![[About Behaviorism - BF Skinner.jpg]] Bookclub guide note: [[BF_Skinner_About_Behaviourism]] Bookclub (Week 1) Keynotes: [[About_Behaviourism-W1-Keynotes]] ## Video Content & Description ![](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDi9VdEzpeI) B. F. Skinner discusses behavior modification, behavioral technology, and the uses of positive reinforcement in shaping human behavior. ## Transcript **0:02** · The Milwaukee Area Technical College presents College of the Air \[Music\] **0:34** · BF Skinner is probably the most influential psychologist in America today. His findings have been applied to nearly every aspect of human behavior, though much of his research was carried out with laboratory animals. He invented the Skinner box and he demonstrated that he could dramatically control the behavior of animals by controlling the reinforcements they received. He's generalized from the results of these very careful laboratory studies to a wide variety of practical human situations. **1:03** · His research led him to develop the teaching machine and programmed learning. In his novel Walden 2, he describes how operant learning and the theory of behaviorism might be applied in a utopian community. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, he discusses the need for human beings at this point in history to develop an effective technology of behavior, not to avoid controls, but to analyze and carefully plan the types of controls that determine our behavior. This leads to that very important question. **1:35** · What is meant by the phrase our behavior is determined? Well, I mean the behavior is indeed the behavior of a physical organism. We are we are just organisms and uh our behavior is chemically, physically, otherwise completely determined by our genetic endowment. **1:53** · what has happened in the history of the species and what has happened to us as individuals since birth and what we the present situation we find ourselves in and our behavior then I think can be shown to be a product of that and that is determined it doesn't mean that we are unable to do things about our own behavior because we are we're able to change the world in which we live and thus change our own behavior I believe in self-control but only because we have **2:18** · been taught how to control ourselves how do we control ourselves well by doing what what we would do to control someone else, which is to manipulate the environment rather than just go with an act of will, we we change the world in which we live. And if we're successful and skillful, uh we can change our behavior. You've talked about the power of reinforcement as a change agent. **2:41** · Yes. Well, reinforcement is a thing that I've investigated myself. It's not the only thing in the world, but it is extremely powerful and that has not really been recognized. positive reinforcement or what people call rewards. Um uh that is an extremely powerful technique and we've only discovered the power fairly recently. **2:59** · Strangely enough, we tend to to control people through aversive control, punishing people for misbehaving or threatening them so they behave the ways we want them to behave and so on. But you can with positive techniques get better effects and effects that we all like because we feel free when we are controlled through positive reinforcement. We don't feel free when we are being coerced or threatened with punishment. **3:24** · How is our behavior shaped? Well, let me give you an example. I used to do this with my classes. I have a hungry pigeon in a space where it can be seen easily by the class and a food dispenser. till somebody dumps a few grains of food into a dish and a a switch that I can use to operate dispensary. Now, my only contact with the pigeon is by this switch. And I'd ask the class, "What do you want the pigeon to do? Do you want it to turn around, put it head up in the air, move to one corner of the cage, and so on?" **3:52** · They choose some particular bit of behavior. They choose turning around. **3:56** · Well, then I I simply watch the pigeon and when it makes a slight turn, say counterclockwise, I press the button and the food appears and the pigeon eats almost immediately. You can see it turn again. This is just visible. You can see the turning take place. Uh then I catch that. But next time I wait for a little bit more of a move and I get a bigger and bigger move and finally the pigeon goes all the way around and then I reinforce and I've got it. The pigeon will then turn around and and eat. Turn around and eat. Turn around and eat. **4:21** · As long as I keep this up very in a matter of two minutes at the most I've shaped a very complex pattern of behavior simply by making the food contingent on that behavior as we say. but in little progressive steps. You have to you can't wait for them to make the turn. That you wait all day. Perhaps you take just little bits of it and add to it and compose a final response. Many of the practical human applications of operant learning have come out of your research with animals. This seems a big jump to many people. Very big jump. **4:52** · We're all animals. You see, and the same same question was raised about medicine. At one time, you know, vaccinations were supposed to be only animals. We now use hormones which are taken from animals. **5:04** · No one questions that at all. Um but there of course human behavior is extraordinarily different much more complex than than animal behavior. But the fundamental principles are probably there. Uh we discovered the power of shaping behavior with positive reinforcement back in the 40s. We were working with pigeons in connection with a with a war project and we discovered that if we gave a hungry pigeon food at just the right time, we could get the pigeon to do almost anything. And very shortly after that uh I tried it on my daughter who was then nine months old. **5:34** · I was holding her in my lap one day growing dark in the room. I reached over and turned on the light. Well, she smiled. I thought, "Well, ah, that's a reinforcer. I'll see if I can't use that to shape a bit of her behavior just as I done with the pigeons." Actually, I waited for her to move around a little bit and I turned the light on and I turned it off and I moved moved it immediately moved right again. You can see that you can see this with with a pigeon experiment or with a human being. **5:57** · And before long, she was doing this to make the light come on. Well, I just reinforced this movement by producing the light and that was the way she made the light come on. Now, this was extrapolating from pigeon to to my daughter. My daughter is not simple-minded. She's a very intelligent person, a very successful artist. But u she's responsible in the same way to these conditions and we all are, you know, we all, you know, we all we're all being shaped by the things that happen in our environment all the time. **6:27** · ==The idea that our behavior is controlled by our environment is very frightening to many people. Well, it is scary because we have taken unto ourselves credit for what we do and we don't like to have the environment get the credit.== **6:42** · ==However, we're perfectly willing to have the environment get the blame.== That's the most interesting thing. If a a juvenile delinquent comes from a poor background, he's the first one to say, "Look, I came from a very bad background. That's why I that's why I committed a crime." And uh we like to say no you're right about that. But if if a child comes from a good environment and creates a work of art, we don't want him to say that's because of the environment. We want that to say because of you. That was you who did that. You see, but that's it. It it cuts both ways. We have it either one way. **7:09** · Either the individual is responsible for what he does by way of achievements and for what he does by way of of bad behavior in which case we punish and and and commend or it it is due to the environment in which case we recognize the role of the environment. It doesn't mean that the individual has not individual has not done wonderful things. **7:30** · He has he still has a still a piece of music or a work of art or scientific discovery which has been made produced and is produced as as a result of an individual behaving. But where the credit goes is a thing that worries people. How can understanding the processes of operant conditioning help people protect themselves from control by others? **7:55** · Well, you can you can see what's being done and you be aware of the of the of the techniques that are being used and of course you can use these techniques yourself. Many there many books have been published in the field of behavior modification on how to control one's own behavior. How how do you find the environment in which you are most likely to behave well and achieve and to do a creative and achieving things and you you can you can do that and I think people ought to be taught how to do it. **8:21** · We no longer teach very much by way of ethical meth. self-management or intellectual self-management. We could and we will again, I'm sure as the possibilities are made clear. You've talked about the need for a technology of behavior. Yes. Well, we certainly do need one. All the great problems today need a behavioral solution. How are we going to get people to stop breeding so much to cut down on the consumption of goods that are running? **8:47** · We're running out of supplies and so on, stop polluting the environment, stop beating each other up personally or uh internationally and so on. These are all behavioral problems and they have to be solved by something like a behavioral technology. It seems to me, do we have examples of that technology working now? **9:07** · Well, behavior modification and I should make clear that I don't mean the kind of thing that turned up in that movie the clockwork orange where you use Pavlovian conditioning with shock therapy and so I'm not talking about that at all but the behavior modification which uses positive rewards is a very good example of of of an application to a practical problem of of reinforcement theory. **9:32** · Some organisms that some people defectives of one kind or another, people, psychotic people, they're not sensitive to contingencies of reinforcement. So what we do is to make the make the reinforcements very conspicuous. This is done with a token economy. You you take a ward in a hospital. These people are sitting around doing nothing. Only time they get any attention is when they cause trouble. It's a very poor situation. But you can rearrange that so that they get tokens for doing things uh making their beds getting dressed and so on. **10:01** · And they can use the tokens to buy extra dessert at meal time and things of that kind. **10:06** · And that makes their lives very different. And uh it's a good example of of designing a reinforcer which has to be used in a particularly conspicuous way. But now I wouldn't recommend that you go around reinforcing people with tokens all the time. Although money is nothing but a token. We use it to reinforce people for working for us. But the normal natural reinforces in in daily life are the work in the same principle. And if you if you were a painter for example, you like what you put paint on the canvas and you're reinforced by the result. So you go put more paint on. If you're a musician, you like to make music, you sit down and make music. **10:37** · And it's music is reinforcing to you. It's a natural consequence where the token is one that someone has cooked up for practical purposes. **10:48** · You've applied this in education with normal children. Oh yes, definitely. And the whole point of programming is it's often misunderstood. Program instruction of course is is now recognized. And when it was first introduced, it was an effort to break into the system where all students had to move at the same pace. You allow the individual to go at his own pace is terribly important because holding people in line is very wasteful of their time and the time of everyone. **11:15** · But not only does programming do that, it it designs material in such a way that the student is almost always right rather than being almost always wrong than the ordinary way. And this means that you get an interest in what you're doing and you stick with it and go on with it and you don't need to force yourself to work and yet you are making progress because every step you take makes it possible to take another step which is more complicated and and moves into more difficult material. **11:46** · This type of thing can also help a person become a more effective employer or employee. **11:52** · Oh yes. Well, any any personal relation whatsoever uh can be changed this way. **11:57** · And the main the main thing is to realize the importance of positive reinforcement rather than negative or aversive conditioning. Unfortunately, we all tend first of all if we can if we're big enough to control people through force. The children fight each other. **12:15** · Animals fight each other. Parents spank their children and children now attack their parents and so on. It's a simple quick easy way of doing things. But of course has terrible byproducts. It's it's a it's a very wasteful system. But positive reinforcement which can get the same effects is more deferred. The results you have to wait a while to get the results. Hence you don't realize that they are available. But you can get very effective control of social situations through positive reinforcement. **12:44** · And a good teacher can be a better teacher if she will reinforce by commending the student rather than picking on the mistakes the student is making and criticizing. The tendency is you read a paper the children the child has written a paper and you go through and you mark the mistakes. Well, much better to go through and mark the nice good sentences and the child feels he's done something. **13:06** · You see, it's very hard to make that point and to get people in classrooms to take the opportunity to positively reinforce good behavior rather than waiting for something to go wrong and then and punishing. You've said that we've reached a point in history where it's important to move beyond the concepts of freedom and dignity and really analyze the controls we use. **13:29** · Yes. And that's been misunderstood. I'm not against freedom or against dignity. **13:35** · I want people to feel freer than ever before and to feel more worthy having achieved more than they've ever done before. But these feelings are byproducts of the ways in which they are controlled. We don't feel free when we are coerced. We do feel free when we are working for positive reinforcement. And I want to see lots of positive reinforcement. People will feel free and do things freely. Moreover, I want the contingencies in the in the social environment to be so good that they do much more than they do now. make more use of their talents and than they do now. ==**14:07** · But beyond that, beyond the the accomplishments of the individual, we must take into account where the culture as a whole is going. And just to be happy, just to feel free, and just to feel worthy will not deal with all of the problems which face us. Beyond freedom and dignity lies the future. And that is what we must take into account.== ==**14:28** · We must make sure that human behavior will be so designed that it will maximize our chances of solving our problems and giving a decent world to the people who follow us. That is what is beyond freedom and dignity. And I think my book appeared just about at the time when the 60s were over and and the search for self and individuality and freedom and the discovery of one's identity that was about worn out.== ==**14:53** · So now people are beginning to realize that there is something beyond simply getting to know yourself better or finding yourself through various modes of psychotherapy and so on and turning to the the the group as a whole to the social environment which is so terribly important in making the most of the individual with a powerful tool like operant conditioning. Do we not also face dangers? Can it any any science has its dangers.== ==**15:25** · Uh think of the munitions industry what they've done. Think of what has been done with atomic physics. And if the wrong people get control of behavioral techniques exclusively, we would be in very serious trouble. The best way to have that happen would be to suppress these techniques because they won't be suppressed forever and other people will get them. I try to make these things as clear to everybody as possible.== ==**15:50** · The best way to make sure that you're not going to be abused by a controller is to understand all of the possible techniques of control so you can see what's going on. People are not aware of how they're being controlled. I'm really disturbed by the current pressures for getting raising money for governments through gambling lotteryies and now casinos.== ==**16:14** · And this is this is a good example of making use of the fact that the individual doesn't know how he's being controlled when he is when he's not only offered lottery tickets but subject to television and other advertising and reports of how much people have won and so on. This is all done to get people to throw away their money because the odds are very bad on those things. They're not not good gambling at all. And this is way the state collects. So I think that is a misuse of a kind of control which can be misused because people don't understand.== ==**16:47** · I should think everybody in a school ought to be told how they can be taken by anybody who uses those particular contingencies of reinforcement on them.== **16:57** · I've had parents tell me, "I don't really want to control the way my children grow up. I'd rather they felt free to go in any direction their talents take them." Well, if I could tell you how you could arrange the world so that your child would be perfectly free and would be energetic and interested in life and creative, wouldn't you follow my suggestions? **17:16** · That's control. Uh I don't want you to control in the sense you mustn't do this, you mustn't do that. Now this is the time to do that, this time to do that. That' be very bad control. But what you still want is control. Society wants control. You don't want anarchy. **17:29** · You don't want people running off in every direction. You want them working. **17:32** · You you if you're an in if you're a teacher, you have to have control. You you the free school is is a misnomer. **17:39** · There's no such thing as a free school. **17:41** · Some have lots of freedom, but not lots of trouble as a rule usually. But unless something else is going on in the free school, nothing is happening. It's not a school at all. And you the teacher needs to control uh the therapist needs to control parents and children control each other. Very I'll bet your child knows how to control you. Oh yes. That's right. Very well. That's right. Well, I I I I think you are aware of that, but you might not be because many people are not, and there are very bad family situations because people are not aware of what they're doing to each other. **18:13** · You've been interested in utopian communities as a way of seeing how this all works. Yes, I like to see I like to try these things out. And one way to try them out is use a small situation such as a community of a thousand people. There one can arrange the kinds of conditions which should lead to effective behavior with a minimum of consumption, minimum pollution, maximally socializing and so on. **18:41** · This my book Walden 2 which has now been published we see 27 years ago 29 years ago um that is still selling a very high rate. People are still interested in it and the translations and so on keep coming out. That was a picture of a **18:59** · community designed in such a way that people would make the minimal use of materials would consume as little as possible but still have a very good life would pollute as little as possible would enjoy conduct with each other would be productive creative arts and so on. I think it's quite feasible. I think it could be done and there are groups now which are trying it. There are small communities. It's too small to be like Bolton too but based on the same principles be quite effective. Can this be transferred to a large complex society like the United States? **19:29** · Well, I think the United States is going to see a return to small communities. People are leaving cities now and going back to smaller towns. Whether or not those small communities are welld designigned is another matter. I think it could be done. I think we should make every effort to make a small town a highly reinforcing place to live rather than at the present time the kind of place that sends us more interesting imaginative people off to a city. Cities like Boston, New York, Milwaukee face so many social problems. **19:59** · Can what's being learned in utopian communities be transferred to such large cities? It' be very difficult. That's one of the reasons why I think everything should be done to keep big cities from becoming big and staying big. The problem, you know, is worse in the third world. The biggest the most rapid rise in cities now is in the third world. These high-rise buildings go up. People flock in from all over looking for jobs which they don't find. Creates a terrible social problem. **20:29** · Now you could do a great deal in this country certainly to get people to stay in a much better environment in smaller communities if you could make them more interesting. **20:41** · One thing you could do for example would be to make sure that public television gets to every set in the in in the continental United States with a single satellite would do that. And then the young man in my position who had to leave a small town to hear any good music or see theaters and so on could see that all right at home. And a young young woman too. And the young people who are the ones who ought to be staying in these communities and building them up and making them interesting places tend to get away now because they can't stand the culture of a small town. But that can be changed. **21:13** · And the small face-to-face community where you don't delegate control to police or so on is much better for everyone than a city where you were all strangers to each other really. And I I feel it's a great chance to build up the small community again not necessarily along the lines of a wald and two but still by using behavioral engineering to work out ways in which a life in such a community could be more satisfying. **21:42** · Is it possible to change the ideas or the ambitions of pe people have learned by the time they've reached adulthood enough to change their goals to well unfortunately it's very difficult to do that because you have so little time compared with the lifetime the therapist **22:01** · he sees I supposing he sees a patient one hour a day for a week that's a very small fraction even of the of the patient's current life let alone what has happened in the past and not too much can be done in there perhaps but um something can be done and in general conditions can be changed in such a way that these problems won't arise. I prefer preventive medicine and preventive behavioral therapy to behavioral therapy of a curative sort. I think we can make an environment that does not produce these violent aggressions and so on. **22:33** · Schools to some extent create the very problems they suffer from when you use punitive techniques. You know, there's a great temptation. Let's go back and use the paddle again. And so on that just and just teaches students to be to escape if they can, to play truent, to drop out, to attack teachers or to vandalize schools, to become inactive, bored. **22:59** · These are all the products of the very techniques the school uses. Now, if you want to solve those problems, change the practices in the school. **23:07** · What would you tell a young couple just beginning to raise a family? Well, I would want them to get to learn as much as they possibly could about human behavior and what is important to the child. I think one of the things that interests me most about an experimental community would be the marvelous things one could do to give young youngsters a chance to develop in in new ways, more productive ways. um the average **23:34** · apartment house with a husband and wife and two or three children this small space that's almost an impossible situation. It's very hard to to do very much with that. It's it's not as it should be. There should be more cooperative work between families. **23:50** · Children should be associating with other children more than they do and so on. **23:58** · You've talked about the importance of well of a culture as um a goal of human beings. Yes. Well, I mean by culture simply the social environment of a group and that environment permits the individual to be much more successful than he could ever be without an environment of that kind. **24:21** · left alone in a natural world, the the human individual would not wouldn't be a Robinson Crusoe even because Robinson Crusoe brought with him the culture he'd picked up from a group. You would probably only become like these wild boys that had been raised in the wild, you know, by animals. You wouldn't be human to any ordinary extent at all. And the social environment is the important thing. And different environments do different things. Some of them emerge uh and produce very effective people. **24:50** · Some of them suppress the very best in people. So there's a kind of rivalry between cultures, between environments. **25:00** · And presumably the the environment which enables the individual to maximize himself to do as much as he can is the environment that will survive and with it will survive the practices which make for a better individual. So, we have to look to the gradual evolution of better and better social environments. I'd like to hear your reactions to Dr. Skinner's ideas. **25:26** · The only thing, Barb, that I'm concerned about is maybe you can answer this for me. At what point does positive reinforcement stop? Okay, a child has been naughty. Okay, you reinforce that child, reinforce that child to curb his behavior, right? And at what point do you spank him or either punish him? I think Dr. Skinner would say you don't. **25:52** · You use positive reinforcement. To positively reinforce, you have to have something that you really want to reinforce. You have to find something about that child's behavior that you really do value and that you can capitalize on to help that child move more and more in that direction. Seems a little bit hard to believe we could ever get away without punishment. If my child's running into the street, am I going to think about ah can I stop? How do I stop him? I'm not going to be nice about it. **26:23** · But Dr. Skinner would talk about the idea of extinguishing behavior instead of punishing it. just ignoring it, making very sure that we don't reinforce things that we don't want in that child. **26:37** · Well, you know, I could see that in the in in a case like that with a child, you can sort, I guess, determine what's good and what's bad. I mean, in kid running into the street, that's obviously bad, but I mean, sort of there's a bigger question. **26:51** · I mean, isn't there? I mean, ultimately, when you talk about all these things about control and all that sort of thing, I mean, who controls the controller? I mean, who decides, you know, what's good behavior and what's bad behavior aside from the obvious like, you know, things that would hurt you? But I mean, terms of morality or ethics or what or that sort of thing. I mean, how do you condition that? Who decides what's good? It's a scary idea that comes out of this whole idea that our behavior isn't determined by our environment. Maybe there's no complete answer to that. **27:21** · But I think we can say that in a dictatorship where they used really aversive control, where they'd used heavy-handed punishments, you have the same question. True. But I mean, doesn't this sort of lead to that kind of uh I think we come down to the question, is it a fact that our environment does control us? If it does, then we really have to think about that. How do we want these controls exercised? Can we do it humanely? We have to face it. **27:52** · It's a scary question. Who's we? Us. All of us. **27:59** · Can we avoid the question? If the if the it is a fact that we are controlled by our environment, can we avoid facing that question? **28:08** · \[Music\] **28:46** · \[Music\] B. F. Skinner discusses behavior modification, behavioral technology, and the uses of positive reinforcement in shaping human behavior.