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On Growth (1974)

On Growth

(1974)–Willem Oltmans–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

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7. B.F. Skinner

Professor B.F. Skinner was born in 1904 at Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. He went to Hamilton College and began to study psychology at Harvard University in 1928.
After various research and teaching posts Skinner returned to Harvard in 1947 and was named Edgar Pierce Professor in Psychology in 1950. He is now ranked among the most influential psychologists of our time. His latest work, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, has stirred a major controversy in the academic world.1
Professor Skinner's novel Walden Two is for the first time since its appearance in 1948 on the bestseller list. Other published works: The Behavior of Organisms (1938), Science and Human Behavior (1953), Verbal Behavior (1957), Schedules of Reinforcement (1957), and Technology of Teaching (1968).
Professor Skinner was the sole person out of seventy interviewees who did not understand the author's intention to publish the conversation in its original form. He refused permission to print the verbatim text. After negotiations he did allow, however, the senior editor of the magazine Psychology Today, Kenneth Goodall, to rewrite the text in its present form. In addition, the author invited Mr. Goodall for a brief interview on the basis of his own research and first comprehensive survey of applied behavior analysis and application of Skinnerian psychology. Goodall is preparing a book on this subject to appear
in 1974. Also see Goodall's article, ‘Shapers at Work,’ Psychology Today, November, 1972.

B.F. Skinner, the Harvard psychology professor whose experiments with rats and pigeons opened new territory in behavioral science, has become increasingly concerned in recent years with the human condition and the problem of human survival. First in his utopian novel Walden Two (1948) and later in Science and Human Behavior (1953), he wrote of the need to redesign cultures so that human beings might live more rewarding lives. By 1971, when he published Beyond Freedom and Dignity, he saw the redesign of cultures as an imperative for survival. It was with this book that Skinner gained a wide audience. Most of the things he said in this book he had said before; but this time a growing number of people, alarmed by the triple threat of pollution, overpopulation and war, were ready to listen.

The burden of Beyond Freedom and Dignity was that man, in order to survive, must develop an elaborate behavioral technology based on the principles of operant psychology that Skinner himself had outlined in his first book, The Behavior of Organisms. This technology, now in the early stages of development, would allow man to control his own behavior much more precisely than he has been able to do. As Skinner sees it, two main barriers, both of which are remnants of eighteenth-century rationalist philosophy, stand in the way of a behavioral utopia: man's futile desire for freedom from control and his blind faith in human dignity. Man can never be free, Skinner says, for the operant psychologist's scientific analysis of man's behavior has shown that all his acts are controlled almost exclusively by his physical and social environment. Dignity, too, is an illusion, since man can take no credit for his own behavior.

Skinner's book outraged many readers, and no wonder. His pronouncements, like those of Darwin2 and Freud,3 represent a view of man that is radically different from man's traditional self-image - and much less flattering. Darwin told us that we are descended from apes; Freud, that we are ruled by animal passions; now Skinner would have us believe that we are no more in control of our lives than are the rats in a Skinner box.

While this view might lead lesser men to despair, for Skinner it ‘offers exciting possibilities,’ as he wrote in Beyond Freedom and Dignity. ‘It

is hard to imagine a world in which people live together without quarreling, maintain themselves by producing the food, shelter and clothing they need, enjoy themselves and contribute to the enjoyment of others in art, music, literature, and games, consume only a reasonable part of the resources of the world and add as little as possible to its pollution, bear no more children than can be raised decently, continue to explore the world around them and discover better ways of dealing with it, and come to know themselves accurately and, therefore, manage themselves effectively,’ he stated. ‘Yet all this is possible’ - through the science and technology of behaviorism.

A year after the publication of Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner discussed his ideas in an interview with the author of this book, Willem L. Oltmans. The psychologist, asked to define his concept of freedom, told Oltmans that the historical struggle for freedom has been a struggle to free oneself from punishment or aversive treatment at the hands of rulers, employers and others in positions of control. The struggle to a great extent has been successful. As a result, we are less subject to the more obvious forms of aversive control; we have greater opportunity to do the things we want to do, and when we do these things we say that we feel free. But it is a mistake to suppose that we are free. ‘We are just as much controlled when we do what we want to do as when we do what we have to do,’ Skinner said. ‘I am simply insisting that we examine the reasons why we do not resist the kinds of control which do not make us feel unfree.’

Although scientific investigation shows that almost all our actions are products of our environmental histories, the relationship is difficult to understand, Skinner said. ‘We all believe that we initiate our own behavior. I don't think that is true. I think we behave in the first place because of our genetic endowment and secondly because of what has happened to us as people during our lives. Now that means, of course, that these conditions can be changed, and we can change them.’ The world as a whole must be redesigned, he said, to induce people to behave in ways that ensure a future for the human race. ‘If we do not change the environment and hence change human behavior, then we will have no future.’

Skinner intimated to Oltmans that his book was intended to frighten men and nations into taking action. ‘A scare technique, a Cassandra-type of prediction’ is necessary, he said. ‘We have to frighten people into doing something. I don't like to do it that way. I wish we could offer a picture of a beautiful future for which man would naturally work for

pleasure. But I'm afraid it has to be the other way around, and we have to make perfectly clear the horrible future that men will work to avoid.’

For Skinner, ‘survival is the only value.’ It no longer is a question of whether any one culture is going to survive, he said. ‘We must take mankind as a whole into account.’ But survival is a difficult value that ‘can only function if you understand the conditions which must be met in order to survive and then somehow make sure that human behavior will have the properties it needs in order to meet those conditions.’

The Club of Rome's model of the planet's future is a very important step, Skinner said. ‘Any clarification of the future is a step in the direction of dealing with it properly.’ Skinner said that his only objection - certainly a crucial one for him - is that the model ‘tends to concentrate on physical and biological technology and not on the behavioral technology that will be needed.’ The model has not taken into account the role of the environment in the determination of human behavior. As Skinner pointed out, ‘We know how to solve the problem of population through birth-control methods. But there is one step further: how to get people to use them; how to get people to give up the pride they take in a large family; how to avoid being laughed at because you have only two or three children. These are behavioral problems, and they are not going to be solved by any number of methods of contraception.’

Rising expectations and overpopulation are severe threats, Skinner said. ‘There's no question that the world cannot support its total population at a level of affluence similar to that which now prevails in a few countries. Can you imagine, say by the year 2000, a billion Chinese driving sports cars over millions of miles of superhighways? Unless there is some miraculous discovery in new sources of energy, that simply is not possible.’ But if a few countries remain so much more affluent than others, there will always be a war because ‘if people do not have what they need they will want to take it away from others who have.’ To avoid that kind of world, ‘the affluent countries must simplify their lives; the very basic process of human behavior that has led to affluence must somehow be deliberately reversed.’ To do that, he said, will require ‘a great deal of very careful behavioral engineering, because it is not natural for man to give up the things that please him most.’

Oltmans asked Skinner who would have the power to redesign a culture in this way - a benevolent dictator? Skinner replied that the change must not be dictated but must come in the culture itself. ‘A culture must somehow redesign itself so that no one can emerge in a position of power such as the phrase “benevolent dictator” suggests,’ he said. ‘We must

have a culture in which those who have control - power, money, weapons and so on - can act only in certain limited ways.’

But who should take the lead, Oltmans asked - the behavioral psychologist? ‘All the behaviorist could do would be to make recommendations,’ Skinner said, just as a structural engineer gives advice on how to build bridges but not where to build them or how many to build. The behaviorist ‘can recommend methods, but he himself is not going to make the decisions. No engineer has the power to induce people to behave in this way or that way. He will tell those who have the power what to do to make sure the desired product comes about.’

Skinner assured Oltmans that it would be possible at this juncture to put the behavioral variable into the Club of Rome model. The technology is developing rapidly, he said. ‘We are learning a great deal now about the relations between behavior and the environment, and we are designing better techniques in such fields as psychotherapy, education, industry and so on. We are making great progress in education today; we're teaching children who have been branded unteachable by creating better environments for them.’

In the search for limits to growth the behavioral factor is of paramount importance, Skinner said, because ‘in one way or another the very characteristics of human behavior, which have brought us where we are today, are causing the trouble we are facing.’ As a matter of fact, Skinner said, ‘the only possible limit to growth which we have to look forward to would be that which comes about from our scientific analysis of human behavior and the policy-making which takes that analysis into account.’

Interview with Kenneth Goodall

You are completing the first full-scale study of the development and application of behavioral technology based on the principles of Skinnerian psychology. How advanced is this technology?

 

In some areas, such as the teaching of children, it is quite advanced, especially when you take into account the fact that its development has been almost haphazard, with none of the official and sustained support of the kind that put a man on the moon.

How and where has the development taken place?

 

B.F. Skinner started it all, both through his direct influence on two or three of his graduate students at Harvard and indirectly through a few other young researchers who were impressed by the principles he outlined in The Behavior of Organisms in 1938. For animal experimenters it would have been a natural step to proceed from the analysis of the behaviors of rats and pigeons to the more complex behaviors of the human animal. But it took nearly twenty years after Skinner published his book for the experimenters to take that big step. Skinner blames the delay on outworn notions about man's inherent freedom and dignity, and I tend to agree with him. It is a fine and noble sentiment to argue for the dignity of prisoners, say, but the term ‘dignity’ is not functional. What is dignity for me may not be dignity for you.

 

But who is to define ‘dignity’ for you, or for me?

 

The behavioral technicians are finding ways to spell out the meaning for each of us in behavioral terms. They could list eight or ten major items that constitute ‘freedom’ and ‘dignity’ for me, and they could measure the frequency with which these items occur. Sleeping late might be an important element of my freedom, for instance; in prison this freedom might well be taken away from me every morning. The difference between the number of mornings I sleep late in prison and the number of mornings I sleep late out of prison would be a behavioral measure of the extent to which I had lost this one freedom. Of course, the technicians' definition of my freedom is limited to the specific behaviors that make me feel free. Unlike prison wardens or even do-good liberals, they have to consult me before they can define my freedom. To answer your question, the behaviorists can put individual freedom into behavioral terms; they can measure it and manipulate it; but they can't define it - only the individual can do that, through his own actions. And the definition may change from day to day, even from minute to minute.

 

Who are some of the outstanding technicians, and where have they made their greatest accomplishments?

 

Most of the accomplishments have been the result of team efforts. In fact, Skinner's doctrine - that a person's achievements are almost entirely a product of his physical and social environment and that therefore the individual deserves little or none of the credit - emphasizes the necessity

of team work and pretty well kills the great-man theory of scientific development. The applied-behavior analysts - the behavioral technicians - apparently accept this doctrine in their own lives. They tend to cluster in groups at major centers of activity, each working on specific problems but all interacting. In addition to Harvard, clusters have formed at Southern Illinois University, the University of Washington in Seattle, the University of Kansas and a few other places.

The Kansas group - Donald Baer, B.L. Hopkins, Barbara Etzel, James Sherman, Vance Hall, Todd Risley, Montrose Wolf, Don Bushell - has been incredibly productive in the last seven years. Their work has centered on the learning problems of children, both normal and disturbed; but they have worked with adults as well. Learning problems, of course, include social interactions as well as academic achievement, even such seemingly elementary tasks as learning to tie one's shoes. For a three-year-old it isn't elementary, but the Kansas group has found a way to get three-year-olds to learn this task in less than an hour's time and virtually without any errors. They have helped reshape the lives of slow learners in ghetto schools, retarded and autistic and brain-damaged children, potential criminals, persons with speech impairments, and all kinds of institutionalized persons. They have also worked with the parents and families of these persons to ensure that the gains they have made will continue.

 

Will this kind of therapeutic work likely be the behavioral technicians' main contribution to human welfare?

 

It is probably too early to tell, but I'm inclined to believe that their major contribution will be in establishing the basis for a new social contract. The United States Constitution guarantees certain rights, and our various laws have established some more or less mutually agreed on limits to these rights. But until now we have had no way to define and measure precisely the extent to which each individual either has or does not have them. Behavioral technology gives us a way to do this. It is also developing an instrument to guarantee an equitable distribution - the behavioral contract. If behavioral contracting were instituted on a large scale, prisoners, for instance, would sign contracts with the warden and the state spelling out in precise terms the elements of their dignity, the limits of their freedom and, perhaps most important, the exact behaviors that will gain for them an exit from behind bars. Their release would not depend on the whims of a parole board but on the fulfillment of the terms of a contract which they have helped write. In the same way,

we could have behavioral contracts with our employers and even with our elected officials. A president who was elected on an end-the-war platform would be under contract to end the war; if he didn't, he would go on probation and might eventually be removed from office through a process that would have been spelled out in advance. Perhaps the last example is a bit far out, but obviously something must be done to make our elected officials responsible to the people who elected them.

 

You are saying, in effect, that behavioral technology has within it the makings of a political revolution, a social revolution.

 

Exactly. And that is one good reason why I believe it is important for the Club of Rome to follow Skinner's advice about putting the behavioral dimension into the model of the planet's future.


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