinking often tell us something about what has happened to them or what they have…

"Verbal contingencies of reinforcement explain why we report what we feel or introspectively observe. The verbal culture that arranges such contingencies would not have evolved if it had not been…

"The analysis of behavior need not wait until brain science has done its part. The behavioral facts will not be changed, and they suffice for both a science and a…

"Human behavior will eventually be explained, because it can only be explained by the cooperative action of ethology, brain science, and behavior analysis." (p. 25)   Subscribe to RSS feed…

"There are two unavoidable gaps in any behavioral account: one between the stimulating action of the environment and the response of the organism, and one between consequences and the resulting…

"We can trace a small part of human behavior, and a much larger part of the behavior of other species, to natural selection and the evolution of the species, but…

"No account of what is happening inside the human body, no matter how complete, will explain the origins of human behavior. What happens inside the body is not a beginning."…

"Whether or not the cognitive revolution has restored mind as the proper subject matter of psychology, it has not restored introspection as the proper way of looking at it. The…

"Unfortunately, we cannot report any internal event, physical or metaphysical, accurately. The words we use are words we learned from people who did not know precisely what we were talking…

"To think is to do something that makes other behavior possible. Solving a problem is an example. A problem is a situation that does not evoke an effective response; we…

"In a behavioral analysis, contingencies of reinforcement change the way we respond to stimuli. It is a changed person, not a memory, that has been “stored.” (p. 16)   Subscribe…

"Like pre-Darwinian evolution (where to evolve meant to unroll as one unrolled a scroll), developmentalism is a form of creationism." (p. 16)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"Since the observable effects of reinforcement are usually not immediate, we often overlook the connection. Behavior is then often said to grow or develop. Develop originally meant to unfold, as…

"Since behavior analysts deal only with complete instances of behavior, the sensing part is out of reach of their instruments and methods and must . . . be left to…

"The world takes control of behavior when either survival or reinforcement has been contingent upon it." (p. 16)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"We do what we do because of what has happened, not what will happen. Unfortunately, what has happened leaves few observable traces, and why we do what we do and…

"As an experimental analysis has shown, behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences, but only by consequences that lie in the past." (p. 15)   Subscribe to RSS feed…

"What is felt when one has a feeling is a condition of one’s body, and the word used to describe it almost always comes from the word for the cause…

"The inspection or introspection of one’s own body is a kind of behavior that needs to be analyzed, but as the source of data for a science it is largely…

"Physiologists, and especially neurologists, look at the same body [as philosophers and psychologists] in a different and potentially successful way, but even when they have seen it more clearly, they…

"For at least 3,000 years . . . philosophers, joined recently by psychologists, have looked within themselves for the causes of their behavior. For reasons which are becoming clear, they…

"On the point of offering a friend a glass of water, we do not ask, “How long has it been since you last drank any water?” or “If I offer…

"Cognitive psychologists are among those who most often criticize behaviorism for neglecting feelings, but they themselves have done very little in the field. The computer is not a helpful model."…

"Psychoanalysis is largely concerned with discovering and changing feelings. An analysis sometimes seems to work by extinguishing the effects of old punishments." (p. 10)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"In his remarkable book, Émile, Rousseau described what is now called desensitization. If a baby is frightened when plunged into cold water (presumably an innate response), begin with warm water…

"Feelings are most easily changed by changing the settings responsible for what is felt . . . When a setting cannot be changed, a new history of reinforcement may change…

"Presumably we are more likely to avoid hurting animals if what they would do resembles what we would do when hurt in the same way . . . It is…

"All words for feelings seem to have begun as metaphors, and it is significant that the transfer has always been from public to private. No word seems to have originated…

"Good behaviorists would say, “You reinforce my behavior” rather than “You reinforce me,” because it is behavior, not the behaving person, that is being reinforced in the sense of being…

"The very privacy which suggests that we ought to know our own bodies especially well is a severe handicap for those who must teach us to know them." (p. 4)…

"Methodological behaviorists, like logical positivists, argued that science must confine itself to events that can be observed by two or more people; truth must be truth by agreement . .…

"Behaviorists are not supposed to have feelings, or at least to admit that they have them. Of the many ways in which behaviorism has been misunderstood for so many years,…

The B. F. Skinner Foundation is bringing back to print the last book by Skinner, Recent Issues In the Analysis of Behavior. This collection of articles, originally published in 1989,…