On January 4, 2016, the B. F. Skinner Foundation launched a new project – Skinner’s Quote of the Day. Quotes from B. F. Skinner’s works, selected by renowned scientists, appear daily Monday-Friday in order, starting with Chapter 1 of each book and running all the way through the last chapter. We started with the Science and Human Behavior (January-December 2916), followed by About Behaviorism (January-November 2017), Contingencies of Reinforcement (January-October 2018), Recent Issues (October 2018-May 2019), Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (May 2019-February 2020), and now moving on to Upon Further Reflection (from February 10 2020).
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"The power achieved by the religious agency depends upon how effectively certain verbal reinforcements are conditioned—in particular the promise of Heaven and the threat of Hell." (p. 353) Subscribe to…
"A functional analysis of behavior provides us with a basic conception with which we may approach each of these fields in turn. . . if we can achieve such an…
"The conception developed in one field is seldom applied, and never effectively applied, to another. What the political scientist has to say about man proves to be of little value…
"Those who are most concerned with restricting personal control have most to gain from a clear understanding of the techniques employed." (p. 322) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"As we have seen, science implies prediction and, insofar as the relevant variables can be controlled, it implies control. We cannot expect to profit from applying the methods of science…
"As we have seen, science implies prediction and, insofar as the relevant variables can be controlled, it implies control. We cannot expect to profit from applying the methods of science…
". . . control is frequently aversive to the controllee. Techniques based upon the use of force, particularly punishment or the threat of punishment, are aversive by definition, and techniques…
"Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists usually prefer theories of behavior in which control is minimized or denied, and we shall see that proposed changes in governmental design are usually promoted by…
"Students of human behavior often avoid the issue of control and even regard it as in bad taste to suggest that deliberate control is ever undertaken." (pp. 320-321) Subscribe to…
"The individual who is able to present a positive reinforcement or withdraw a negative is usually also able to present the negative or withdraw the positive and is therefore able…
"Negative reinforcement is employed in personal control in the aversive cry of the child and the nuisance value of the behavior of an adult. Control is achieved by making the…
"The whole field of verbal behavior exemplifies the use of stimuli in personal control. The speaker generates auditory patterns which are effective because of the listener's history in a given…
"The use of force has obvious disadvantages as a controlling technique. It usually requires the sustained attention of the controller. It is almost exclusively concerned with the prevention of behavior,…
"[The first task of the counselor] is to make sure that the man he is counseling continues to listen and to return for further counsel. If this can be done,…
"The kind and extent [of personal control over others] depend upon the personal endowment and skill of the controller. The strong man uses the variables which derive from his strength.…
"[In analyzing social interaction,] it is our task to evaluate the various ways in which one person controls another." (p. 313) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"The interchanges within a group and the heightened effect of the group upon the environment may be studied within the framework of a natural science." (p. 312) Subscribe to RSS…
"The reinforcing consequences generated by the group easily exceed the sums of the consequences which could be achieved by the members acting separately. The total reinforcing effect is enormously increased.…
"The [behavior of the] man attired in full uniform, parading smartly down the street, is reinforced by the acclaim of the crowd even though it would not be forthcoming if…
"Situations [where behaving as others behave is likely to be reinforcing] multiplied a thousandfold generate and sustain an enormous tendency to behave as others are behaving." (p. 312) Subscribe to…
"The group may reinforce the individual for telling the truth, helping others, returning favors, and reinforcing others in turn for doing the same. The Golden Rule is a generalized statement…
"Although many . . . interlocking social systems are stable, others show a progressive change. A trivial example is the behavior of a group of people who enter an unfamiliar…
"Social behavior arises because one organism is important to another as part of its environment. A first step, therefore, is an analysis of the social environment and of any special…
Skinner's Quote of the Day will be back on Monday, November 28.
"The principal realm of the symbol is the dream which occurs when we are asleep. This is a species of private event which is extremely difficult to study and is,…
"It has been argued that one cannot describe behavior after the fact which one could not have described at the time. This appears to explain our inability to recall the…
"It is easy to overestimate the unity of a group of responses, and unfortunately personification encourages us to do so . . . [and] may lead us to expect consistencies…
"The best way to dispose of any explanatory fiction is to examine the facts upon which it is based . . . In the present case it appears that a…
"We may quarrel with any analysis which appeals to a self or personality as an inner determiner of action, but the facts which have been represented with such devices cannot…
"The self is most commonly used as a hypothetical cause of action. So long as external variables go unnoticed or are ignored, their function is assigned to an originating agent…
"The problem of privacy may . . . eventually be solved by technical advances. But we are still faced with events which occur at the private level and which are…
"We may think before we act in the sense that we may behave covertly before we behave overtly, but our action is not an "expression" of the covert response or…
"Private problem-solving usually consists of a mixture of discriminative and manipulative responses . . . In mental arithmetic one multiplies, divides, transposes, and so on, seeing the result in each…
"A discriminative [operant] response which can be made when the appropriate stimulus is absent has certain advantages. It does not require the sometimes troublesome precurrent behavior which generates an external…
"The practical task of generating conditioned stimuli of special effectiveness is an important one, as the artist, writer, and composer know. If it is possible to reinforce a man with…
"A man may see or hear "stimuli which are not present" on the pattern of the conditioned reflex: he may see X, not only when X is present, but when…
"Verbal behavior, however, can occur at the covert level because it does not require the presence of a particular physical environment for its execution. Moreover, it may remain effective at…
"Another possibility [than control by private events] is that when an individual appears to describe unemitted behavior, he is actually describing a history of variables which would enable an independent…
"I was on the point of going home" may be regarded as the equivalent of "I observed events in myself which characteristically precede or accompany my going home." (p. 262)…
"Such responses as "I'm strongly inclined to go home" or "I shall go home in half an hour" also describe states of affairs which appear to be accessible only to…
"An important verbal repertoire describes one's own behavior. It is generated by a community which insists upon answers to such questions as "What did you say?" "What are you doing?"…
"Now, self-observation is also the product of discriminative contingencies, and if a discrimination cannot be forced by the community, it may never arise. Strangely enough, it is the community which…
"The environment, whether public or private, appears to remain undistinguished until the organism is forced to make a distinction." (p. 260) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"There is no effective answer to the student who insists, after being corrected, that that was what he "meant to say," but the existence of this private event is not…
"Verbal responses which are acquired with respect to public events may be transferred to private events on the basis of common properties. It has often been pointed out that many…
"The community may resort to public accompaniments of the private event. For example, it may establish a verbal response to an aching tooth by presenting or withholding reinforcement according to…
"The verbal response "red" is established as a discriminative operant by a community which reinforces the response when it is made in the presence of red stimuli and not otherwise.…
"The contribution which a science of behavior can make in suggesting an alternative [to the psychophysical dualism] point of view is perhaps one of its most important achievements. No discussion…
"The picture which emerges is almost always dualistic. The scientist humbly admits that he is describing only half the universe, and he defers to another world—a world of mind or…
"These questions [of private events] may not be of interest to all readers . . . Fortunately, the issue is seldom crucial in the practical control of human behavior. The…