On January 4, 2016, the B. F. Skinner Foundation launched a new project – Skinner’s Quote of the Day. Quotes from B. F. Skinner’s works, selected by renowned scientists, appear daily Monday-Friday in order, starting with Chapter 1 of each book and running all the way through the last chapter. We started with the Science and Human Behavior (January-December 2916), followed by About Behaviorism (January-November 2017), Contingencies of Reinforcement (January-October 2018), Recent Issues (October 2018-May 2019), Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (May 2019-February 2020), and now moving on to Upon Further Reflection (from February 10 2020).
You can leave your comments here (registered users only), or join the discussion on our open Facebook forum. Please keep your comments brief and directly related to the quote.
"A rule is simply an object in the environment. Why should it be important? This is the sort of question which always plagues the dualist. Descartes could not explain how…
"Science is in large part a direct analysis of the reinforcing systems found in nature; it is concerned with facilitating the behavior which is reinforced by them." (p. 143) …
"As a culture evolves, it encourages running comment [on contingencies] and thus prepares its members to solve problems most effectively. Cultures which divert attention from behavior to mental events said…
"It is particularly helpful to describe behavior which fails to satisfy contingencies, as in I let go too soon or I struck too hard. Even fragmentary descriptions of contingencies speed…
"A child learns to describe both the world to which he is reacting and the consequences of his reactions . . . Descriptions of his own behavior are especially important.…
"Scientific laws also specify or imply responses and their consequences. They are not, of course, obeyed by nature but by men who deal effectively with nature." (p. 141) Subscribe…
"The codification of legal practices, justly recognized as a great advance in the history of civilization, is an extraordinary example of the construction of SD’s." (p. 141) Subscribe to…
"It is because programmed instruction eliminates much problem solving that some objections have been raised against it. The programmer solves the learner’s problems for him. How does he do so?…
"The changes which contribute to such a [trial-and-error] curve include the adaptation and extinction of emotional responses, the conditioning of reinforcers, and the extinction of unreinforced responses. Any contribution made…
"The expression [trial and error] is unfortunate. “Try” implies that a response has already been affected by relevant consequences . . . The term “error” does not describe behavior, it…
"Since there is probably no behavioral process which is not relevant to the solving of some problem, an exhaustive analysis of techniques would coincide with an analysis of behavior as…
"The behavior observed when a man solves a problem is distinguished by the fact that it changes another part of his behavior and is reinforced and strengthened when it does…
"The “referent” of an abstract response is not identifiable upon any one occasion. Only by surveying many instances can we identify the properties of stimuli and responses which enter into…
"Contingencies cannot always be detected upon a given occasion. Although a response is reinforced, we cannot be sure what property satisfied the contingencies and hence defines the operant." (131) …
"An operant is a class, of which a response is an instance or member." (p. 131) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"Reinforcement strengthens responses which differ in topography from the response reinforced . . . This is a characteristic of behavior which has strong survival value (see Chapter 7), since it…
"Freud argued, for example, that events in a person’s early life may be responsible for the fact that he now tends to act in ways which damage others and is…
"Peterson has shown that imprinting in the young duckling is largely a matter of being reinforced by increasing proximity to the mother or imprinted object; increased proximity is reinforcing even…
"The contingencies of reinforcement which define operant behavior are widespread if not ubiquitous. Those who are sensitive to this fact are sometimes embarrassed by the frequency with which they see…
"–when a man explicitly states his purpose in acting in a given way he may, indeed, be constructing a “contemporary surrogate of future consequences” which will affect subsequent behavior, possibly…
"To say that “the child who learns a language has in some sense constructed the grammar for himself” is as misleading as to say that a dog which has learned…
"The behavior of one who speaks correctly by applying the rules of a grammar merely resembles the behavior of one who speaks correctly from long experience in a verbal community.…
"The introspective vocabulary used in circumventing an experimental analysis is hopelessly inadequate for the kinds of facts currently under investigation. If one field is to borrow from the other, the…
"There is no reason why a description of contingencies of reinforcement should have the same effect as exposure to the contingencies." (p. 115) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"The manipulation of independent variables appears to be circumvented when, instead of exposing an organism to a set of contingencies, the contingencies are simply described in “instructions.” . . .…
"Statistical techniques often inject a destructive delay between the conduct of an experiment and the discovery of the significance of the data—a fatal violation of a fundamental principle of reinforcement."…
"Operant methods make their own use of Grand Numbers; instead of studying a thousand rats for one hour each, or a hundred rats for ten hours each, the investigator is…
"The complex system we call an organism has an elaborate and largely unknown history which endows it with a certain individuality . . . Statistical techniques cannot eliminate this kind…
"Eventually the investigator may move on to peripheral areas where indirect methods become necessary, but until then he must forego the prestige which attaches to traditional statistical methods." (p. 111)…
"When a variable is changed and the effect on performance observed, it is for most purposes idle to prove statistically that a change has indeed occurred. (It is sometimes said…
"The effect [of studying changes in rate of responding on a cumulative recorder] is similar to increasing the resolving power of a microscope; a new subject matter is suddenly open…
"The term “operant” distinguishes between reflexes and responses which operate directly on the environment . . . . The alternative term, instrumental, suggests the use of tools. To say that…
"The consequences of action change the organism regardless of how or why they follow. The connection need not be functional or organic—as, indeed, it was not in Thorndike’s experiment." (p.…
"The teleological problem is, of course, not solved until we have answered certain questions: what gives an action its purpose, what leads an organism to expect to have an effect,…
"Some effects seem to throw light on the behavior which produces them, but their explanatory role has been clouded by the fact that they follow the behavior and therefore raise…
"We ignore some things for the sake of studying others, but we do not ignore them permanently. They will be studied in their turn." (p. 103) Subscribe to RSS…
"The experimental analysis of behavior is, of course, an analysis. The environment in which human behavior is observed is usually simplified so that one aspect (or at most a very…
"Although it is sometimes said that research on lower animals makes it impossible to discover what is distinctly human, it is only by studying the behavior of lower animals that…
"In both [geophysics and the experimental analysis of behavior], principles derived from research conducted under the favorable conditions of the laboratory are used to give a plausible account of facts…
"The use of concepts and laws derived from an experimental analysis in the interpretation of daily life is also a source of misunderstanding. An analogy from another science may be…
"An experimental analysis of behavior is necessarily a science in progress. The assertion that it cannot explain some aspect of behavior must be qualified with the phrase “as of this…
"Man may be foolish enough to set off a nuclear holocaust—not by design but by one of those accidents which are so much admired by those who oppose design." (p.…
"The need for an effective technology of behavior is obvious enough. Every generation seems to believe that the world is going to the dogs, but (to be ethological for a…
"In the long run, the effective management of human affairs will probably require a change in the way in which everyone thinks about himself and those with whom he comes…
"The scientific method which has made [the experimental analysis of behavior] successful in the laboratory makes it almost immediately available for practical purposes. It is not concerned with testing theories…
"Psychology as a basic science has failed to supply a conception which recommends itself to specialists in other fields of human behavior." (p. 96) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"When Freud first turned from biology to psychology, he wrote to a friend: “What horrifies me more than anything else is all the psychology I shall have to read in…
"The psychological literature contains a prodigious number of charts, graphs, tables, and equations reporting quantitative relations among unimportant or useless variables. Much of this may be attributed to professional contingencies…
"Behavior as a dependent variable is often neglected when the investigator turns his attention to internal processes, real or fancied." (p. 92) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"An emphasis on topography of behavior at the expense of controlling relations is an example of the Formalistic Fallacy. It is common in linguistics and psycholinguistics." (p. 89) Subscribe…