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"The physiologist of the future will tell us all that can be known about what is happening inside the behaving organism. His account will be an important advance over a…

"It is direct intervention and manipulation of the body which is most often cited today to illustrate the dangers of the control of behavior, but a much more effective control…

"The organism is, of course, not empty, and it cannot be adequately treated simply as a black box, but we must carefully distinguish between what is known about what is…

"A science of behavior must consider the place of private stimuli as physical things, and in doing so it provides an alternative account of mental life. The question, then is…

"It is true that we could trace human behavior not only to the physical conditions which shape and maintain it but also to the causes of those conditions and the…

"Attitudes, opinions, or intelligence, as states inferred from behavior, are also useless in control, but they permit us to predict one kind of behavior from another kind known to be…

"No one steps outside the causal stream. No one really intervenes. Mankind has slowly but erratically created environments in which people behave more effectively and no doubt enjoy the feelings…

"The notion of evolution is misleading—and it misled both Herbert Spencer and Darwin—when it suggests that the good represented by survival will naturally work itself out. Things go wrong under…

"There are remarkable similarities in natural selection, operant conditioning, and the evolution of social environments. Not only do all three dispense with a prior creative design and a prior purpose,…

"Man is born free,” said Rousseau, “and is everywhere in chains,” but no one is less free than a newborn child, nor will he become free as he grows older.…

"The control of behavior is concealed or disguised in education, psychotherapy, and religion, when the role of teacher, therapist, or priest is said to be to guide, direct, or counsel,…

"Control is concealed when it is represented as changing minds rather than behavior." (p. 218)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"Compare two people, one of whom has been crippled by an accident, the other by an early environmental history which makes him lazy and, when criticized, mean. Both cause great…

". . . if we are asked, “Is a person moral because he behaves morally, or does he behave morally because he is moral?” we must answer, “Neither.” He behaves…

"A person who has been exposed to the promise of heaven and the threat of hell may feel stronger bodily states than one whose behavior is merely approved or censured…

"We sometimes say that we acted in a given way because we knew it was right or felt that it was right, but what we feel when we behave morally…

"We refrain from hurting others, not because we “know how it feels to be hurt,” but (1) because hurting other members of the species reduces the chances that the species…

"The consequences responsible for benevolent, devoted, compassionate, or public-spirited behavior are forms of countercontrol, and when they are lacking, these much-admired features of behavior are lacking." (p. 210)   Subscribe…

"[Control] is exerted in ways which most effectively reinforce those who exert it, and unfortunately this usually means in ways which either are immediately aversive to those controlled or exploit…

"We cannot choose a way of life in which there is no control. We can only change the controlling conditions." (p. 209)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"A person acts upon the environment, and what he achieves is essential to his survival and the survival of the species. Science and technology are merely manifestations of this essential…

"We often overlook the fact that human behavior is also a form of control. That an organism should act to control the world around it is as characteristic of life…

"We cannot prove, of course, that human behavior as a whole is fully determined, but the proposition becomes more plausible as facts accumulate, and I believe that a point has…

"A scientific analysis of behavior must, I believe, assume that a person’s behavior is controlled by his genetic and environmental histories rather than by the person himself as an initiating,…

"What is needed,” says Carl Rogers, “is a new concept of therapy as offering help, not control.” But these are not alternatives. One can help a person by arranging an…

"When a problem calling for therapy is due to a shortage of social or intimately personal reinforcers, a solution may be difficult . . . Simulated attention, approval, or affection…

"The metaphor of growth begins in the “kindergarten” and continues into “higher” education, diverting attention from the contingencies responsible for changes in the students’ behavior." (pp. 203-204)   Subscribe to…

"[Teaching] is a field in which the goal seems to be obviously a matter of changing minds, attitudes, feelings, motives, and so on, and the Establishment is therefore particularly resistant…

"One person changes the behavior of another by changing the world in which he lives. In doing so, he no doubt changes what the other person feels or introspectively observes."…

"The Greek gods were said to change behavior by giving men and women mental states, such as pride, mental confusion, or courage, but no one has been successful in doing…

"One person manages another in the sense in which he manages himself. He does not do so by changing feelings or states of mind." (p. 199)   Subscribe to RSS…

"As in other sciences, we often lack the information necessary for prediction and control and must be satisfied with interpretation, but our interpretations will have the support of the prediction…

". . . our knowledge of another person is limited by accessibility, not by the nature of the facts. We cannot know all there is to know, as we cannot…

"The meaning of an expression is different for speaker and listener; the meaning for the speaker must be sought in the circumstances under which he emits the verbal response and…

". . . one person does not make direct contact with the inside of another, and so-called knowledge of another is often simply an ability to predict what he will…

"Those who seek to know themselves through an exploration of their feelings often claim an exclusive kind of knowledge . . . But it may be argued as well that…

"The experimental analysis of behavior, together with a special self-descriptive vocabulary derived from it, has made it possible to apply to oneself much of what has been learned about the…

"We should not be surprised that the more we know about the behavior of others, the better we understand ourselves. It was a practical interest in the behavior of “the…

"It is . . . important to examine the reasons for one’s own behavior as carefully as possible because they are essential . . . to good self-management." (p. 188)…

"The shift from introspective to environmental evidence does not guarantee that self-knowledge will be accurate . . . [When evidence is sketchy,] we are likely to explain the inexplicable by…

"As the relevance of environmental history has become clearer, . . . practical questions have begun to be asked, not about feelings and states of mind, but about the environment,…

"The verbal community asks, “How do you feel?” rather than, “Why do you feel that way?” because it is more likely to get an answer." (p. 187-188)   Subscribe to…

"It is difficult to maintain an identity when conditions change, but a person may conceal from himself conflicting selves, possibly by ignoring or disguising one or more of them, or…

"Self-knowledge is of social origin, and it is useful first to the community which asks the questions. Later, it becomes important to the person himself—for example, in managing or controlling…

"All species except man behave without knowing that they do so, and presumably this was true of man until a verbal community arose to ask about behavior and thus to…

"A distinction between two selves in the same skin is made when we say that a tennis player “gets mad at himself” because he misses an easy shot . .…

"A person is not an originating agent; he is a locus, a point at which many genetic and environmental conditions come together in a joint effect. As such, he remains…

"The person who asserts his freedom by saying, “I determine what I shall do next,” is speaking of freedom in or from a current situation: the I who thus seems…

"Complex contingencies create complex repertoires, and . . . different contingencies create different persons in the same skin, of which so-called multiple personalities are only an extreme manifestation." (pp. 184-185)…

"In a behavioral analysis a person is an organism, a member of the human species, which has acquired a repertoire of behavior. It remains an organism to the anatomist and…