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:

• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 3: The Initiating Self. Quote 2
  Only under special kinds of verbal contingencies do we respond to certain features of our body. (p. 28)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 3: The Initiating Self. Quote 1
  Chemistry suggests ways in which living things could have emerged from nonliving, and biologists explain the origin of species, including homo sapiens, through natural selection. There is less for a creator to do. Behavior has also come within the scope of a scientific analysis. (p. 27)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 19
  … we have only begun to construct a science needed to analyze the complex interactions between the environment and the body and the behavior to which it gives rise. (p. 25)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 13
  We can trace a small part of human behavior, and a much larger part of the behavior of other species, to natural selection and the evolution of the species, but the greater part of human behavior must be traced to contingencies of reinforcement, especially to the very complex social contingencies we call cultures. Only when… Read more: Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 13
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 12
  No account of what is happening inside the human body, no matter how complete, will explain the origins of human behavior. What happens inside the body is not a beginning. (p. 24)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 11
  Whether or not the cognitive revolution has restored mind as the proper subject matter of psychology, it has not restored introspection as the proper way of looking at it. The behaviorists’ attack on introspection has been devastating. (p. 24)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 10
  Unfortunately, we cannot report any internal event, physical or metaphysical, accurately. The words we use are words we learned from people who did not know precisely what we were talking about, and we have no sensory nerves going to the parts of the brain in which the most important events presumably occur. (pp. 23-24)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 9
  To think is to do something that makes other behavior possible. Solving a problem is an example. A problem is a situation that does not evoke an effective response; we solve it by changing the situation until a response occurs. (p. 20)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 8
  In a behavioral analysis, contingencies of reinforcement change the way we respond to stimuli. It is a changed person, not a memory, that has been “stored.”
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 7
  Like pre-Darwinian evolution (where to evolve meant to unroll as one unrolled a scroll), developmentalism is a form of creationism. (p. 16)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 6
  Since the observable effects of reinforcement are usually not immediate, we often overlook the connection. Behavior is then often said to grow or develop. Develop originally meant to unfold, as one unfolds a letter. We assume that what we see was there from the start. (p. 16)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 5
  Since behavior analysts deal only with complete instances of behavior, the sensing part is out of reach of their instruments and methods and must … be left to physiologists. (p. 16)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 4
  The world takes control of behavior when either survival or reinforcement has been contingent upon it. (p. 16)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 3
  We do what we do because of what has happened, not what will happen. Unfortunately, what has happened leaves few observable traces, and why we do what we do and how likely we are to do it are therefore largely beyond the reach of introspection. (p. 15)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 2
  As an experimental analysis has shown, behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences, but only by consequences that lie in the past. (p. 15)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 2: The Origins of Cognitive Thought. Quote 1
  What is felt when one has a feeling is a condition of one’s body, and the word used to describe it almost always comes from the word for the cause of the condition felt. (p. 13)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 1: The Place of Feeling in the Analysis of Behavior. Quote 14
  The inspection or introspection of one’s own body is a kind of behavior that needs to be analyzed, but as the source of data for a science it is largely of historical interest only. (p. 20)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 1: The Place of Feeling in the Analysis of Behavior. Quote 12
  For at least 3,000 years … philosophers, joined recently by psychologists, have looked within themselves for the causes of their behavior. For reasons which are becoming clear, they have never agreed upon what they have found. (p. 11)
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 1: The Place of Feeling in the Analysis of Behavior. Quote 11
  On the point of offering a friend a glass of water, we do not ask, “How long has it been since you last drank any water?” or “If I offer you a glass of water, what are the chances you will accept it?” We ask, “Are you thirsty?” The answer tells us all we need… Read more: Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 1: The Place of Feeling in the Analysis of Behavior. Quote 11
• Recent Issues: Extended Edition. Chapter 1: The Place of Feeling in the Analysis of Behavior. Quote 10
  Cognitive psychologists are among those who most often criticize behaviorism for neglecting feelings, but they themselves have done very little in the field. The computer is not a helpful model. (p. 10)

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