Skinner’s Quote of the Day

Verbal Behavior was criticized in a different way by an old friend, I. A. Richards, whose interest in the field goes back, of course to the Meaning of Meaning .…

... I agreed to participate [in a BBC television discussion with Chomsky] only if the moderator could guarantee equal time. I suggested that we use chess clocks. My clock would…

Eventually the question was asked, why had I not answered Chomsky? ... No doubt I was shirking a responsibility in not replying to Chomsky, and I am glad an answer…

. . . Chomsky’s review began to be widely cited and reprinted and became, in fact, much better known than my book. (p. 474)

Let me tell you about Chomsky. I published Verbal Behavior in 1957. In 1958 I received a 55-page typewritten review by someone I had never heard of named Noam Chomsky.…

... I intend to raise the question of whether I am responsible for what I am saying, whether I am actually originating anything, and to what extent I deserve credit…

The study of the verbal behavior of speaker and listener, as well as of the practices of the verbal environment which generates such behavior, may not contribute directly to historical…

The origins of most forms of response will probably always remain obscure, but if we can explain the beginnings of even the most rudimentary verbal environment, the well-established processes of…

Where the baby first cried as a reflex response to painful stimulation, it may now cry as an operant. (p. 465)

The relatively undifferentiated babbling of the human infant from which vocal verbal behavior develops is undoubtedly an evolutionary product, but it is not the sort of behavior which is evoked…

It is unlikely, moreover, that verbal behavior in the present sense arose from instinctive cries. Well-defined emotional and other innate responses comprise reflex systems which are difficult, if not impossible,…

The mother bird cries out not “in order to warn her young” but because the young of earlier members of the species who have cried out have survived to perpetuate…

Innate and acquired responses both appear to be emitted “in order to achieve effects”—in order to promote the welfare of the species or the individual. (p. 463)

There is a parallel between natural selection and operant conditioning. The selection of an instinctive response by its effect in promoting the survival of a species resembles, except for enormous…

To say that [responses] are instinctive is merely to say that each form of behavior is observed in most members of a given species, when there has been no opportunity…

A superficial resemblance between verbal behavior and the instinctive signal systems of animals (many of them vocal) has been the source of much confusion. (p. 462)

Early man was probably not very different from his modern descendants with respect to behavioral processes. If brought into a current verbal community, he would probably develop elaborate verbal behavior.…

In studying the practices of the community rather than the behavior of the speaker, the linguist has not been concerned with verbal behavior in the present sense. (p. 461)

The “languages” studied by the linguist are the reinforcing practices of verbal communities. When we say that also means in addition or besides “in English,” we are not referring to…

I have found it necessary from time to time to attack traditional concepts which assign spontaneous control to the special inner self called the speaker. Only in this way could…

Men will never become originating centers of control, because their behavior will itself be controlled, but their role as mediators may be extended without limit. (p. 460)

If we eventually give a plausible account of human behavior as part of a lawfully determined system, man’s power will increase even more rapidly. (p. 460)

There is no reason why scientific methods cannot now be applied to the study of man himself—to practical problems of society and, above all, to the behavior of the individual.…

The program of a radical behaviorism left no originating control inside the skin. (p. 459)

It is as unfair to ask a science of behavior to  as to ask the science of physics to account for the changes in temperature which were taking place in…

In 1934, while dining at the Harvard Society of Fellows, I found myself seated next to Professor Alfred North Whitehead. We dropped into a discussion of behaviorism . . .…

In many ways, then, this seems to me to be a better way of talking about verbal behavior, and that is why I have tried to get the reader to…

Hundreds of puzzling questions and obscure propositions about verbal behavior may be dismissed, while the new questions and propositions which arise to take their place are susceptible to experimental check…

It is my belief that something like the present analysis reduces the total vocabulary needed for a scientific account. It eliminates far more terms than it creates, and the terms…

Stating the matter in the most selfish light, I have been trying to get the reader to behave verbally as I behave. (p. 455)

I have invented a few new terms—“mand,” “tact,” “autoclitic,” and so on—which are perhaps now part of the reader’s vocabulary, though in what strength I would not undertake to say.…

It has not been my purpose to present the facts of verbal behavior as such, and that is why I have not been greatly concerned with experimental or statistical proof.…

I believe that the present book realizes an effective synthesis which represents the place of verbal behavior in the larger field of human behavior as a whole. (p. 455)

Originally it appeared that an entirely separate formulation would be required [for VB], but, as time went on, and as concurrent work in the field of general behavior proved more…

For practical purposes a special field has been set apart in terms of characteristics imparted to it by special controlling variables. It is in terms of these variables—of the contingencies…

So far as a science of behavior is concerned, Man Thinking is simply Man Behaving. (p. 452)

All behavior, verbal or otherwise, is subject to Kantian a priori’s in the sense that man as a behaving system has inescapable characteristics and limitations. (p. 451)

Tradition and expedience seem to agree in confining the analysis of human thought to operant behavior. So conceived, thought is not a mystical cause or precursor of action, or an…

The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior—verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior…

A verbal response makes it possible to “think about” one property of nature at a time. Since there is no practical response appropriate to all instances of red, the abstract…

A “resolution” is a sort of mand upon oneself which masquerades as a tact. I am not going to smoke for the next three months is not a response to…

The troublesome expressions ought and should can be interpreted as describing contingencies of reinforcement. (p. 443)

Verbal self-supplementation plays an important role in decision making. A man escapes from an aversive indecision by tossing a coin. (p. 442)

The self-tact has an immediate effect in helping the speaker identify or clarify the situation to which it is a response. (p. 441)

A self-mand is not as useless as it may at first appear. (p. 440)

Aside from autistic or artistic behavior, verbal responses may be automatically reinforced by practical consequences. These may follow even when the speaker is his own listener. (p. 440)

When a man talks to himself, aloud or silently, he is an excellent listener . . . He speaks the same language or languages and has had the same verbal…

We can explain the tendency to identify thinking with covert behavior by pointing out that the reinforcing effects of covert behavior must arise from self-stimulation. But self-stimulation is possible, and…

So far as we know, the events at the covert end have no special properties, observe no special laws, and can be credited with no special achievements. (p. 438)

Some [other “mental processes”] are exemplified when a speaker acquires or retains a response (the mental processes of “learning” and “memory”), responds differently to different stimuli (“discrimination”), reacts with one…