B.F. Skinner From A to Z
By W. Joseph Wyatt

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Other Novels by W. Joseph Wyatt, Ph.D.

Excerpts

AGGRESSION

A given instance of aggression can generally be traced to both phylogenic and ontogenic contingencies, since both kinds of variables are generally operative upon a given occasion.

Author Note: Here, as occurs often throughout Skinner's works, his reference is to the influences on behavior of both genetics and learning. "Phylogenic contingencies" is Skinner's term for what is inherited through the genetic structure, while "ontogenic contingencies" is his term for what is learned by a single individual in its lifetime. It is apropos that the first entry in this book addresses one of the frequent misconceptions about Skinner. That is, he is often misrepresented, even among scholars, as being a strict environmentalist who did not believe in genetic influences on behavior. Clearly, that is not the case.

THE ARTS

We might say...that it is the business of the entertainer, writer, artist, or musician to create reinforcing events. In the process of creation...a medium may be manipulated to reveal self-enforcing properties, but the "universality" of a work of art is measured by the number of other people who also find it reinforcing.

Author Note: Skinner was highly interested in the arts. He subjected the activity of artists to a theoretical behavioral analysis. He objected to explanations such as "He creates art because he has a great deal of creativity." Skinner found such explanations circular ("How do we know a person has creativity?" "Because he creates art.")

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

A conception of human behavior based primarily on clinical information and practice will undoubtedly differ from a conception emanating from the laboratory. This does not mean that either is superior to the other, or that eventually a common formulation will not prove useful to both.

Author Note: Because Skinner was primarily an experimentalist, only occasionally delving into applications with humans, some have developed the impression that he was averse to, or rejected, clinical applications. This is a misconception sometimes found even among otherwise well trained behavior analysts. Little could be further from the truth. It was his dream that his laboratory findings would find their way to clinics where they would be used to enhance human potential.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE

Cognitive science is the creation science of psychology, as it struggles to maintain the position of a mind or self.

Author Note: This statement was made during Skinner's acceptance speech at the presentation of his lifetime achievement award from the American Psychological Association only a week before his death. To the end Skinner remained convinced that psychology's return to cognitive formulations in the late 1970s and 1980s was counterproductive to the development of a science of behavior.

DEMOCRACY

Democracy is a version of countercontrol designed to solve the problem of manipulation.

Author Note: Little was left out of Skinner's analysis, including democracy. It is an irony that Skinner was occasionally accused of advocating a totalitarian government because, in fact, he viewed totalitarianism as destructive and felt that creation of democracy is a natural response by people because they prefer positive systems of control.

THINKING

Human thought is human behavior. The history of human thought is what people have said and done. Mathematical symbols are the products of written and spoken verbal behavior, and the concepts and relationships of which they are symbols are in the environment. Thinking has the dimensions of behavior, not of a fancied inner process which find expression in behavior...
...The world of the mind is as remote today as it was when Plato is said to have discovered it. By attempting to move human behavior into a world of nonphysical dimensions, mentalistic or cognitive psychologists have cast the basic issues in insoluble forms. They have also probably cost us much useful evidence, because great thinkers (who presumably know what thinking is) have been led to report their activities in subjective terms, focusing on their feelings and what they introspectively observe while thinking, and as a result they have failed to report significant facts about their earlier histories.

Author Note: Skinner conceptualized thinking as verbal behavior that could not be heard by anyone else, and as visual behavior (images or pictures in the mind's eye) that could not be seen by anyone else, etc.

But he was careful to point out that our thoughts are simply more behavior to be explained, and are not themselves explanations of other behavior. Thinking and visual imagery are learned and reinforced and subject to extinction and the other laws of behavior, like observable behavior.

And how do we explain thinking? Not by looking inward. Rather we will explain it by looking outward and backward, to the reinforcement histories of people. Someone who is a critical thinker has probably had such thinking reinforced. Someone who is a pessimistic thinker has probably had such talk (and the thoughts accompanying it) reinforced with attention. The individual who is a "free thinker" has probably met with approval or other rewards for demonstrating novel ideas to his friends or colleagues. In such reinforcement histories lie the roots of thinking.

UNIQUENESS OF THE PERSON

A person is not an originating agent; his a locus, a point at which many genetic and environmental conditions come together in a joint effect. As such, he remains unquestionably unique. No one else (unless he has an identical twin) has his genetic endowment, and without exception no one else has his personal history.

Author Note: No psychologist has been criticized as intensely as Skinner for ignoring the "uniqueness of the person." This is ironic because Skinner has also been equally intensely critiqued by others who feel he placed too much emphasis on the study of individual subjects in the laboratory.

The most accurate thing that can be said is that Skinner was well aware of the uniqueness of the individual. He was dedicated to studying individuals as opposed to groups or subjects. But at the same time he simply refused to agree that individuals are uniquely created by God, or are unique with respect to being in possession of, or possessed by, psychodynamic forces in the mysterious world of the mind. And he disagreed with critics whose view of human uniqueness was built on the suggestion that people are somehow not susceptible to the general laws of learning (reinforcement, punishment, extinction, etc.)

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B.F. Skinner From A to Z

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