B. F. Skinner Quotes
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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To say that a man is sinful because he sins is to give an operational definition of sin. To say that he sins because he is sinful is to trace his behavior to a supposed inner trait. But whether or not a person engages in the kind of behavior called sinful depends upon circumstances which are not mentioned in either question. The sin assigned as an inner possession (the sin a person "knows") is to be found in a history of reinforcement.
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Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
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If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.
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It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.
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To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
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Many social practices essential to the welfare of the species involve the control of one person by another, and no one can suppress them who has any concern for human achievements
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If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.
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A person's genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.
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Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world.
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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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A child who has been severely punished for sex play is not necessarily less inclined to continue; and a man who has been imprisoned for violent assault is not necessarily less inclined toward violence.
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We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
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No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out.
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To say that... behaviors have different 'meanings' is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life.
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The strengthening of behavior which results from reinforcement is appropriately called 'conditioning'. In operant conditioning we 'strengthen' an operant in the sense of making a response more probable or, in actual fact, more frequent.
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It is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It's a question of what's to be done from now on.
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In the traditional view, a person is free. He is autonomous in the sense that his behavior is uncaused. He can therefore be held responsible for what he does and justly punished if he offends. That view, together with its associated practices, must be re-examined when a scientific analysis reveals unsuspected controlling relations between behavior and environment.
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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
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Punitive measures whether administered by police, teachers, spouses or parents have well known standard effects: (1) escape-education has its own name for that: truancy, (2) counterattack-vandalism on schools and attacks on teachers, (3) apathy-a sullen do-nothing withdrawal. The more violent the punishment, the more serious the by-products.
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