Skinner’s Quote of the Day

"To discriminate is not to respond but to respond differently to two or more stimuli." (p. 76)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"Like probability, rate of responding would be a meaningless concept if it were not possible to specify topography of response in such a way that separate instances of an operant…

"A natural datum in a science of behavior is the probability that a given bit of behavior will occur at a given time. An experimental analysis deals with that probability…

"[According to cultural norms] . . . innocent activities like card playing or dancing or simply doing nothing should certainly be left to the individual. But the question is: Can they…

"It simply happens that when the environment has been altered so that major reinforcers are no longer powerful, lesser reinforcers take over." (p. 68)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"Money is the archetypal generalized reinforcer, and men are reinforced by it even when they do not exchange it for other things. The possibility of a generalized negative reinforcement must…

"The trouble with both affluent and welfare societies is that reinforcers are not contingent on behavior. Men who are not reinforced for doing anything do little or nothing . .…

"For more than two hundred years talented and skillful men have worked to create a device which will powerfully reinforce the behavior of pressing keys. (The piano, is, indeed, an…

"The world in which man lives has been changing much faster than man himself. In a few hundred generations, highly beneficial characteristics of the human body have become troublesome. One…

"(The doctrine of survival after death is a source of personal reinforcers appropriate only to an earlier design.) (p. 48)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"A scientific analysis of human behavior and of genetic and cultural evolution cannot make individual freedom the goal of cultural design. The individual is not an origin or source. He…

"By accepting the fact that human behavior is controlled—by things if not by men—we take a big step forward, for we can then stop trying to avoid control and begin…

"The notion of personal credit is incompatible with the hypothesis that human behavior is wholly determined by genetic and environmental forces." (p. 45)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"Design implies control, and there are many reasons why we fear it. The very techniques are often objectionable, for control passes first to those who have the power to treat…

"The man who insists upon judging a culture in terms of whether or not he likes it is the true immoralist . . . He is like the child who…

"The problem, in short, is not to design a way of life which will be liked by men as they now are, but a way of life which will be…

"Why should I care whether my way of life survives or contributes to the way of life of the future?” An honest answer would seem to be, “There is no…

"When a member of a herd of grazing animals spots the approach of a predator and utters a warning cry, the group is more likely to escape and survive, but…

"An important point is that effective contingencies need to be programmed—that is, they are effective only when a person has passed through a series of intermediate contingencies." (pp. 39-40)  …

"The rule-following contingencies [of a culture] are often un-skillfully designed, and members of a culture seldom take net consequences into account. On the contrary, they resist control of this sort.…

"To maximize net gains we must do things we do not like to do and forgo things we like. A culture cannot change these facts, but it can induce us…

"We “like” a way of life to the extent that we are reinforced by it." (p. 39)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"The important thing about the good things in life is what people are doing when they get them. “Goods” are reinforcers, and a way of life is a set of…

"Heavens are usually described by listing the good things to be found in them, but no one has ever designed a really interesting heaven on that principle." (p. 37)  …

"Everyone who went to heaven was to be happy, but it was not clear just why. No one, in fact, has ever portrayed a very interesting heaven." (p. 31)  …

"The interrelations among SD, R, and Srein compose the contingencies of reinforcement. All three terms must be specified." (p. 23)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"Basic science always leads eventually to an improved technology, and a science of behavior is no exception. It should supply a technology of behavior appropriate to the ultimate utopian goal:…

"Political action is always a matter of manipulating contingencies of reinforcement, and an understanding of contingencies and their effects could bring a dramatic improvement." (p. 20)   Subscribe to RSS…

"Modern governments manipulate vast quantities of positive as well as negative reinforcers, but they seriously neglect the contingencies in both cases. The behavior to be reinforced is seldom defined, in…

"The wealth of a culture depends upon the productive behavior of its members. It is a natural resource which is shamefully neglected because a true economic technology has yet to…

"A particularly effective schedule is at the heart of all gambling devices. Consider a room full of people playing Bingo. The players sit quietly for many hours; they listen with…

"... when a craftsman spends a week in completing a given object, each of the parts produced during the week is likely to be automatically reinforcing because of its place…

"No one works on Monday morning because he is reinforced by a paycheck on Friday afternoon." (p. 18)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"When the psychotic shows an insensitivity to normal contingencies of reinforcement, an environment must be designed to which he is likely to respond." (p. 16)   Subscribe to RSS feed…

"The problem [with psychotic behavior] is not to find in the structure of the observed behavior some hint as to how it may be made to disappear, but rather to…

"Teaching is the arrangement of contingencies of reinforcement which expedite learning . . . Programmed instruction is a technique taken directly from the operant laboratory, and it is designed to…

"Practical control is already a commonplace in the operant laboratory, where behavior is frequently manufactured to specifications and changed almost at will." (p. 14)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"When the variables discovered in an experimental analysis prove to be manipulable, we can move beyond interpretation to the control of behavior." (p. 14)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"A culture is not the behavior of the people “living in it”; it is the “it” in which they live—the contingencies of social reinforcement which generate and sustain their behavior."…

"Eventually we must ask why people behave in their respective ways. It is not enough to say that a custom is followed simply because it is customary to follow it.…

"It is the contingencies which prevail in a given verbal community which “generate sentences.” They shape and maintain the phonemic and syntactical properties of verbal behavior and account for a…

"Verbal contingencies have the same status as contingencies maintained by laboratory equipment, but they involve the behavior of a second organism, the listener, and the behavior they generate therefore has…

"A language is not the words or sentences “spoken in it”; it is the “it” in which they are spoken—the practices of the verbal community which shape and maintain the…

"Verbal behavior is a field in which the concept of contingencies of reinforcement has proved particularly useful." (p. 10)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"The principles of hedonism, utilitarianism, and adaptation were not wrong, they were simply not precise." (p. 10)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"... we no longer look at behavior and environment as separate things or events but at the interrelations among them. We look at the contingencies of reinforcement. We can then…

"It is only when we have analyzed behavior under known contingencies of reinforcement that we can begin to see what is happening in daily life." (p. 10)   Subscribe to…

"When we recall how long it took to recognize the causal action of the environment in the simple reflex, we should perhaps not be surprised that it has taken us…

"Suppose we ask an observer who knows nothing about the analysis of behavior to look into a typical experimental space when an experiment is in progress ... The fact remains…

"A more active form of attention is analyzed as a sequence of contingencies; paying attention is precurrent behavior having the effect of changing stimuli. A pigeon will change the shape…