May 2023
Cumulative Record. Chapter 22: Compassion and Ethics in the Care of the Retardate. Quote 8
Fortunately, there are those who are inclined to do something about the mistreatment of children, the aged, prisoners, psychotics, and retardates. We say that they care, but it is important to make clear that caring is first of all a matter of acting and only secondarily a matter of feeling. (p. 333)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 22: Compassion and Ethics in the Care of the Retardate. Quote 5
When someone mistreats us, we may feel angry or enraged, but if we call him bad and his behavior wrong or take more effective action, it is not because of our feelings but because of the mistreatment. (pp. 330-331)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 22: Compassion and Ethics in the Care of the Retardate. Quote 2
The words “Good!” and “Bad!” eventually become social reinforcers in their own right. Comparable social contingencies are implied by the concepts of duty and obligation. We are likely to speak of a “sense of duty” or a “feeling of obligation,” but the basic facts concern social reinforcement. (p. 330)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 22: Compassion and Ethics in the Care of the Retardate. Quote 1
If our feelings do not explain our behavior, some other explanation for right or wrong or good or bad conduct must be found. Ethical and moral principles must then be derived from the reasons why people behave (and only incidentally feel) as they do. The point is important because we can change reasons more directly […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 19
The basic researcher has, in fact, a tremendous advantage. Any slight advance in our understanding of human behavior which leads to improved practices in behavior modification will eventually work for the good of billions of people. (p. 328)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 17
Prevailing practices [in American elementary and high school education] are derived from unscientific “philosophies of education” and from the personal experiences of administrators and teachers, and the results are particularly disturbing to those who know what might be done instead. (p. 328)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 16
The experimental analysis of behavior is more than measurement. It is more than testing hypotheses. It is an empirical attack upon the manipulable variables of which behavior is a function. As a result the behavior modifier plays an exceptional role. (p.327)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 15
Behavior modification is environment modification, but this is not widely recognized. Very little current “behavioral science” is really behavioral, because prescientific modes of explanation still flourish, but behavior modification is an outstanding exception. (p. 326)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 14
The genetic history is at the moment beyond control, but the environmental history, past and present, can be supplemented and changed, and that is what is done in a genuine technology of behavior. (p. 326)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 13
The theory which accompanies an experimental analysis is particularly helpful in justifying practice because behavior modification often means a vast change in the way in which we deal with people . . . as the states of mind, feelings, and other attributes of the inner man who figures in traditional explanations of human behavior are […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 12
Techniques of behavior modification often seem, after the fact, like the plainest of common sense, but we should remember that they remained undiscovered or unused for a long time and that the same “common sense” still leads to many violations of the basic principles. (p. 326)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 11
The amenable conditions of the laboratory are likely to bring the researcher under the control of deferred consequences and to maintain his behavior when it is only intermittently reinforced. (p. 326)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 10
The effects of reinforcement are often deferred and need to be mediated, and this is particularly true when reinforcement is used in place of punishment because the latter has quicker effects. (p. 326)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 9
A contribution … — from basic to applied — would traditionally be described as the “confidence” with which contingencies are now designed in solving practical problems. Laboratory successes generalize to daily life. (p. 326)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 8
… an important difference [between basic and applied research] lies in the reasons why research is undertaken and supported. The applied researcher is under the influence of a special kind of consequence. He carries on, in part, because he will make someone healthier or wealthier rather than simply wiser. (p. 325)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 7
It is hard to see the contingencies of reinforcement which prevail in daily life and hence to understand the behavior they generate.4 Laboratory research tells us what to look for and, equally important, what to ignore, and in doing so it leads to the improvement of practical contingencies. (p. 325)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 6
The behavior modification of the future will also make a far more extensive use of the control exerted by the current environment, of deprivation and satiation, of the conditioning of new reinforcers, and of the explicit design of instructional repertoires (of which imitation is an example). (pp. 324-325)