Science And Human Behavior

Rating:
Summary: The truth shall set you beyond free
Review: 1/3 of this book covers basic conditioning as seen in all animals, including humans. Much of this was established experimentally with rats and pigeons but the discussion here is in terms of humans. There are no diagrams or pictures in this section, which can get rather dry.

The remaining 2/3 of the book covers topics associated more with humans such as thinking, private events, the self, institutions and culture. Skinner refers to institutions such as the government, religions, psychotherapy, economic groups and education as "controlling agencies". His scientific approach of these agencies overlaps the artistic rendering of addictive systems by the very different William Burroughs in "Naked Lunch", but between the two of them one can get a good sense of how one's actions are conditioned.

For millenia, for lack of scientific application, speculative systems have been dominate. The Greeks were masters of such systemization, which culminated in "The Enneads" by Plotinus, an amazingly unified and satisfying work consisting almost exclusively of explanatory fictions. Such comfort systems seem to have a strong hold on people. Much of modern psychology is not an advance on "The Enneads". Look at how much of cognitive psychology is speculative, lacking in any experimental confirmation.

There is a great opportunity here for you. At this time, half a century after this book's publication, behaviorism is not well supported. To be sure, there are practicing behaviorists and some excellent progress in the application of behavioral analysis. But behaviorism seems to be heavily resisted, as Skinner himself recognized. This book has excited me. Read it and if it indeed excites you, even as a layperson, see what you can do to apply it and to educate others about it. The opportunity is that there is still a lot to learn about how to apply it in our everyday life. This stuff is too important not to embrace...well, see what you think.

Rating:
Summary: The weaknesses of behaviorism are apparent here
Review: BF's Skinner's early work in operant conditioning through laboratory research on animals is generally regarded as a lasting and significant contribution to science and psychology. However, Skinner's works on human behavior, including this one, attempt to generalize to all human behavior the model he developed and used to predict and control animal behavior under highly controlled conditions.

In Science and Human Behavior, Skinner repeatedly offers, as the reason for a given behavior's occurrence, the explanation that it is "reinforced," and advocates that we abandon the traditional discourse used to explain human behavior through reference to intention, desire, will, thoughts, and feelings. Instead, Skinner argues that a science of behavior can improve upon such explanations by using the jargon of operant conditioning theory.

In operant conditioning theory, "reinforcement" is the process whereby a behavior is strengthened by the process of associating it with a consequence, and Skinner shows little regard for the precise technical meaning of this word when he makes many uses of this term and its derivations (reinforce, reinforcer, reinforcing). For example, he writes the following: "Education is a profession, the members of which engage in education primarily because of economic reinforcement." It is hard to see what this assertion means, as the behavioral antecedents to "economic reinforcement" that constitute the "profession" of "education" remain undefined. Furthermore, such an assertion is comically out of touch with the reality that many teachers, who could make much more money in other professions, might object to having their primary motive for teaching characterized this way. Perhaps what is meant here is that "economic reinforcement" (money) strengthens the "behavior" of teaching more efficiently than any other reinforcer, in which case it seems that Skinner is applying a truism-that people work when they get paid for it, and stop working when they don't. Whatever the case, such statements as this one, which litter this book, seem remarkably short of any scientific authority or interest.

One might argue that since virtually all of the haphazardly placed illustrative applications of his jargon to actual human behavior are as brief and platitudinous as the one mentioned, they shouldn't be taken literally, but seen as rhetorical devices in service of explaining his conceptual model. But some might wish that Skinner took seriously the burden of demonstrating that what he asserts is both verified by the scientific method, and a non-trivial improvement on what is already known. In absence of either, this book is mostly an amusing glimpse at an outdated approach to psychology that simply has not delivered on its promise to find mechanisms for the effective control of human behavior, unless you count its contribution to the management of prisons, mental hospitals, and other highly controlled environments that approximate the inhumane conditions under which Skinner's lab rats lived.

Therefore, if you are interested, like me, in understanding the roots of Skinner's influence and an introduction to how he applies his basic concepts to human behavior, this book is a very profitable read. If you are looking for a work of actual scientific merit, this book has little to recommend.

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Summary: Critics ignorant of pragmatic value
Review: Harsh criticism of Skinner has typically come from arm chair philosophers more concerned with sounding progressive than with helping or understanding people. Science and Human Behavior has contributed and continues to contribute to valuable application and research in Psychology. A standing challenge to any critic would be to find a book that can match Science and Human Behavior's contributions to the application of science for the welfare of humanity.