Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B. F. Skinner

First published: 1971

Type of work: Psychology

The Work:

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner summarized his ideas about the nature of science, the techniques for controlling human behavior, and the possibility of building a happier and more stable society. Convinced that all human behavior is determined by environment and biology, he denied the existence of free will (or freedom) and moral autonomy (or dignity). Indeed, he held that illusions about their existence are harmful, because they militate against the establishment of an effective technology to eliminate harmful forms of behavior. Skinner had already discussed his theories in previous publications, but Beyond Freedom and Dignity had the advantages of being more readable and relatively concise, comprising 215 pages of text. When published in 1971, the book created a great deal of interest and controversy, and it remained on the New York Times best-seller list for eighteen weeks—an unusual occurrence for a theoretical work of this kind.

More than two decades earlier, Skinner had published his utopian novel, Walden Two (1948), in which protagonist T. E. Frazier told about a happy community that utilized Skinnerian principles of control to produce a way of life inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s writings. As was true of many persons in the early 1970’s, Skinner had become alarmed about population growth and environmental degradation, and he wrote Beyond Freedom and Dignity with the goal of providing an additional theoretical explanation about how to design and operate the kind of culture that his character Frazier had described.

Skinner confidently proclaimed that, because of modern science, engineering a better society is entirely possible and that, once established, such a society would produce people who voluntarily pursue policies that promote survival. In particular, citizens would embrace limitations on population growth and restrictions on practices that damage the environment. With confidence in the engineering skills of those who would design and control the community, he was happy to give these benevolent engineers the power to change “the conditions under which men live and, hence, [to engage] in the control of human behavior.” With Frazier-like optimism, Skinner appeared to see no need to put any limitations on the powers of the new, enlightened leadership.

Skinner’s psychological system, which is commonly called “radical behaviorism,” included three major components. First, he focused exclusively on behaviors that can be observed and measured empirically, and he argued that it was unscientific (or prescientific) to investigate “mentalist” phenomena such as thoughts, cognitions, and intentions. Second, he concentrated on behaviors that are learned (or conditioned) as a result of reinforcements, with an emphasis on the benefits of positive reinforcements rather than those that are negative. Third, in contrast to Pavlovian conditioning (also called “classical conditioning”), which was directed at involuntary reflexes, as in Ivan Pavlov’s experiments with the salivation of dogs, Skinner called his approach “operant conditioning,” which referred to the teaching of voluntary behaviors that interact with the environment, as in his experiments in teaching mice to push levers to obtain food.

The key term for Skinner was “operant,” by which he referred to any nonreflexive behavior that reacts to the environment and produces reinforcing effects. Although every operant exists naturally, it tends to remain weak or inert without reinforcement. With effective reinforcements it becomes activated and powerful. Often referring to the learning of “organisms,” Skinner held that operant conditioning works with humans in the same way that it does with other animals, and he rejected the concept of an “autonomous inner man” (or mind) controlling the behavior of a human being. Particularly critical of cognitive psychology, he insisted that no account of what happens inside the body can ever explain the origins of human behavior.

In arguing against any consideration of mentalist concepts, Skinner used an analogy to the sciences of physics, chemistry, and astronomy. For many centuries, progress in these fields was held back by beliefs in mysterious forces such as indwelling spirits, but significant advances occurred after scientists began to concentrate exclusively on phenomena that could be observed and measured. Likewise, Skinner argued, a scientific approach to psychology must look only at external behavior that can be observed; thus it may not rely on subjective methods such as introspection that are not amenable to objective measurement. Although Skinner did not deny that human beings might experience cognitions, intentions, and other functions of the brain, he found that consideration of such phenomena was unnecessary to account for human behavior, and, furthermore, that reliance on these internal processes would make it impossible to develop psychology into a scientific disciple.

Relying on the premise that no phenomenon can occur without sufficient causes, Skinner insisted that modern science is inherently deterministic. Asserting that the traditional concepts of free will and human autonomy imply that human behavior is “uncaused,” he found that a person’s behavior is determined entirely by two causative variables: “genetic endowment” and “environmental circumstances.” Skinner does not appear to have considered the compromise position of soft determinism, which recognizes some margin of choice, even if it is greatly limited. Since he would not concede even this limited degree of free choice, moreover, he logically concluded that a scientific analysis is incompatible with the notion of individual responsibility, which has traditionally been the justification for punishing people who disobey societal rules.

Without expressing concern about whether punishments are ever morally justified, Skinner found that punishment is not very successful at controlling behavior. A competent parent learns that rewarding a child for desired behavior is much more likely to result in the desired result than is punishing undesired behavior. An even more effective strategy is to change the environment, utilizing “contingencies of reinforcement” that maximize desirable behavior and achievement.

Observing that modern societies already control the behaviors of babies and persons with disabilities, Skinner advocated the application of such controls to everyone. Once an appropriate “technology of contingent reinforcements” was institutionalized, he asserted, the members of the new society would enjoy the kind of existence described in Walden Two. They would live in harmony with one another, take pleasure in music and literature, and consume only a bare minimum of resources. In addition, Skinner asserted that “it should be possible to design a world in which behavior likely to be punished seldom or never occurs.” Convinced that behavior has almost nothing to do with attitudes, he wrote: “The problem is to induce people not to be good but to behave well.”

Skinner recognized that controlling a population would require a very sophisticated “science of behavior” (which he also called a “technology of technology”). Although admitting that behaviorism was still only “a science in progress,” he insisted that it continued to develop and was “much further advanced than its critics usually realize.” The lack of further development, in his opinion, was largely attributable to the desire to maintain traditional views about the existence of free will, dignity, and individual responsibility. This was his justification for holding that the literature of human freedom and dignity “stands in the way of further achievements.” In several places, Skinner writes that “man” will be controlled by “an environment which is largely of his own making.” By using the same word to refer to both the designers and the population of the utopia, Skinner appeared to obscure the likelihood that the population would be controlled by an environment that would be under the control of a small ruling elite. Skinner, therefore, saw no urgent need to explain how this elite would be selected.

Almost all psychologists agree that Skinner’s techniques of operant conditioning are at least partially effective and useful in the training of animals and young children. It is also possible, moreover, that a few small voluntary communities might operate according to some of the principles of Beyond Freedom and Dignity, even though Hilke Kuhlmann has shown that almost all such efforts have failed, usually because everyone wanted to be the Frazier of the group. In the early twenty-first century, very few social and behavioral scientists maintain that it will ever be possible to organize and control a large society, such as the United States, along Skinnerian lines. It is difficult to deny that there are limits to the extent that operant conditioning can be successfully applied to large groups of adult humans, who are already products of socialization. While admitting the importance of environmental and genetic influences, cognitive psychologists have made a strong case for the view that complex processes in the human brain play a causative role on human behavior. Noam Chomsky, moreover, has observed that Skinner wrote his books with the goal of convincing readers to agree with his behavioral theories, utilizing arguments that appeal to readers’ cognitions, with the tacit assumption that changes in their cognitions would result in behavioral changes.

Bibliography

Chomsky, Noam. “The Case Against B. F. Skinner.” The New York Review of Books 17 (December 30, 1971): 18-24. A classic review of Beyond Freedom and Dignity, arguing that its theories are unscientific, dogmatic, and sometimes incoherent.

Ellis, Albert, Mike Abrams, and Lidia D. Abrams. Personality Theories: Critical Perspectives. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2009. In addition to providing a good summary of Skinner’s theories, this text allows for a comparison with Ellis’s synthesis of “cognitionism” and behaviorism.

Ferguson, Kyle E., and William T. O’Donahue. The Psychology of B. F. Skinner. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2001. A comprehensive work that clarifies Skinnerian ideas in their historical and philosophical contexts.

Kuhlmann, Hilke. Living Walden Two: B. F. Skinner’s Behavioral Utopia and Experimental Communities. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. Sympathetic study of several small communities inspired by Skinner, including analysis about why all but one in Mexico failed after a short time.

Machan, Tibor. The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 2007. A provocative but polemical analysis of Skinner’s ideas about science, particularly rules of evidence, experiments, inferences, and the construction of theories.

Sagal, Paul T. Skinner’s Philosophy. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981. A concise analysis of Skinner’s ideas about determinism, free will, morality, and the nature of science.

Skinner, B. F. Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1989. Includes summaries of major concepts, responses to critics, and a new preface to Beyond Freedom and Dignity.