Skinner’s Quote of the Day

"We refrain from hurting others, not because we “know how it feels to be hurt,” but (1) because hurting other members of the species reduces the chances that the species…

"The consequences responsible for benevolent, devoted, compassionate, or public-spirited behavior are forms of countercontrol, and when they are lacking, these much-admired features of behavior are lacking." (p. 210)   Subscribe…

"[Control] is exerted in ways which most effectively reinforce those who exert it, and unfortunately this usually means in ways which either are immediately aversive to those controlled or exploit…

"We cannot choose a way of life in which there is no control. We can only change the controlling conditions." (p. 209)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"A person acts upon the environment, and what he achieves is essential to his survival and the survival of the species. Science and technology are merely manifestations of this essential…

"We often overlook the fact that human behavior is also a form of control. That an organism should act to control the world around it is as characteristic of life…

"We cannot prove, of course, that human behavior as a whole is fully determined, but the proposition becomes more plausible as facts accumulate, and I believe that a point has…

"A scientific analysis of behavior must, I believe, assume that a person’s behavior is controlled by his genetic and environmental histories rather than by the person himself as an initiating,…

"What is needed,” says Carl Rogers, “is a new concept of therapy as offering help, not control.” But these are not alternatives. One can help a person by arranging an…

"When a problem calling for therapy is due to a shortage of social or intimately personal reinforcers, a solution may be difficult . . . Simulated attention, approval, or affection…

"The metaphor of growth begins in the “kindergarten” and continues into “higher” education, diverting attention from the contingencies responsible for changes in the students’ behavior." (pp. 203-204)   Subscribe to…

"[Teaching] is a field in which the goal seems to be obviously a matter of changing minds, attitudes, feelings, motives, and so on, and the Establishment is therefore particularly resistant…

"One person changes the behavior of another by changing the world in which he lives. In doing so, he no doubt changes what the other person feels or introspectively observes."…

"The Greek gods were said to change behavior by giving men and women mental states, such as pride, mental confusion, or courage, but no one has been successful in doing…

"One person manages another in the sense in which he manages himself. He does not do so by changing feelings or states of mind." (p. 199)   Subscribe to RSS…

"As in other sciences, we often lack the information necessary for prediction and control and must be satisfied with interpretation, but our interpretations will have the support of the prediction…

". . . our knowledge of another person is limited by accessibility, not by the nature of the facts. We cannot know all there is to know, as we cannot…

"The meaning of an expression is different for speaker and listener; the meaning for the speaker must be sought in the circumstances under which he emits the verbal response and…

". . . one person does not make direct contact with the inside of another, and so-called knowledge of another is often simply an ability to predict what he will…

"Those who seek to know themselves through an exploration of their feelings often claim an exclusive kind of knowledge . . . But it may be argued as well that…

"The experimental analysis of behavior, together with a special self-descriptive vocabulary derived from it, has made it possible to apply to oneself much of what has been learned about the…

"We should not be surprised that the more we know about the behavior of others, the better we understand ourselves. It was a practical interest in the behavior of “the…

"It is . . . important to examine the reasons for one’s own behavior as carefully as possible because they are essential . . . to good self-management." (p. 188)…

"The shift from introspective to environmental evidence does not guarantee that self-knowledge will be accurate . . . [When evidence is sketchy,] we are likely to explain the inexplicable by…

"As the relevance of environmental history has become clearer, . . . practical questions have begun to be asked, not about feelings and states of mind, but about the environment,…

"The verbal community asks, “How do you feel?” rather than, “Why do you feel that way?” because it is more likely to get an answer." (p. 187-188)   Subscribe to…

"It is difficult to maintain an identity when conditions change, but a person may conceal from himself conflicting selves, possibly by ignoring or disguising one or more of them, or…

"Self-knowledge is of social origin, and it is useful first to the community which asks the questions. Later, it becomes important to the person himself—for example, in managing or controlling…

"All species except man behave without knowing that they do so, and presumably this was true of man until a verbal community arose to ask about behavior and thus to…

"A distinction between two selves in the same skin is made when we say that a tennis player “gets mad at himself” because he misses an easy shot . .…

"A person is not an originating agent; he is a locus, a point at which many genetic and environmental conditions come together in a joint effect. As such, he remains…

"The person who asserts his freedom by saying, “I determine what I shall do next,” is speaking of freedom in or from a current situation: the I who thus seems…

"Complex contingencies create complex repertoires, and . . . different contingencies create different persons in the same skin, of which so-called multiple personalities are only an extreme manifestation." (pp. 184-185)…

"In a behavioral analysis a person is an organism, a member of the human species, which has acquired a repertoire of behavior. It remains an organism to the anatomist and…

"It is often said that a science of behavior studies the human organism but neglects the person or self. What it neglect is a vestige of animism, a doctrine which…

"The argonauts of the psyche have for centuries sailed the stormy seas of the mind, never in sight of their goal, revising their charts from time to time in the…

"We need to know a great deal more about complex contingencies of reinforcement, and it will always be hard to deal with that particular set to which any one person…

"The psyche, like the mind, is a metaphor which is made plausible by the seeming relevance of what a person feels or introspectively observes but which is destined to remain…

"The objection to the inner workings of the mind is not that they are not open to inspection but that they have stood in the way of the inspection of…

"The extraordinary appeal of inner causes and the accompanying neglect of environmental histories and current setting must be due to more than a linguistic practice. I suggest that it has…

"Some people may have been born cautious in the sense that they learn very quickly to move cautiously or become excessively cautious even when not excessively punished, but the behavior…

"We tend to make nouns of adjectives and verbs and must then find a place for the things the nouns are said to represent." (p. 177)   Subscribe to RSS…

"By turning to the facts on which these expressions [about “intrapsychic life”] are based, it is usually possible to identify the contingencies of reinforcement which account for the intrapsychic activities."…

"What behaviorism rejects is the unconscious as an agent, and of course it rejects the conscious mind as an agent, too." (p. 169)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"To increase a person’s consciousness of the external world is simply to bring him under more sensitive control of that world as a source of stimulation." (p. 169)   Subscribe…

"It is often said, particularly by psychoanalysts, that behaviorism cannot deal with the unconscious. The fact is that, to begin with, it deals with nothing else. The controlling relations between…

"Freud’s analysis has seemed convincing because of its universality, but it is the environmental contingencies rather than the psyche which are invariant." (p. 167)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"A self or personality is at best a repertoire of behavior imparted by an organized set of contingencies." (p.164)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"How much more we should know if the prevailing contingencies had been described rather than the feelings and isms generated by them." (p. 162)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"The facts and laws of science are descriptions of the world—that is, of prevailing contingencies of reinforcement. They make it possible for a person to act more successfully than he…