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The behaviorist is often said to treat behavior simply as response to stimuli, but that view has long been out of date.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)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 47
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 Boring and Stevens] is merely that of “methodological” behaviorism. According to this doctrine the world is divided into public and private events; and psychology, in […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 46
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 be awkward and inappropriate, and Watsonianism was, in fact, practically wrecked in the attempt to make them work. Thus it came about that while the […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 45
. . . 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 begun to see that psychology actually did not require the redefinition of subjective concepts. The reinterpretation of an established set of explanatory fictions was not […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 44
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 logic, which will also have been embraced by our analysis. (p. 426)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 43
. . . 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 simple fact is that we can make progress in a scientific analysis of verbal behavior. Eventually we shall be able to include, and perhaps to […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 42
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, for example, as a “rule for the use of a term” (Feigl); he must turn instead to the contingencies of reinforcement which account for the […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 41
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 . . . It is an ironic twist, considering the history of the behavioristic revolution, that as we develop a more effective vocabulary for the analysis of behavior […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 40
. . . 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 the contingencies of reinforcement are provided by other organisms rather than by a mechanical action upon the environment. The hypothesis is equivalent to saying that […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 39
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 a complex of stimuli. A differential reinforcement cannot be made contingent upon the property of privacy. This fact is of extraordinary importance in evaluating traditional […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 38
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 this is due to its relative intensity, not to any condition of differential reinforcement. In a description of one’s own behavior, the private component may […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 37
“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 am ravenous” (3) (compare the expression “I was hungrier than I thought” which describes the ingestion of an unexpectedly large amount of food), or “I […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 35
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 . . . It is, therefore, impossible to establish a rigorous scientific vocabulary for public use, nor can the speaker clearly “know himself” in the sense in […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 34
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 reinforcement accorded the response when it is made to public stimuli, the private case occurring by induction when the stimuli are only partly similar. If […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 33
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 maintained in connection with public stimuli may be emitted, through induction, in response to private events. The transfer is not due to identical stimuli, . […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 32
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? . . . the covert response may be similar to, though probably less intense than, the overt and hence supply the same stimulus, albeit in a weakened […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 31
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 to identify the stimulus for a toothache from certain public accompaniments . . . , the response “toothache” is generally transmitted on the basis of […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 30
. . . 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 contingent upon public accompaniments of painful stimuli (a smart blow, tissue damage, and so on). The connection between public and private stimuli need not be […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 29
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 who learns the names of a trayful of objects from a teacher who identifies the objects by sight. The reinforcements are supplied or withheld according […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 27
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 possible. They occur commonly enough and must be accounted for. But why do they occur, what is their relation to controlling stimuli, and what, if […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 26
. . . 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 that in the normal verbal episode they are quite private. We have not solved the second problem of how the community achieves the necessary contingency […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 25
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 difficulty is that we cannot, as in the case of public stimuli, account for the verbal response by pointing to a controlling stimulus. Our practice […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 24
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 the required connection with the tooth in question. There is nothing mysterious or metaphysical about this; the simple fact is that each speaker possesses a […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 23
The problem of subjective terms does not coincide exactly with that of private stimuli, but there is a close connection. We must know the characteristics of verbal responses to private stimuli in order to approach the operational analysis of the subjective term. (p. 419)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 22
This scheme presupposes that the stimulus act upon both the speaker and the reinforcing community; otherwise the proper contingency cannot be maintained by the community. But this provision is lacking in the case of many “subjective” terms, which appear to be responses to private stimuli. (p. 419)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 21
There are three important terms: a stimulus, a response, and a reinforcement supplied by the verbal community. (All of these need more careful definitions than are implied by current usage, but the following argument may be made without digressing for that purpose.) The significant interrelations between these terms may be expressed by saying that the […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 28: The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms. Quote 20
We may generalize the conditions responsible for the standard “semantic” relation between a verbal response and a particular stimulus without going into reinforcement theory in detail … . The reinforcement of the response “red,” for example, is contingent upon the presence of a red object. (The contingency need not be invariable.) A red object then […]