Skinner’s Quote of the Day

The consequences of participating in government are also important. What is the effect of casting a vote? (p. 471)

If a young person does not work productively, it is not because he does not like his job or is lazy; it is because the contingencies are defective. His feeling…

If a young person often stays away from school or drops out, it is not because he is shiftless, or lacks curiosity, or is dull; it is because the contingencies…

What happens when a student behaves well toward his teachers and other students, and what happens when he behaves badly? Does he study mainly to avoid the consequences of not…

Alienation is not a state of mind; it is a state of behavior attributable to defective contingencies of reinforcement. What is felt is a by-product. (p. 470)

How reinforcing is a young person’s home simply as a physical place? How does it look or sound or smell? How often do other members of his family reinforce him…

Some extremely complex contingencies have been analyzed, and the results help in interpreting some of the contingencies which prevail in daily life. (p. 470)

The behaviorist is often said to treat behavior simply as response to stimuli, but that view has long been out of date. Three things must be taken into account: the…

It has long been recognized that some effects of a person’s behavior are satisfying or rewarding, but a special significance is emphasized when we call these effects “reinforcing”: they strengthen…

One fact has become particularly clear: people do things because of the consequences. (p. 470)

In hundreds of laboratories throughout the world, complex environments are arranged and their effects studied. The evidence grows more and more convincing that a person behaves as he does because…

By turning directly to the environmental history, rather than to its perceived or felt effects, we may take advantage of certain recent advances in the experimental analysis of behavior. (p.…

The feeling or state of mind seems to be a necessary link in a causal chain, but the fact is that we change behavior by changing the environment, and, in…

By reinforcing nonverbal and verbal behavior in particular ways, we change what a person says or does, but what he says or does is not due to his opinions or…

By responding in certain ways to what a person does, we may change the behavior from which we infer that he does not feel wanted, and it is quite possible…

According to [the traditional] explanation [of behavior problems], our task is to correct disturbed personalities, change troubled states of mind, make people feel wanted, give them purpose or a sense…

I shall argue, in short, that the social sciences are not more effective precisely because they are not fully behavioral, and for that reason not really scientific, and for that…

An expanding population will exhaust our resources and pollute the environment and sooner or later (sooner if we suffer a nuclear holocaust) put an end to the kind of world…

The first guess in a series of five, as in the Zenith experiments, is apparently controlled by an abiding preference, by biased preliminary conditions, or by trivial circumstances which cancel…

Guessing is a special kind of (usually verbal) behavior in which two or more responses are about equally likely to be emitted. (p. 455)

To speak of a series of five guesses as a single organized act is perhaps in line with one trend in modern psychology, but a possible alternative view, in which…

The confusion which seems to have arisen from a principle which is supposed to eliminate confusion is discouraging. (p. 430)

The irony ... is that, while Boring must confine himself to an account of my external behavior, I am still interested in what might be called Boring-from-within. (p. 430)

... I contend that my toothache is just as physical as my typewriter, though not public, and I see no reason why an objective and operational science cannot consider the…

The distinction between public and private is by no means the same as that between physical and mental. That is why methodological behaviorism (which adopts the first) is very different…

The ultimate criterion for the goodness of a concept is not whether two people are brought into agreement but whether the scientist who uses the concept can operate successfully upon…

It is agreed that the data of psychology must be behavioral rather than mental if psychology is to be a member of the United Sciences, but the position taken [by…

There was no more reason to make a permanent place for “consciousness,” “will,” “feeling,” and so on, than for “phlogiston” or “vis anima.” On the contrary, redefined concepts proved to…

. . . by the time Bridgman’s book was published, most of the early behaviorists, as well as those of us just coming along who claimed some systematic continuity, had…

If it turns out that our final view of verbal behavior invalidates our scientific structure from the point of view of logic and truth-value, then so much the worse for…

. . . talking about talking is no more circular than thinking about thinking or knowing about knowing. Whether or not we are lifting ourselves by our own bootstraps, the…

To be consistent the psychologist must deal with his own verbal practices by developing an empirical science of verbal behavior. He cannot, unfortunately, join the logician in defining a definition,…

The individual becomes aware of what he is doing only after society has reinforced verbal responses with respect to his behavior as the source of discriminative stimuli . . .…

. . . being conscious, as a form of reacting to one’s own behavior, is a social product. Verbal behavior may be distinguished, and conveniently defined, by the fact that…

In a rigorous scientific vocabulary private effects are practically eliminated. The converse does not hold. There is apparently no way of basing a response entirely upon the private part of…

When public manifestations survive, the extent to which the private stimulus takes over is never certain. In the case of a toothache, the private event is no doubt dominant, but…

“I am hungry” may . . . be variously translated as “I have not eaten for a long time” (1), or “That food makes my mouth water” (2), or “I…

Statements about private events may be under control of the drives associated with their consequences rather than antecedent stimuli. (p. 423)

None of the conditions which we have examined permits the sharpening of reference which is achieved, in the case of public stimuli, by a precise contingency of reinforcement . .…

In summary, a verbal response to a private stimulus may be maintained in strength through appropriate reinforcement based upon public accompaniments or consequences, . . . , or through appropriate…

The principle of transfer or stimulus induction supplies a fourth explanation of how a response to private stimuli may be maintained by public reinforcement. A response which is acquired and…

Suppose, now, that a given response recedes to the level of covert or merely incipient behavior. How shall we explain the vocabulary which deals with this private world? . .…

A commoner basis for the verbal reinforcement of a response to a private stimulus is provided by collateral responses to the same stimulus. Although a dentist may occasionally be able…

. . . in the case of private stimuli, one may teach a child to say “That hurts” in agreement with the usage of the community by making the reinforcement…

It is not strictly true that the stimuli which control the response must be available to the community. Any reasonably regular accompaniment will suffice. Consider, for example, a blind man…

There are at least four ways in which a verbal community which has no access to a private stimulus may generate verbal behavior in response to it . . .…

How is the response “toothache” appropriately reinforced if the reinforcing agent has no contact with the tooth? There is, of course, no question of whether responses to private stimuli are…

. . . the problem of privacy cannot be wholly solved by instrumental invasion. No matter how clearly these internal events may be exposed in the laboratory, the fact remains…

So far as we know, [the speaker’s] reactions to these [private stimuli] are quite like his reactions to external events. Nevertheless the privacy gives rise to two problems. The first…

The response “My tooth aches” is partly under the control of a state of affairs to which the speaker alone is able to react, since no one else can establish…