Theories of Personality: Skinner

1. Learning Theories
B. F. Skinner: Radical
Behaviorism
Dan Andrei Navarro Bagao RPm
May
2019

2. B. F.
Skinner
Argued that most behavior is learned through
operant conditioning, wherein the organism must
make the correct response to be reinforced (receive
a reward or avoid punishment). A response
operates on the environment to produce
consequences that either strengthen or weaken that
behavior. If the response is reinforced, it is more
likely to occur again; if it is not reinforced, it is less
likely to recur. All of our behavior is determined by
prior causes and by our environment; we have no
free will.

3. B. F.
Skinner
Therefore, the only way to change (and improve)
our behavior is to design the environment
appropriately, so that it will reinforce desired
responses and not reinforce undesired responses.
How reinforcement is administered (schedules of
reinforcement) strongly influences learning and
behavior. Even the most complicated behaviors
consist of sequences of specific responses that
have been learned through operant conditioning.
Psychotherapy should be based on behaviorist
principles, rather than seeking to change
unobservable and abstract inner processes.

4. Overview
• Behaviorism seeks to make psychology more scientific by studying
only what can be observed. It therefore redefines psychology as the
study of overt behavior. Behaviorism eliminates from consideration
virtually all of what personality theorists consider to be important:
inner causes of behavior, wishes, needs, thoughts, emotions,
memories, beliefs, expectations, preferences, self-perceptions,
unconscious processes, intrapsychic conflicts, dreams. Thus
behaviorism is not another approach to personality theory, but
rather an alternative to personality theory.

5. Overview
• Skinner minimized speculation and focused almost entirely
on observable behavior. However, he did not claim that
observable behavior is limited to external events. Such
private behaviors as thinking, remembering, and
anticipating are all observable—by the person experiencing
them. Skinner’s strict adherence to observable behavior
earned his approach the label radical behaviorism, a
doctrine that avoids all hypothetical constructs, such as ego,
traits, drives, needs, hunger, and so forth.

6. Overview
• In addition to being a radical behaviorist, Skinner can rightfully be
regarded as a determinist and an environmentalist. As a determinist, he
rejected the notion of volition or free will. Human behavior does not
stem from an act of the will, but like any observable phenomenon, it is
lawfully determined and can be studied scientifically.
• As an environmentalist, Skinner held that psychology must not explain
behavior on the basis of the physiological or constitutional components
of the organism but rather on the basis of environmental stimuli. He
recognized that genetic factors are important, but he insisted that,
because they are fixed at conception, they are of no help in the control of
behavior.
• The history of the individual, rather than anatomy, provides the most
useful data for predicting and controlling behavior.

7. Objectives
• To make psychology more scientific by studying only observable behaviors and external
operations performed on the organism, and eliminating from consideration all inner causes and
unobservable behaviors.
• To emphasize the importance of operant conditioning, wherein the organism must make the
correct response to be reinforced (receive a reward or avoid punishment).
• To show that we have no free will: all of our behavior is determined by conditioning, mostly
operant conditioning.
• To show that learning and behavior are strongly influenced by the ways in which reinforcement
is administered, and to define and explain such schedules of reinforcement.
• To explain concepts used by personality theorists, including psychoanalytic theory and trait
theory, in behaviorist terms.
• To replace psychotherapy that seeks to change abstract and unobservable inner processes with
procedures based on behaviorist principles.
• To apply behaviorist principles and procedures to such areas as education and work.
• To improve our society and the world by creating the correct contingencies of reinforcement.

8. Scientific Behaviorism
• Why postulate a hypothetical internal mental function?
• People do not eat because they are hungry. Hunger is an
inner condition not directly observable. If psychologists
wish to increase the probability that a person will eat,
then they must first observe the variables related to
eating. If deprivation of food in- creases the likelihood of
eating, then they can deprive a person of food in order to
better predict and control subsequent eating behavior.
Both deprivation and eating are physical events that are
clearly observable and therefore within the province of
science.

9. Scientific Behaviorism
• Why postulate a hypothetical internal mental function?
• Scientists who say that people eat because they are
hungry are assuming an unnecessary and unobservable
mental condition between the physical fact of deprivation
and the physical fact of eating. This assumption clouds
the issue and relegates much of psychology to that realm
of philosophy known as cosmology, or the concern with
causation. To be scientific, Skinner (1953, 1987a) insisted,
psychology must avoid internal mental factors and
confine itself to observable physical events.

10. Philosophy of Science
• Scientific behaviorism allows for an interpretation of
behavior but not an explanation of its causes.
Interpretation permits a scientist to generalize from a
simple learning condition to a more complex one. Any
science, including that of human behavior, begins with the
simple and eventually evolves generalized principles that
permit an interpretation of the more complex. Skinner
(1978) used principles derived from laboratory studies to
interpret the behavior of human beings but insisted that
interpretation should not be confused with an explanation
of why people behave the way they do.

11. Characteristics of Science
•According to Skinner (1953), science has three main
characteristics:
•First, science is cumulative;
•second, it is an attitude that values empirical
observation; and
•third, science is a search for order and lawful
relationships.

12. Characteristics of Science
•Science, in contrast to art, philosophy, and
literature, advances in a cumulative manner.
However, cumulative knowledge is not to be
confused with technological progress. Science is
unique not because of technology but rather
because of its attitude.

13. Characteristics of Science
• The second and most critical characteristic of science is an attitude that places value on
empirical observation above all else. In Skinner’s (1953) words: “It is a disposition to
deal with facts rather than with what someone has said about them” (p. 12). In
particular, there are three components to the scientific attitude:
• First, it rejects authority—even its own authority. It must stand the test of empirical
observation.
• Second, science demands intellectual honesty, and it requires scientists to accept facts
even when these facts are opposed to their wishes and desires. “Where right and wrong
are not so easily or so quickly established, there is no similar pressure” (Skinner, 1953, p.
13):
• Finally, science suspends judgment until clear trends emerge. Nothing is more
damaging to a scientist’s reputation than to rush into print findings that are
insufficiently verified and tested. If a scientist’s report of findings does not hold up to
replication, then that scientist appears foolish at best and dishonest at worst. A healthy
skepticism and willingness to suspend judgment are therefore essential to being a
scientist.

14. Characteristics of Science
• A third characteristic of science is a search for order and
lawful relationships. All science begins with observation of
single events and then attempts to infer general principles
and laws from those events. In short, the scientific method
consists of prediction, control, and description. A scientist
makes observations guided by theoretical assumptions,
develops hypotheses (makes predictions), tests these
hypotheses through controlled experimentation, describes
honestly and accurately the results, and finally modifies
the theory to match the actual empirical results.

15. Characteristics of Science
• Skinner (1953) believed that prediction, control, and
description are possible in scientific behaviorism because
behavior is both determined and lawful. Human behavior,
like that of physical and biological entities, is neither
whimsical nor the outcome of free will. It is determined by
certain identifiable variables and follows definite lawful
principles, which potentially can be known. Behavior that
appears to be capricious or individually determined is
simply beyond scientists’ present capacity to predict or
control. But, hypothetically, the conditions under which it
occurs can be discovered, thus permitting both prediction
and control as well as description.

16. Conditioning
• Skinner (1953) recognized two kinds of conditioning, classical and
operant. With classical conditioning (which Skinner called respondent
conditioning), a response is drawn out of the organism by a specific,
identifiable stimulus. With operant conditioning (also called Skinnerian
conditioning), a behavior is made more likely to recur when it is
immediately reinforced.
• One distinction between classical and operant conditioning is that, in
classical conditioning, behavior is elicited from the organism, whereas in
operant conditioning behavior is emitted. An elicited response is drawn
from the organism, whereas an emitted response is one that simply
appears. Because responses do not exist inside the organism and thus
cannot be drawn out, Skinner preferred the term “emitted.” Emitted
responses do not previously exist inside the organism; they simply
appear because of the organism’s individual history of reinforcement or
the species’ evolutionary history.

17. Ivan
Pavlov
First demonstrated the
simple form of learning
called classical conditioning
in his famous experiment
with dogs, food, a tone, and
salivation. In classical
conditioning, the organism
learns that one stimulus will
be followed by another
stimulus because the two
stimuli repeatedly occur
closely together in time.

21. John
B.Watson
Also an advocate of classical
conditioning, he
demonstrated that fear to a
previously neutral stimulus
can easily be conditioned in
his famous experiment with
“little Albert.”

35. Operant Conditioning
• Although classical conditioning is responsible for some human
learning, Skinner believed that most human behaviors are learned
through operant conditioning. The key to operant conditioning is
the immediate reinforcement of a response. The organism first does
something and then is reinforced by the environment.
Reinforcement, in turn, increases the probability that the same
behavior will occur again. This conditioning is called operant
conditioning because the organism operates on the environment to
produce a specific effect. Operant conditioning changes the
frequency of a response or the probability that a response will
occur. The reinforcement does not cause the behavior, but it
increases the likelihood that it will be repeated.

43. Reinforcement
• According to Skinner (1987a), reinforcement has two effects: It
strengthens the behavior and it rewards the person. Reinforcement and
reward, therefore, are not synonymous. Not every behavior that is
reinforced is rewarding or pleasing to the person. Reinforcers exist in the
environment and are not something felt by the person. Any behavior that
increases the probability that the species or the individual will survive
tends to be strengthened. Food, sex, and parental care are necessary for
the survival of the species, and any behavior that produces these
conditions is reinforced. Injury, disease, and extremes in climate are
detrimental to survival, and any behavior that tends to reduce or avoid
these conditions is likewise reinforced. Reinforcement, therefore, can be
divided into that which produces a beneficial environmental condition
and that which reduces or avoids a detrimental one. The first is called
positive reinforcement; the second is negative reinforcement.

52. The Human Organism
• Skinner’s (1974, 1987a) view was that an understanding of the behavior of
laboratory animals can generalize to human behavior, just as physics can be
used to interpret what is observed in outer space and just as an understanding
of basic genetics can help in interpreting complex evolutionary concepts.
• Skinner (1953, 1990a) agreed with John Watson (1913) that psychology must be
confined to a scientific study of observable phenomena, namely behavior.
Science must begin with the simple and move to the more complex. Skinner
(1974, 1987a), therefore, made no apology for beginning with the study of
animals.
• According to Skinner (1987a), human behavior (and human personality) is
shaped by three forces:
• (1) natural selection,
• (2) cultural practices, and
• (3) the individual’s history of reinforcement, which we have just discussed.
Ultimately, however, “it is all a matter of natural selection, since operant
conditioning is an evolved process, of which cultural practices are special
applications” (p. 55).

53. Natural Selection
•Human personality is the product of a long
evolutionary history. As individuals, our behavior is
determined by genetic composition and especially by
our personal histories of reinforcement. As a species,
however, we are shaped by the contingencies of
survival. Natural selection plays an important part in
human personality (Skinner, 1974, 1987a, 1990a).

58. Natural Selection
• Although natural selection helped shape some human behavior, it is
probably responsible for only a small number of people’s actions.
Skinner (1989a) claimed that the contingencies of reinforcement,
especially those that have shaped human culture, account for most
of human behavior.
• We can trace a small part of human behavior . . . to natural selection
and the evolution of the species, but the greater part of human
behavior must be traced to contingencies of reinforcement, especially
to the very complex social contingencies we call cultures. Only when
we take those histories into account can we explain why people
behave as they do. (p. 18)

59. Cultural Evolution
• In his later years, Skinner (1987a, 1989a) elaborated more fully on the
importance of culture in shaping human personality. Selection is
responsible for those cultural practices that have survived, just as
selection plays a key role in humans’ evolutionary history and also
with the contingencies of reinforcement. “People do not observe
particular practices in order that the group will be more likely to
survive; they observe them because groups that induced their
members to do so survived and transmitted them” (Skinner, 1987a,
p. 57). In other words, humans do not make a cooperative decision to
do what is best for the society, but those societies whose members
behaved cooperatively tended to survive.

61. Inner States
• Although he rejected explanations of behavior founded on non-
observable hypothetical constructs, Skinner (1989b) did not deny the
existence of internal states, such as feelings of love, anxiety, or fear.
Internal states can be studied just as any other behavior, but their
observation is, of course, limited. In a personal communication of
June 13, 1983, Skinner wrote, “I believe it is possible to talk about
private events and, in particular, to establish the limits with which
we do so accurately. I think this brings so-called ‘non-observables’
within reach.” What, then, is the role of such inner states as self-
awareness, drives, emotions, and purpose?

62. Self-Awareness
• Skinner (1974) believed that humans not only have
consciousness but are also aware of their consciousness; they
are not only aware of their environment but are also aware of
themselves as part of their environment; they not only observe
external stimuli but are also aware of themselves observing that
stimuli.
• Behavior is a function of the environment, and part of that
environment is within one’s skin. This portion of the universe is
peculiarly one’s own and is therefore private. Each person is
subjectively aware of his or her own thoughts, feelings,
recollections, and intentions.

63. Drives
• From the viewpoint of radical behaviorism, drives are not causes of
behavior, but merely explanatory fictions. To Skinner (1953), drives
simply refer to the effects of deprivation and satiation and to the
corresponding probability that the organism will respond. To deprive a
person of food increases the likelihood of eating; to satiate a person
decreases that likelihood. However, deprivation and satiation are not the
only correlates of eating. Other factors that increase or decrease the
probability of eating are internally observed hunger pangs, availability of
food, and previous experiences with food reinforcers.
• If psychologists knew enough about the three essentials of behavior
(antecedent, behavior, and consequences), then they would know why a
person behaves, that is, what drives are related to specific behaviors.
Only then would drives have a legitimate role in the scientific study of
human behavior. For the present, however, explanations based on
fictionalized constructs such as drives or needs are merely untestable
hypotheses.

64. Emotions
• Skinner (1974) recognized the subjective existence of emotions, of
course, but he insisted that behavior must not be attributed to them.
He accounted for emotions by the contingencies of survival and the
contingencies of reinforcement. Throughout the millennia,
individuals who were most strongly disposed toward fear or anger
were those who escaped from or triumphed over danger and thus
were able to pass on those characteristics to their offspring. On an
individual level, behaviors followed by delight, joy, pleasure, and
other pleasant emotions tend to be reinforced, thereby increasing the
probability that these behaviors would recur in the life of that
individual.

65. Purpose and Intention
• Skinner (1974) also recognized the concepts of purpose and intention, but
again, he cautioned against attributing behavior to them. Purpose and
intention exist within the skin, but they are not subject to direct outside
scrutiny. A felt, ongoing purpose may itself be reinforcing. For example, if
you believe that your purpose for jogging is to feel better and live longer,
then this thought per se acts as a reinforcing stimulus, especially while
undergoing the drudgery of jogging or when trying to explain your
motivation to a nonrunner.
• A person may “intend” to see a movie Friday evening because viewing
similar films has been reinforcing. At the time the person intends to go to
the movie, she feels a physical condition within the body and labels it an
“intention.” What are called intentions or purposes, therefore, are
physically felt stimuli within the organism and not mentalistic events
responsible for behavior. “The consequences of operant behavior are not
what the behavior is now for; they are merely similar to the consequences
that have shaped and maintained it” (Skinner, 1987a, p. 57).

66. Complex Behavior
• Human behavior can be exceedingly complex, yet Skinner believed
that even the most abstract and complex behavior is shaped by
natural selection, cultural evolution, or the individual’s history of
reinforcement. Once again, Skinner did not deny the existence of
higher mental processes such as cognition, reason, and recall; nor
did he ignore complex human endeavors like creativity, unconscious
behavior, dreams, and social behavior.

67. Higher Mental Processes
• Skinner (1974) admitted that human thought is the most
difficult of all behaviors to analyze; but potentially, at least, it
can be understood as long as one does not resort to a
hypothetical fiction such as “mind.” Thinking, problem solving,
and reminiscing are covert behaviors that take place within the
skin but not inside the mind. As behaviors, they are amenable
to the same contingencies of reinforcement as overt behaviors.
• Problem solving also involves covert behavior and often
requires the person to covertly manipulate the relevant
variables until the correct solution is found. Ultimately these
variables are environmental and do not spring magically from
the person’s mind.

68. Creativity
• How does the radical behaviorist account for creativity? Logically, if
behavior were nothing other than a predictable response to a
stimulus, creative behavior could not exist because only previously
reinforced behavior would be emitted. Skinner (1974) answered this
problem by comparing creative behavior with natural selection in
evolutionary theory. “As accidental traits, arising from mutations,
are selected by their contribution to survival, so accidental
variations in behavior are selected by their reinforcing
consequences” (p. 114). Just as natural selection explains
differentiation among the species without resorting to an
omnipotent creative mind, so behaviorism accounts for novel
behavior without recourse to a personal creative mind.

69. Creativity
• The concept of mutation is crucial to both natural selection and creative
behavior. In both cases, random or accidental conditions are produced
that have some possibility of survival. Creative writers change their
environment, thus producing responses that have some chance of being
reinforced. When their “creativity dries up,” they may move to a different
location, travel, read, talk to others, put words on their computer with
little expectancy that they will be the finished product, or try out various
words, sentences, and ideas covertly. To Skinner, then, creativity is
simply the result of random or accidental behaviors (overt or covert) that
happen to be rewarded. The fact that some people are more creative than
others is due both to differences in genetic endowment and to
experiences that have shaped their creative behavior.

70. Unconscious Behavior
• As a radical behaviorist, Skinner could not accept the notion of a
storehouse of unconscious ideas or emotions. He did, however,
accept the idea of unconscious behavior. In fact, because people
rarely observe the relationship between genetic and environmental
variables and their own behavior, nearly all our behavior is
unconsciously motivated (Skinner, 1987a). In a more limited sense,
behavior is labeled unconscious when people no longer think about
it because it has been suppressed through punishment. Behavior
that has aversive consequences has a tendency to be ignored or not
thought about.

71. Dreams
• Skinner (1953) saw dreams as covert and symbolic forms of
behavior that are subject to the same contingencies of reinforcement
as other behaviors are. He agreed with Freud that dreams may serve
a wish-fulfillment purpose. Dream behavior is reinforcing when
repressed sexual or aggressive stimuli are allowed expression. To
act out sexual fantasies and to actually inflict damage on an enemy
are two behaviors likely to be associated with punishment. Even to
covertly think about these behaviors may have punitive effects, but
in dreams these behaviors may be expressed symbolically and
without any accompanying punishment.

72. Social Behavior
• Groups do not behave; only individuals do. Individuals establish
groups because they have been rewarded for doing so. Membership
in a social group is not always reinforcing; yet, for at least three
reasons, some people remain a member of a group.
• First, people may remain in a group that abuses them because some
group members are reinforcing them;
• second, some people, especially children, may not possess the means
to leave the group; and
• third, reinforcement may occur on an intermittent schedule so that
the abuse suffered by an individual is intermingled with occasional
reward. If the positive reinforcement is strong enough, its effects
will be more powerful than those of punishment.

73. Control of Human Behavior
• Ultimately, an individual’s behavior is controlled by
environmental contingencies. Those contingencies may
have been erected by society, by another individual, or
by oneself; but the environment, not free will, is
responsible for behavior.

74. Social Control
• Individuals act to form social groups because such behavior tends to be
reinforcing. Groups, in turn, exercise control over their members by
formulating written or unwritten laws, rules, and customs that have
physical existence beyond the lives of individuals. The laws of a nation,
the rules of an organization, and the customs of a culture transcend any
one individual’s means of counter-control and serve as powerful
controlling variables in the lives of individual members.
• Each of us is controlled by a variety of social forces and techniques, but all
these can be grouped under the following headings:
• (1) operant conditioning,
• (2) describing contingencies,
• (3) deprivation and satiation, and
• (4) physical restraint (Skinner, 1953).

75. Social Control
• Society exercises control over its members through the four principal
methods of operant conditioning: positive reinforcement, negative
reinforcement, and the two techniques of punishment (adding an
aversive stimulus and removing a positive one).
• A second technique of social control is to describe to a person the
contingencies of reinforcement. Describing contingencies involves
language, usually verbal, to inform people of the consequences of their
not-yet-emitted behavior. Many examples of describing contingencies
are available, especially threats and promises. A more subtle means of
social control is advertising, designed to manipulate people to
purchase certain products. In none of these examples will the attempt
at control be perfectly successful, yet each of them increases the
likelihood that the desired response will be emitted.

76. Social Control
• Third, behavior can be controlled either by depriving people or by
satiating them with reinforcers. Again, even though deprivation and
satiation are internal states, the control originates with the environment. People
deprived of food are more likely to eat; those satiated are less likely to eat even
when delicious food is available.
• Finally, people can be controlled through physical restraints, such as holding
children back from a deep ravine or putting lawbreakers in prison. Physical
restraint acts to counter the effects of conditioning, and it results in behavior
contrary to that which would have been emitted had the person not been
restrained. Some people might say that physical restraint is a means of denying
an individual’s freedom. However, Skinner (1971) held that behavior has
nothing to do with personal freedom but is shaped by the contingencies of
survival, the effects of reinforcement, and the contingencies of the social
environment. Therefore, the act of physically restraining a person does no more
to negate freedom than does any other technique of control, including self-
control.

77. Self-Control
• If personal freedom is a fiction, then how can a person exercise
self-control? Skinner would say that, just as people can alter the
variables in another person’s environment, so they can
manipulate the variables within their own environment and
thus exercise some measure of self-control. The contingencies
of self-control, however, do not reside within the individual
and cannot be freely chosen. When people control their own
behavior, they do so by manipulating the same variables that
they would use in controlling someone else’s behavior, and
ultimately these variables lie outside themselves. Skinner and
Margaret Vaughan (Skinner & Vaughan, 1983) have discussed
several techniques that people can use to exercise self-control
without resorting to free choice.

78. Self-Control
• First, they can use physical aids such as tools, machines,
and financial resources to alter their environment.
• Second, people can change their environment, thereby
increasing the probability of the desired behavior.
• Third, people can arrange their environment so that they
can escape from an aversive stimulus only by producing
the proper response.
• Fourth, people can take drugs, especially alcohol, as a
means of self-control.
• Fifth, people can simply do something else in order to
avoid behaving in an undesirable fashion.

79. The Unhealthy Personality
• Unfortunately, the techniques of social control and self-control
sometimes produce detrimental effects, which result in
inappropriate behavior and unhealthy personality
development.

80. Counteracting Strategies
• When social control is excessive, people can use three basic strategies for counteracting
it—they can escape, revolt, or use passive resistance (Skinner, 1953).
• With the defensive strategy of escape, people withdraw from the controlling agent
either physically or psychologically. People who counteract by escape find it difficult to
become involved in intimate personal relationships, tend to be mistrustful of people,
and prefer to live lonely lives of noninvolvement.
• People who revolt against society’s controls behave more actively, counterattacking the
controlling agent. People can rebel through vandalizing public property, tormenting
teachers, verbally abusing other people, pilfering equipment from employers,
provoking the police, or overthrowing established organizations such as religions or
governments.
• People who counteract control through passive resistance are more subtle than those
who rebel and more irritating to the controllers than those who rely on escape. Skinner
(1953) believed that passive resistance is most likely to be used where escape and revolt
have failed. The conspicuous feature of passive resistance is stubbornness. A child with
homework to do finds a dozen excuses why it cannot be finished; an employee slows
down progress by undermining the work of others.

81. Inappropriate Behaviors
• Inappropriate behaviors follow from self-defeating techniques of counteracting social control or
from unsuccessful attempts at self-control, especially when either of these failures is
accompanied by strong emotion. Like most behaviors, inappropriate or unhealthy responses
are learned. They are shaped by positive and negative reinforcement and especially by the
effects of punishment.
• Inappropriate behaviors include excessively vigorous behavior, which makes no sense in terms
of the contemporary situation, but might be reasonable in terms of past history; and excessively
restrained behavior, which people use as a means of avoiding the aversive stimuli associated
with punishment.
• Another type of inappropriate behavior is blocking out reality by simply paying no attention to
aversive stimuli.
• A fourth form of undesirable behavior results from defective self-knowledge and is manifested
in such self-deluding responses as boasting, rationalizing, or claiming to be the Messiah. This
pattern of behavior is negatively reinforcing because the person avoids the aversive stimulation
associated with thoughts of inadequacy. Another inappropriate behavior pattern is self-
punishment, exemplified either by people directly punishing themselves or by arranging
environmental variables so that they are punished by others.

82. Thank You!
Dan Andrei Navarro Bagao RPm
Phone
09985573898
Email
andreibagao@gmail.com