January 2024
Cumulative Record. Chapter 32: Why Are the Behavioral Sciences Not More Effective. Quote 13
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 with attention, approval, or affection—and for what behavior? How often do they disapprove of him and punish him? What competing contingencies await him elsewhere? Do […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 32: Why Are the Behavioral Sciences Not More Effective. Quote 11
The behaviorist is often said to treat behavior simply as response to stimuli, but that view has long been out of date.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 situation in which behavior occurs, the behavior itself, and its consequences. These three things are interrelated in very intricate ways in what are called the […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 32: Why Are the Behavioral Sciences Not More Effective. Quote 10
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 the behavior they are contingent upon, in the sense of making it more likely to occur again. (p. 470)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 32: Why Are the Behavioral Sciences Not More Effective. Quote 8
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 of (1) what has happened in the distant past as his species evolved, and (2) what has happened to him in his lifetime as an […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 32: Why Are the Behavioral Sciences Not More Effective. Quote 6
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 doing so, change what is felt. Feelings and states of mind are not causes, they are by-products. (p. 469)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 32: Why Are the Behavioral Sciences Not More Effective. Quote 5
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 attitudes but to the contingencies of reinforcement we have arranged. (p. 469)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 32: Why Are the Behavioral Sciences Not More Effective. Quote 3
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 of pride in their work, allay their frustration, and teach them the value of order, security, and affluence. But we have no direct access to […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 32: Why Are the Behavioral Sciences Not More Effective. Quote 2
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 reason not commensurate with the problems they are asked to solve. (p. 468)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 32: Why Are the Behavioral Sciences Not More Effective. Quote 1
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 in which the species can live . . . To do so we need a much clearer understanding of why people behave as they do. […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 31: The Processes Involved in the Repeated Guessing of Alternatives. Quote 3
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 out in the long run and are spoken of as “chance.” The second guess raises a different problem, for it is under the additional control […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 31: The Processes Involved in the Repeated Guessing of Alternatives. Quote 1
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 a unit of behavior is taken at a lower level of analysis, needs to be stated. (p. 455)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 50
… 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 processes through which a vocabulary descriptive of a toothache is acquired and maintained. (pp. 429-430)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 49
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 from radical behaviorism (which lops off the latter term in the second). The result is that while the radical behaviorist may in some cases consider […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 48
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 his material—all by himself if need be. (p. 429)