Cumulative Record. Chapter 21: Some Relations Between Behavior Modification and Basic Research. Quote 1
The first scientific laws were probably the rules of craftsmen. In other words, science seems to have emerged from efforts to solve practical problems … As science advances, however, the direction changes. Subject matters become too complex to yield to lay wisdom or rules of thumb, and it is the scientist who sees the useful […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 21
It is not inconceivable that the mental apparatus and all that it implies will be forgotten. It will then be more than a mere working hypothesis to say. . . that psychotic behavior, like all behavior, is part of the world of observable events to which the powerful methods of natural science apply and to […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 20
Terms which refer to private events tend to be used inexactly. Most of them are borrowed in the first place from descriptions of external events. (Almost all the Vocabulary of emotion, for example, has been shown to be metaphorical in origin.) (p. 317)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 19
It is easy to teach a child to distinguish between colors by presenting different colors and reinforcing his responses as right or wrong accordingly, but it is much more difficult to teach him to distinguish between different aches or pains, since the information as to whether his responses are right or wrong is much less […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 18
That a small part of the universe is enclosed within the skin of each of us, and that this constitutes a private world to which each of us has a special kind of access can scarcely be denied. But the world with which we are in contact does not for that reason have any special […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 17
. . . we should probably remain blind if visual stimuli were never of any importance to us, just as we do not hear all the separate instruments in a symphony or see all the colors in a painting until it is worthwhile for us to do so. (p. 317)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 16
Philosophers have often insisted that we are not aware of a difference until it makes a difference, and experimental evidence is beginning to accumulate in support of the view that we should probably not know anything at all if we were not forced to do so. The discriminative behavior called knowledge arises only in the […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 15
A comprehensive set of causal relations stated with the greatest possible precision is the best contribution which we, as students of behavior, can make in the co-operative venture of giving a full account of the organism as a biological system. (p. 316)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 14
The task of physiology is not to find hungers, fears, habits, instincts, personalities, psychic energy, or acts of willing, attending, repressing, and so on . . . Its task is to account for the causal relations between input and output which are the special concern of a science of behavior. (p. 316)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 13
The practical criteria of prediction and control will force us to take into account the complete causal chain in every instance. Such a program is not concerned with establishing the existence of inferred events, but with assessing the state of our knowledge. This does not mean, of course, that the organism is conceived of as […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 12
What is needed is an operational definition of terms. This means more than simple translation. The operational method is commonly misused to patch up and preserve concepts which are cherished for extraneous and irrelevant reasons. (p. 315)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 11
No matter how we may wish to represent such a sequence of causal events, we cannot satisfy the requirements of interpretation, prediction, or control unless we go back to events acting upon the organism from without—events, moreover, which are observed as any event is observed in the physical and biological sciences. (pp. 314-315)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 9
A man may walk down the street in precisely the same way upon two occasions, although in one instance he is out for exercise and in another he is going to mail a letter. And so it is thought necessary to consider, not the behavior itself, but “what it means” to the behaving individual. But […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 8
In any event, the newly conceived organism begins at once to be influenced by its environment; and when it comes into full contact with the external world, environmental forces assume a major role. They are the only conditions which can be changed so far as the individual is concerned. (p. 308)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 6
The study of behavior, psychotic or otherwise, remains securely in the company of the natural sciences so long as we take as our subject matter the observable activity of the organism, as it moves about, stands still, seizes objects, pushes and pulls, makes sounds, gestures, and so on. (p. 306)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 5
The study of human behavior is, of course, still in its infancy, and it would be rash to suppose that anyone can foresee the structure of a well-developed and successful science. Certainly no current formulation will seem right fifty years hence. (p. 306)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 3
Of all the myriad aspects of behavior which present themselves to observation, which are worth watching? Which will prove most useful in establishing functional relations? . . . Frequency of response has proved to be a remarkably sensitive variable, and with its aid the exploration of causal factors has been gratifyingly profitable. (p. 304)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 20: What Is Psychotic Behavior? Quote 1
The object [of my research] has been to discover the functional relations which prevail between measurable aspects of behavior and various conditions and events in the life of the organism. The success of such a venture is gauged by the extent to which behavior can, as a result of the relationships discovered, actually be predicted […]
B. F. Skinner Foundation’s Board of Directors Annual Meeting
The annual meeting of the B. F. Skinner Foundation’s Board of Directors took place on March 18-19, 2023 in Watertown, MA. Members of the Board reviewed Foundation’s activities in 2022 and set plans for 2023. Main topics of discussion during the Board meeting included the progress of our archival project, our educational services, reprinting of […]
Happy Birthday B. F. Skinner!
March 20th is the birthday of B. F. Skinner. To celebrate, we are offering a PDF copy of Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition, one of Skinner’s most widely read books, complementary* for 24 hours only. For the entire day of March 20th, 2023 only, Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition in PDF format is yours to download at no charge from bfskinner.org. The […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 19: Psychology in the Understanding of Mental Disease. Quote 6
It will be recalled that the old introspective psychologist had a trained observer, but it is now clear that in training him the psychologist was definitely shaping the way in which the observer reacted to stimuli and was to some extent creating the very data which he was trying to collect. (p. 302)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 19: Psychology in the Understanding of Mental Disease. Quote 5
We acquire the vocabulary which describes our own behavior under great difficulty. The verbal community which can easily teach a child to distinguish colors, for example, cannot with the same technique teach him to distinguish aches, pains, feelings, and emotions. (p. 301)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 19: Psychology in the Understanding of Mental Disease. Quote 3
Recent work in the field of learning has enabled the psychologist to achieve an extensive control over the behavior of an organism, and to bring this behavior under the control of complex environmental conditions. (pp. 298-299)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 19: Psychology in the Understanding of Mental Disease. Quote 1
Of special importance in the field of mental disease are many forms of behavior resulting from the use of punishment as a measure of control. It is now clear that in punishing a response, we do not simply lower the probability that it will be emitted. (p. 297)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 18: A Critique of Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories. Quote 12
Freud appears never to have considered the possibility of bringing the concepts and theories of a psychological science into contact with the rest of physical and biological science by the simple expedient of an operational definition of terms. (p. 294)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 18: A Critique of Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories. Quote 11
Freud’s contribution has been widely misunderstood. The important point was not that the individual was often unable to describe important aspects of his own behavior or identify important causal relationships but that his ability to describe them was irrelevant to the occurrence of the behavior or to the effectiveness of the causes. (p. 293)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 18: A Critique of Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories. Quote 10
There are many words in the layman’s vocabulary which suggest the activity of an organism yet are not descriptive of behavior in the narrower sense . . . We say that a man discriminates between two objects when he behaves differently with respect to them; but discriminating is not itself behavior. (p. 291)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 18: A Critique of Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories. Quote 9
In spite of Freud’s valuable analysis of verbal slips and of the techniques of wit and verbal art, he rejected the possibility of an analysis of verbal behavior in its own right rather than as the expression of ideas, feelings, or other inner events, and therefore missed the importance of this field for the analysis […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 18: A Critique of Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories. Quote 8
Inevitably, [Freud’s mental apparatus] stole the show. Little attention was left to behavior per se. Behavior was relegated to the position of a mere mode of expression of the activities of the mental apparatus or the symptoms of an underlying disturbance. [p. 289]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 18: A Critique of Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories. Quote 7
In the process of therapy, the analyst necessarily acts upon the patient only through physical means . . . Nevertheless, it is commonly assumed that the mental apparatus is being directly manipulated. (p. 288)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 18: A Critique of Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories. Quote 3
There is an alternative view [to the one held by some of Freud’s followers], however, which holds that Freud did not discover the mental apparatus but rather invented it, borrowing part of its structure from a traditional philosophy of human conduct but adding many novel features of his own devising. (p, 286)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 18: A Critique of Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories. Quote 2
No matter what logicians may eventually make of this mental apparatus, there is little doubt that Freud accepted it as real rather than as a scientific construct or theory. One does not at the age of 70 define the goal of one’s life as the exploration of an explanatory fiction. (p. 286)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 18: A Critique of Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories. Quote 1
Freud demonstrated that many features of behavior hitherto unexplained—and often dismissed as hopelessly complex or obscure—could be shown to be the product of circumstances in the history of the individual. (p. 285)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 17: Contingency Management in the Classroom. Quote 20
No matter how bad a teacher may be, he has at least one available reinforcer—dismissing his class . . . He should wait until the behavior of the class is as acceptable as it is likely to be and then dismiss. But almost inevitably he will do the wrong thing: he will tend to dismiss […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 17: Contingency Management in the Classroom. Quote 19
Many problems in classroom management arise because the teacher reinforces students when they behave in objectionable ways . . . The teacher tends to do so “naturally,” and he will be dissuaded from doing so only when the effects of reinforcement have been made clear to him. (p. 280)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 17: Contingency Management in the Classroom. Quote 17
The training of a teacher should begin with basic principles. Everyone who intends to be a teacher should have a chance to see learning take place or, better, to produce visible learning himself, as by shaping the behavior of a rat or a pigeon. (pp. 279-280)