Skinner Ate My Dinner

B.F. Skinner was, in my opinion, unmistakably a genius, and he did great work. His contribution to psychology is undeniable. In his time, Skinner’s theories and the behaviorist philosophy dominated American psychology. The central ideas of behaviorism are that a person’s actions and behaviors can be shaped through reinforcement and conditioning. Behaviorism as a science unequivocally works. It is empirical in nature and its ability to accurately predict human behavior gives it great validity. It is simple and elegant in its explanations and methods. I have no problem with the science of the behaviorist position.

Where it begins to falter for me, is when the behaviorist ideals are taken beyond the science and presented in the field of social or personality theory. To observe and conclude that one can be manipulated by changes in the environment is reasonable and scientific, but to say that people are nothing but these manipulations is quite a leap. Skinner himself went this far with his ideas. He put forth that people should give up the concept of freedom, because there is really no true free will. He viewed people, as well as animals, as organisms solely constructed by the environment that surrounds them and the reinforcements they receive.

Now it is true that these ideas have faded in popularity. In modern psychology, it is pretty widely accepted that people are products of both nature and nurture, external and internal processes. However, I have looked around the internet at some forums and the like, and while you have to take everything you find on the internet with a grain of salt, it is hard to ignore the strict behavioral attitudes. The irony here is that many of the individuals that portray this ideal do so in a very pessimistic matter, while Skinner himself was an unrelenting optimist.

One issue I have seen brought up quite a few times in favor of this idea of strict behaviorism is the idea of no true neutral. This idea holds that we can never have a truly unbiased view on any decision, and therefore never truly have the freedom of choice in any situation. We have been biased through conditioning and reinforcement against or in favor of almost any choice in front of us. This begs the question: If we have no real neutral position, and every decision is biased by prior experience and reinforcement, are we really making decisions based on free will, or are we simply carrying out programming? This is an interesting thought. It can even make you doubt your own motives, or your control over yourself. The problem I see with this is that it overlooks intentionality. We can intentionally and deliberately make choices that go against all of our better judgment and conditioning. This is the case in the act of rebellion. If all conditioning prompted a person to pick up a blue cup filled with water rather than the red cup filled with water, and someone told a group of people that they would pick up the blue cup no matter what, it is not unforeseeable that someone, out of stubbornness, would pick up the red cup in defiance. Could defiance have links to childhood reinforcement? Possibly, but we have all known people that are more spirited, more argumentative, and more rebellious than others for no apparent reason. It seems as if they have some predisposition toward stubbornness, and even this slight predisposition to disobey shows that they, if not everyone, are more than simply our conditioning.

Another big problem with a strict behaviorist view is found in addressing creativity, in particular, children’s creative use of language. Children create words, phrases and linguistic structure that are not presented to them. These errors are not reinforced or even taught. The children simply take the few rules they may have learned, then assume, speculate, and create new ideas. These things are not products of their environment, and they are not reinforced behavior. They come from the children’s own cognitive ability, above and beyond conditioning.

Overall, I find the science of behaviorism fascinating, but the social theory lacking. I believe that we do have choice, in everything we do. Once we become aware of that choice, and the reinforcements that sometimes dictate our actions, we can exercise our intentionality, and choose the way we react to things. I find the thought that we are nothing but conditioned automata relatively depressing, and I can see how the idea has been recently linked to such negativity and pessimism. I would like to keep my optimism, and consider intentionality and choice something that is still very much alive.

Come back next time when I discuss Ellis’ third trait of a healthy personality: Tolerance. The week after that I will be talking about the importance of the words that we choose to use.

Two Levels of Thought

The cognitive-behaviorist Aaron Beck is known as one of the fathers of cognitive therapy (as well as for wearing snazzy bow ties everywhere). He noted that there were two distinct kinds of thought. First there is automatic thought. This, as you would assume, are thoughts that happen involuntarily, and are difficult to control or regulate. The other kind of thoughts that he discussed were controlled thoughts. These are voluntary, controllable, and amendable. The automatic thoughts can be like inner voices, berating us, or supporting us. The controlled thoughts can then either agree with, expand upon, or dissent against the automatic voice. These two distinct types of thought result in an inner dialog. In essence, we talk to ourselves all the time in two pieces, automatic and controlled.

Sometimes people end up developing a recurring automatic thought that is negative or harmful. This can come in the form of denigrating thoughts about one’s self, or even paranoia. I am not talking about extreme cases of paranoid delusions, or auditory hallucinations, but the average inner monologue that we mostly all have, taking on a negative or harmful outlook. For instance, some have very negative automatic voices that say things like "I'm ugly," "I'm stupid," "I'm no good," and the like. Where I think the biggest issue comes in is when an individual's secondary voice, or controlled thought, does not dissent against the negative automatic voice. When the secondary voice concurs with the first, it creates an inner self agreement. It almost has the same affect as two separate people agreeing on something in that the agreement compounds upon itself. It becomes a repeating pattern of self abuse.

Now, I do not believe that automatic thoughts are completely unchangeable, just more difficult to change than the secondary thoughts. With thought stopping techniques, over time, one can most definitely change the automatic thoughts that may be troubling them. This reflects the concept of taking responsibility for your own well being and taking control of your life, which is one of my favorite ideas and a common theme in many of my favorite therapy theories. I am sure that I will eventually revisit this idea in the future in another respect.

In any regard, we can choose what to do in reaction to the initial voices, and that reaction is essentially our responsibility. Again, I am not talking about the few who are not in complete control of their faculties, but average people have little reason to deny culpability for their reactions. This idea, amongst others, put my personal philosophy at odds with that of the strict behaviorists (such as B.F. Skinner), who would contest that our actions are little more that conditioned responses, but I can live with not subscribing to that.

What do you think in regard to the two types of thought? Do you have any automatic thoughts that you actively dissent against, or have trouble tackling?

Make sure to come back next week when I continue my discussion on Albert Ellis’ nine personality traits, by covering “self-direction,” and the week after that, when I will be exploring some of my issues with behaviorists.