B. F. Skinner, at 82, Grows Pessimistic That World Will Accept His Ideas
B.F. Skinner, sometimes likened to Hitler and shunned for decades in a fearful, skeptical world, still dreams of saving the human race. But the famous psychologist has grown pessimistic with age.
At 82, the father of a behavior modification technique that he calls operant conditioning knows that it is probably already too late to see his hope of a society made better through positive reinforcement come true. He is not so sure anymore that it ever will.
“You know, you say, ‘Well, things will get so bad people will change.’ But that’s been said again and again and again,” said Skinner, slowly stroking the air with his right hand while grasping the arm of his desk chair with the left during a recent interview.
“The people who control the condition in which we live have no reason to think beyond more than the next five or 10 years,” said Skinner, leaning into the high-backed chair in his office.
Someday, perhaps, critics will be quieted and society will heed his call to save the future from the threat of nuclear war, pollution and overpopulation.
“But not in my lifetime,” said Skinner. “My lifetime is growing short.”
There was no bitterness in his soft, monotone voice. It was the calm observation of the trained scientist.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner, however, has not given up. Rising each day at 4:50 a.m., he works for two hours at home before walking two miles to the 14-story building where Harvard University allows the professor emeritus the use of two rooms.
Heart problems have subsided, and a tumor in his salivary gland was beaten back with radiation. Although the white-haired Skinner’s face is lined and drawn, and he needs a hearing aid for each ear, he says he is healthy.
From an office lined with tables and shelves filled neatly with papers and books written over nearly half a century, Skinner answers phone calls, prepares for speaking appearances and does whatever he can to counter what he considers to be misconceptions about his ground-breaking work on human behavior.
“I never really expected to be controversial,” said Skinner, peering across his desk through gold wire-rimmed glasses.
“I always thought I was right. I don’t really understand all the misconceptions except, as I say, I’m asking people to make an enormous change in the way they think about themselves and about human behavior.”
Skinner believes all human behavior can be explained through the environment. Desirable behavior can be elicited by manipulating the environment and offering positive reinforcements. He calls this operant conditioning, which he believes should be applied to solve the world’s ills.
Critics, however, say Skinner’s ideas are simplistic, ignoring such important factors as free will and emotions. At their worst, his ideas are dangerous and could result in a controlled, totalitarian society, they contend.
In part to try, once again, to counter critics and dispel what he considers to be misunderstandings, Skinner is publishing his 20th book this summer. It is a compilation of papers that he has delivered over the last few years.
The first article is titled, “Why Are We Not Acting to Save the World,” a pessimistic paper about the future. “Most thoughtful people agree the world is in serious trouble,” the paper begins.
Skinner was not always so gloomy.
Born March 20, 1904, in Susquehanna, Pa., Skinner moved to New York’s Greenwich Village after graduating from Hamilton College to pursue a career as a writer. In 1928, he became interested in psychology, went back to school and earned a master’s and a doctorate at Harvard.
In 1938, Skinner published his first book, “The Behavior of Organisms.” In it, he described several years of research in which he used a special device later dubbed the “Skinner box” to condition a white rat to press a lever to get food pellets.
These experiments, and ones using similar boxes for pigeons and monkeys, formed the basis of Skinner’s renowned theories of operant conditioning.
Skinner argued that he had developed a science to explain behavior. Operant conditioning explained much more complex human behavior than the Pavlovian stimulus-response psychology developed by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov, who made dogs salivate by ringing a bell.
People do not act in direct response to a stimulus, Skinner said. They act on the basis of reinforcement they have received for past behavior.
Hours of research produced reams of data that Skinner said showed how behavior could be influenced and controlled by offering positive reinforcements in various ways.
Under the theory of operant conditioning, for example, if you wanted to improve public school attendance, you would reject punishing students who were truant. Instead, you might devise a system that abates a portion of parents’ taxes based on the student’s attendance and stipulates that a portion of the money go the child.
At the time, psychology was focused on the importance of free will, emotions and feelings. Critics said Skinner was oversimplifying, likening people to rats.
But armed with his research, Skinner and his followers began a battle to take over psychology. His work began being applied in a variety of ways.
Skinner’s first brush with infamy came in 1945, when he developed a glass-sided, temperature-controlled “air crib” to care for his second daughter. A horrified public confused the crib with the Skinner box, creating the misconception he wanted to condition children like rats.
In fact, the crib had nothing to do with operant conditioning. Simply the product of Skinner’s tinkering, the crib was designed to make parenting easier and infants more comfortable.
Skinner, meanwhile, began looking beyond simple applications of his operant conditioning to using his science for more grandiose purposes.
In 1948, Skinner published “Walden Two,” in which he described a fictional Utopian world in which operant conditioning was used to control behavior for the good of society by creating a better world.
The book inspired the creation of several experimental communities, a handful of which still exist. But critics rejected Skinner’s vision, saying it would produce Big Brother totalitarianism and prompting comparisons of Skinner to Nazis.
Some say “Walden Two” was the beginning of Skinner’s shifting his emphasis from the science of behavior to the philosophy of the science known as behaviorism.
“Skinner is two different things in one,” said Robert Epstein, a former student of Skinner’s who now runs the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies.
Scientist, Philosopher
“He is both scientist and philosopher. He’s untouchable as a scientist. But he is also a behaviorist who believes in something that is ugly to the American public. The American public wants to believe in free will,” said Epstein.
Few question Skinner’s contribution to science. His work with operant conditioning has been widely applied by teachers using positive reinforcement to teach and control behavior in the classroom. It has also been used to improve productivity in industry, help treat the mentally ill and in counseling.
He received numerous honors throughout his career, including awards from the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Psychological Assn. and various universities.
It is Skinner’s role as a philosopher, in which he called on the world to apply operant conditioning to create a better society, that prompted the harshest criticism.
‘Appalling Program’
“The program, if it were ever applied, would be appalling,” said Jerry Fodor, a professor of philosophy and psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I think it would be horrendous to try to control people’s behavior.”
In 1970, Skinner published “Beyond Freedom and Dignity,” a defense of the goals in “Walden Two,” in which he urged society to dispense with notions of individual freedom and dignity in favor of the survival of the species.
Called “the year’s most controversial book” by Time magazine, “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” only heightened fears that Skinner was calling for a controlled state that ignored the needs of the individual. But Skinner denies advocating this idea.
“I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control,” said Skinner, touching his fingers to his lips and gazing at etchings on the walls of his office.
The landscapes are the work of the daughter raised in the air crib. Debra is now 41 and an artist living in London. Skinner’s other daughter, Julie, 48, is an educational psychologist who lives in West Virginia.
Government Selection
“It’s not control through punishment. It’s not control through pulling strings. It’s control by using government as a selecting factor. I’m all for swinging away from punitive control to positive reinforcement,” said Skinner.
But Skinner’s hope that psychology would be taken over by behaviorists foundered. Of the 60,000 members of the American Psychological Assn., only 1,200 today list themselves as Skinnerians. Psychology has returned to its roots, probing the mind and the importance of feelings, emotions and free will.
But some, like Epstein, hope that behavioral psychology, instead of taking over psychology, will become a science unto itself, working more with neuroscientists and biologists rather than with psychologists.
Skinner, meanwhile, although doubtful whether his ultimate goals will ever be achieved, remains active and productive, proud of his career and devoted to his goals.
Major Changes
“I’m not comparing myself to Darwin,” said Skinner. “But the kind of changes I’m asking people to make with respect to human behavior is the change he was asking them to make with respect to the creation of the species.
“I have to tell people that they are not responsible for their behavior. They’re not creating it; they’re not initiating anything. It’s all found somewhere else. That’s an awful lot to relinquish,” he said.
