Skinner’s Quote of the Day

Skinner’s Quote of the Day is the project of the B. F. Skinner Foundation, copyright holder for Skinner’s works. On January 4, 2016, we started with Science and Human Behavior, followed by About Behaviorism, Contingencies of Reinforcement, Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior, Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, Upon Further Reflection, and Cumulative Record. Quotes are selected by renowned scientists and published every workday (Monday through Friday). The daily quote is also posted on the Facebook forum. RSS feed for “Skinner’s Quote of the Day” is available here: http://www.bfskinner.org/category/quotes/feed/. Please use the Archives function below to access previous quotes, or to search by a keyword.

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Recent Quotes:

• Quote of the Day Will Be Back Soon
  Thank you for your interest in B. F. Skinner and his works. Quote of the Day will be back in September with a new set of quotes!
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 16
  We do not always need listeners if our verbal behavior has been strongly reinforced or reinforced on an intermittent schedule. The witty response at a cocktail party occurs again and again before we go to sleep that night, and we need not ask who the listener is, any more than we need ask what the… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 16
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 15
  Internal dialogues … are often called thinking, but all behavior is thinking, as I argue in the last chapter in Verbal Behavior. (p. 515)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 13
  Those who have been directly exposed to contingencies behave more subtly and effectively than those who have merely been told, taught, or advised to behave or who follow rules. (pp. 512-513)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 12
  If cognitive psychologists were correct in saying that rules are in the contingencies, it would not matter whether we learned them from the contingencies or from the rule—in other words, from acquaintance or description. The results, however, are obviously different. (p. 512)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 11
  The rules of games describe invented contingencies of reinforcement. There are natural contingencies in which running faster than another person is reinforced, but the contingencies in a marathon are contrived. (p. 510)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 10
  Instructional contingencies in schools and colleges are designed to prepare students for contingencies of reinforcement which they will encounter at some later time. Few, if any, natural reinforcers are therefore available, and reinforcers must be contrived. (p. 508)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 9
  I “believe” a small object on my desk is a pen, in the sense that I tend to pick it up when I am about to write something. I do so because when I have picked up similar objects in the past they have proved to be pens. (p. 507)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 8
  The mand frees us from making a response. The tact replaces the discriminative stimulus controlling a response. (p. 506)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 7
  Five kinds of operants—mand, tact, intraverbal, echoic, and textual—are distinguished by their respective contingencies of reinforcement. They are maintained by verbal environments or cultures—that is, by listeners. (p. 505)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 6
  A language is a kind of behavior (English, Arabic, and so on). It exists even though no one is speaking it. (No one need speak it at all if it is a dead language.) (p. 505)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 5
  We say that we reinforce a response when we make a reinforcer contingent upon it, but we do not change that particular response. What we reinforce, in the sense of strengthen, is the operant, the probability that similar responses will occur in the future. (p. 504)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 4
  When we say that behavior is controlled by the environment, we mean two very different things. The environment shapes and maintains repertoires of behavior, but it also serves as the occasion upon which behavior occurs. (p. 504)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 3
  Most of my book, Verbal Behavior, was about the speaker . . . But if listeners are responsible for the behavior of speakers, we need to look more closely at what they do. (p. 504)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 2
  A minor problem will be illustrated in what follows. In using modern English, you find yourself implying the traditional view in the very act of challenging it. Only at special times can you be technical and correct. The rest of the time everyday English must suffice, and you must expect to be accused of inconsistency.… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 2
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Behavior of the Listener. Quote 1
  In a behavioral account, the direction of action is exactly reversed. Speakers do not take in the world and put it into words; they respond to it in ways which have been shaped and maintained by special contingencies of reinforcement. (p. 503)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 24
  The [current] paper is speculative, but the speculation is under the restraint imposed by a commitment to the established principles of an operant analysis. (p. 501)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 23
  There is a good chance that [laughing and crying] evolved at about the same time as vocal behavior, but they are not operants, although they can be simulated as such—as in crying to get attention, for example, or laughing politely at an unfunny joke. (p. 500)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 22
  … we could say that other primates have engaged in verbal behavior in artificial verbal environments created by scientists but have not developed a language [in the sense of a verbal environment] of their own. (p. 500)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 21
  Verbal behavior is behavior that is reinforced through the mediation of other people, but only when the other people are behaving in ways that have been shaped and maintained by an evolved verbal environment, or language. (p. 500)

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