Science And Human Behavior Paperback – 1 Mar. 1965

In 1958 I discovered this book while I was studying for a degree in psychology. It was a completely different approach from what I was being taught. At the time I could not convince my fellow students or lecturers that it was more convincing and applicable than their syllabus.Since then as a Counselling and Occupational Psychologist, I was increasingly convinced by what Skinner wrote and in this and subsequent books, where he expanded and illustrated the validity and applicability of the guidelines set out in this book. Recently, I bought a new copy from Amazon because my copy had fallen apart though constant use.Psychology is the science that tries to identify the factors that influence and guide our thoughts, feelings and actions. In this book Skinner sets out clearly with numerous examples the principle that, if desired actions are positively reinforced, then these actions are more likely to be repeated in the future. On the other hand, if undesired actions are negatively reinforced they are less likely to occur. Negative reinforcement means undesired actions are ignored and other actions that help the person escape are positively reinforced. This approach is completely opposite to punishment which tries to forcibly stop undesired action. So if a child misbehaves the normal response is to tell them off, threaten them with punishment or punish them. Did that work when we were children or with our children?Instead of punishment Skinner suggests we stop reinforcing undesirable behaviour by ignoring our child and waiting until they do something right. Then give them the positive reinforcement of praising them and giving them more of your time and suggesting what they could do to get positive reinforcement from other people or themselves. Our child will soon, consciously or not, learns to act in ways which get positively reinforced. .Between 1953 when this book was published and 1993 when he died, Skinner was himself repeatedly positively reinforced by the growing acceptance of his principles and their successful application to teaching children and adults more quickly and effectively and helping individuals overcome their emotional, mental and social problemsSince he wrote this book, a rival approach called Cognitive Psychology claims that internal thoughts and feelings explain our external actions - speech writing, gestures and movements. Skinner has repeatedly pointed out that the supposed internal “mental way stations” are “explanatory fictions” because they explain nothing. In contrast, argues Skinner, all of our current actions, whether external or internal, speaking writing, gesturing or moving are best explained by factors created when in the past these actions were reinforced. We continually generate new actions, which are reinforced and, in turn, become factors that influence and guide our future actions.I strongly recommend this book. Read it and decide if his principles of positive and negative reinforcements give you useful and helpful guidelines on understanding yourself and others. . .

Brilliantly written discourse on the objective approach to human affairs for both specialists and interested readers. B.F.Skinner offers his honest account while remarking his limitations in a thoroughly scientific enquiry of human behaviour, without avoiding controversy. This book is a comprehensive and broad manual to functional analysis at the individual, group and societal levels. Possibly seen as an unconventional approach, environmental determinism and operant behaviour draws explanation on solid observation and evidence and invites the reader to challenge status quo beliefs about behaviour and its causes. Current findings from neuroscience neuropsychology support predictions that Skinner proposed herein that were unavailable at the date of authorship.

This is exactly what I was looking for. Im Enjoying every second of reading 😊

Great item, item as described, super fast delivery and a great book

Very good book and buy

Great book and very informative, especially worth reading if taking a psychology degree.

Would recommend buying.

Acknowledged as the most influential psychologist ever, Skinner stands in Social Science as Darwin stands in Biology and Newton stands in Physics.Being the most recent, Skinner is inevitable the most controversial. It may be century before mankind can abandon its cherished false beliefs and apply Skinner's findings as we now apply those of Newton and Darwin.Essential reading for anyone seriously seeking to understand humans

Muito bom, linguagem compreensível para nós brasileiros que temos o inglês como segunda língua.

Difficult but well worth it!

Very good information but i guess mr Skinner is not the greatest story teller.

El producto llegó en buen estado. Es increíble, 100% recomendado, como todas las obras de Skinner.

Being a student of psychology I found very difficult to find some modern literature on behaviorism. Behaviorism has in fact almost disappeared from mainstream psychology which now bubbles with cognitive neuroscience and so on. Being quite difficult to retrieve some basic theory text on behaviorism I then reverted to the original book of Skinner who probably is the most influential divulgation test ever written on behaviorism. Basic aspects of theory of operant behavior are address with some short passage on the ideas developed by Thorndike on learning which actually constituted the basic of operating learning. The powerfullness of behaviorism as a all-in-one theory of human behavior you get reading this book is astounding. I was personally impressed by how our knowledge of behavior was so advanced in 1953 and under certain aspects how little has been made subsequently on the practical plan (a lot of theory and experiments thought). The most impressive feature of this book and the one I had more difficulty to digest as a psychologist was the way in which Skinner convincely rid off every reference to thoughts, will and emotion in his theory of behavior. I could understand only with extreme hardness the fact that you can thrown off all what we think psychology is and indeed instead of having an empty hull you got a sound and proof-tested theory. Emotion for example rather than the cause of a certain behavior is observed to be a sensation of a physiological condition which may act as an internal stimuli. Basically everything can be explained with behaviorism and one guess why psychology, instead of building on that, reverted to other 'theories' thus creating fragmentation (psychology today is a variously defined set of theories encompassing from psychoanalysis to mathematical psychology) thus weakining the scientific status of the discipline. An absolute serious reading to everyone interested in this philosophy and practice of human (and animal) behavior.