B. F. Skinner Quotes

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.

Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.

Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education.

We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.

Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.

Behavior is determined by its consequences.

Reinforcement is being right.

Habits are the daughters of action, but then they nurse their mother, and produce daughters after her image, but far more beautiful and prosperous.

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.

To acquire behavior, the student must engage in behavior

What motivates most people to change their behavior is consequences. No consequences? No behavior modification.

That's all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.

The power of habit is very strong.

I think the negative reinforcement really helped me in my very beginnings.

Animals... don't have a sense of time. You just have to do things over and over with animals until they happen to do it right because they don't really know what you want.

As an undergraduate at Harvard in the 1960s, I was fascinated by my visits to psychologist B.F. Skinner's laboratory.

Two things rule the world -- reward and punishment.

Of course, Behaviorism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling from others.

I'm always amazed that people are shocked when their despicable action causes an equally despicable reaction.

A child might be made to bow every time he met a certain person by pressure on his neck muscles, and bowing would finally become automatic. It would not, however, be an act of recognition or deference on his part, till he did it with a certain end in view - as having a certain meaning.

You do the best you can and you deal with the consequences. It's all there is.

I can train a monkey to wave an American flag. That does not make the monkey patriotic.

To rescue people from the natural consequences of their behavior is to render them powerless.