BOOKS
RATS, MEN, AND HISTORY
ABOUT BEHAVIOR ISM. By
B. F.
Skinner. Alfred A. Knopf.
$6.96.
For well over a generation-from around 1930 to the
mid-1960s-psychological research and teaching in America were dominated
by Behaviorism. Its dogmatic dicta, promulgated by such academic high
priests as John B. Watson, Clark
L.
Hull and B. F. Skinner, and enforced by
an informal sanhedrin of department heads and senior professors, deter–
mined what psychologists were allowed to study and how they could study it at
dozens of American colleges and universities.
Today the Behaviorist establishment, though it still controls important
intellectual power centers such as the American Psychological Association, has
increasingly been forced on the defensive; the present volume is a case in
point. In it, Skinner, the leading spokesman for the school, seeks to reply to
his many critics in and out of the profession. His book will in fact supply them
with more ammunition. In its disregard for scientific method and even simple
logic, its presentation of platitude and tautology as meaningful scientific
statement, and in its extraordinary-perhaps willful-ignorance of basic facts
about both human nature and science, it typifies Behaviorism at its worst. The
book's publication, moreover, raises some important questions of public policy
which I shall discuss later.
As most people know, Skinner has reduced psychology, animal and
human alike, to the study of "reinforcement." His fundamental rule is that
the actions an animal performs depend entirely on whether those actions, or
similar ones, have in the past been followed by particular kinds of conse–
quences, either "positive" or "negative" ("aversive"). If positive, the action is
more likely to recur; if negative, less likely. This is the central dogma of
Skinnerian Behaviorism, and it is (a) tautologous and (b) untrue.
The tautology is most easily perceived by enquiring
why
some conse–
quences are positive and others, negative. Most of us would say, because the
