Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 8: Behaviorism at fifty. Quote 13

“The [mentalistic] formulation leads directly to a technology based on the manipulation of mental states. To change a man’s voting behavior, we change his opinions; to induce him to act, we strengthen his beliefs; to make him eat, we make him feel hungry; to prevent wars, we reduce warlike tensions in the minds of men; to effect psychotherapy, we alter troublesome mental states. In practice, all these ways of changing a man’s mind reduce to manipulating his environment, verbal or otherwise.” (p. 239)

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