June 2023
Cumulative Record. Chapter 23: Current Trends in Experimental Psychology. Quote 17
The integrity or unity of the individual has been assumed, perhaps because the organism is a biological unit. But it is quite clear that more than one person, in the sense of an integrated and organized system of responses, exists within one skin. (p. 354)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 23: Current Trends in Experimental Psychology. Quote 16
Since we have not clearly identified the significant data of a science of behavior, we do not arrive well prepared at the second stage of theory building, at which we are to express relations among data. Observed relations of this sort are the facts of a science—or, when a sufficient degree of generality has been […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 23: Current Trends in Experimental Psychology. Quote 14
The current theoretical practice which is objectionable is the use of a hypothetical neural structure, the conceptual nervous system, as a theory of behavior. The neurological references introduced into such a theory, like references to mental states, interfere with free theory building, and they produce a structure which is not optimal for the organization of […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 23: Current Trends in Experimental Psychology. Quote 13
The other current explanatory theory flourishes with greater prestige and presumably in more robust health. This is the physiological theory of behavior. The inner man is given neurological properties, with a great gain in scientific respectability. Psychiatry becomes neuropsychiatry, and psychology the study of the nervous system. It is difficult to attack this theory without […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 23: Current Trends in Experimental Psychology. Quote 9
There is no more pathetic figure in psychology today than the mere collector of facts, who operates, or thinks he operates, with no basis for selecting one fact as against another. In the end, he is usually to be found doing something else, or perhaps nothing at all. Behavior can only be satisfactorily understood by […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 23: Current Trends in Experimental Psychology. Quote 8
It is not true that human behavior is not controlled. At least we cannot proceed very far as scientists on that assumption. To have a science of psychology at all, we must adopt the fundamental postulate that human behavior is a lawful datum, that it is undisturbed by the capricious acts of any free agent—in […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 23: Current Trends in Experimental Psychology. Quote 6
Correlational techniques have been extensively used in pure research, and the reason they have dominated the science of psychology in its application to education, industry, public affairs, and elsewhere is not that the processes to be dealt with in those fields are of any special nature, but that it has generally been impossible to give […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 23: Current Trends in Experimental Psychology. Quote 5
The two approaches represent different scientific plans and lead to different results. It is curious that our definition should single out the kind of result which has been traditionally accepted as characteristic of the field of experimental psychology. (p. 344)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 23: Current Trends in Experimental Psychology. Quote 4
One interesting consequence of defining experimental psychology as a branch of the science in which we control the variables which govern behavior is that we thus exclude most investigations using correlational methods. (p. 344)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 23: Current Trends in Experimental Psychology. Quote 3
In more formal terms we manipulate certain “independent variables” and observe the effect upon a “dependent variable.” In psychology the dependent variable, to which we look for an effect, is behavior. We acquire control over it through the independent variables. The latter, the variables which we manipulate, are found in the environment. (p. 343)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 23: Current Trends in Experimental Psychology. Quote 2
In psychology, as in any science, the heart of the experimental method is the direct control of the thing studied. When we say, “Let us try an experiment,” we mean, “Let us do something and see what happens.” The order is important: we do something first and then see what happens. (p. 343)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 23: Current Trends in Experimental Psychology. Quote 1
To simplify the material of a science is one of the purposes of a laboratory, and simplification is worthwhile whenever it does not actually falsify. But the experimental psychologist has no corner on simplification. The psychoanalytic couch is a simplified world, and so is any test situation. (p. 342)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 22: Compassion and Ethics in the Care of the Retardate. Quote 13
Sympathetic understanding may suggest the design of a reinforcing environment, but it will not specify details. What is needed is technical knowledge of the effects of the environment on human behavior. (p. 335)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 22: Compassion and Ethics in the Care of the Retardate. Quote 12
Help is charity only for the helpless. We do not help those who can help themselves when we make it unnecessary for them to do so. Instead, we deprive them of the chance to behave in ways which are said to show an interest in life or possibly even excitement or enthusiasm. (p. 335)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 22: Compassion and Ethics in the Care of the Retardate. Quote 11
We have developed more and more efficient ways of getting the things we need, and in doing so we have deprived ourselves of some powerful reinforcers. We have built a world in which we less and less often engage in strongly reinforced behavior. We feel the resulting condition and call it boredom. (p. 335)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 22: Compassion and Ethics in the Care of the Retardate. Quote 10
The human organism has evolved under conditions in which great effort has been needed for survival, and a person is in a very real sense less than human when he is merely consuming things supplied to him gratis. (p. 335)