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B.F. Skinner: A Life · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why We Do What We Do. Welcome
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: to Why We Do What We Do. I am your
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: budding behaviorist host, Abraham.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: And I am your key pecking host, Shane.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: That was a good one. We are a psychology podcast.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: We talk about the things that humans and non-human animals do.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: And in our twilight time together as a show, we're
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: going to talk about one of the people who made
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: a show like this possible in a way. We're going
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: to be talking about BF Skinner. And this is actually
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: going to be a little suite of episodes that we're
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: going to do. And that'll actually be, this is kind
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: of our swan song, if you will. This is how
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: we're going to close things out for the next few episodes.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: So excited to have everyone here.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really excited to get into this because this
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: is this feels like a full circle moment, right? Like
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: the show started because we're behaviorists. It ends with arguably
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: one of the most, if not the most influential behaviorist
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: of our field. And I think it's kind of nice
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: to kind of like bring it all back to like
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: where it started, you know?
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Started-ish.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Started-ish, exactly. So if you're joining us for the first time,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: then welcome. We hope that you enjoy in this discussion.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: If you're a returning person, then welcome back. Thank you
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  Speaker 1: rating and a review, like, subscribe, tell a friend, join
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  Speaker 1: us on Patreon for the next few episodes, or... And
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: other things. I'll talk more about that at the end
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: of this discussion. This episode comes out on November 4th.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: So happy International Stress Awareness Day. Yes.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Also, happy King Tut Day. I think of that SNL
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: skit where Steve Martin sang King Tut and he like
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: danced the song. It was great.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Nice. Is King Tut the one who was just a
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: kid when he died?
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was a child of incest
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: as well, which is pretty, I guess, common for royalty.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: But I believe they think he had a club foot,
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: like one of those types of situations. He had a
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: limb difference. Oedipus.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Sorry, enough for that, for this holiday. National Block
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It Out Day is also the day that it is.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is. It's also National Candy Day.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I guess that makes sense. I mean, we're just past
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Halloween at this point, so maybe people are just still
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: living on that as their main source of caloric intake. Yeah.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Who knows?
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: It's National Easy-Bake Oven Day. Oh, what an interesting idea
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: that was. I feel like maybe that even deserves a mini.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, how dangerous. It is National Eating Healthy Day,
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: speaking of easy-bake ovens.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Very good. Well, I'm not sure I believe in all
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: that because it is National Skeptics Day. So that's like
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: our day, baby.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: That's our day. That's the whole premise of the show.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: It is also National Waiting for the Barbarians Day.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, waiting is over. They've been here the last couple
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: of years.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: They got voted in.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they voted in. It is Use Your Common Sense Day.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: And given that Election Day, I think, was yesterday, I
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: feel like that maybe should have been Use Your Common
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Sense Day, but Common Sense Day hangover.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes. It is Drowsy Driving Prevention Week.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Definitely seems important. Give wildlife a break, B-R-A-K-E. Week means
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: stop and don't hit them with your car or other vehicle.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, save the turtles. It is National Allied Health Week.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Save the turtles is so applicable to like one tiny,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: tiny part of this country.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's true.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Road safety goes.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: There are so many turtles on our roads here. It's crazy.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: So save the deer. Yes. It's most of them.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Sorry. Did you do the next one? Okay. Well,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: it is national animal shelter and rescue appreciation week. So
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: that's awesome. And very good.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: It is very good. It's also a national cat week.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: I love all the animal stuff going on right now.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Very good.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Awesome. And as we mentioned, yesterday was election day. Hopefully
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: that went well. Uh, you were recording this in the past.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: So you people of the future know I tentatively optimistic
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: having seen where polls were going recently. So maybe I'm
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: sad right now. Maybe, maybe I'm happy. Maybe you are too.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Who knows? But, uh, I'm hoping that it went well.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: I'm tentatively optimistic that it did. But we're not here
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: to talk about a recap of the election, partially because
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: we don't know what happens during that election, but also
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: because we're here to talk about something else because we're
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: a psychology podcast. I think we're ready to get into it.
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  Speaker 1: Anything that a mystery you'd like to add before we start?
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  Speaker 2: No, I think we're ready to go.
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  Speaker 1: All right. So we received our graduate training and our
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: professional training in the science that largely developed out of
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: the pioneering work done by B.F. Skinner. Never in the
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: time that we have been doing this show have we
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  Speaker 1: actually spent a lot of time actually talking about Skinner.
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  Speaker 1: He's come up periodically, right? But we've never done like
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: a very deep dive into anything Skinner related. And so
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  Speaker 1: kind of seemed like it was about time.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you're not into behavior analysis, you're not
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: working in that field, you might remember the name Skinner
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: in association with pigeons, piloting missiles, operant quote-unquote reward-based learning
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: and psychology, his work with lab rats, and specifically the
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Skinner box, you might have heard that term, the incorrect
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: rumor that he raised his child in a Skinner box,
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  Speaker 2: or a misassociation with the Little Albert Experiment or Pavlov's dogs.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, or maybe you never heard of Skinner at all,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: or maybe you are very much in the know Whatever.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Glad you're here. Hopefully you'll be able to learn something
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: in this. I actually learned quite a few things that
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't know about Skinner going into putting these notes together.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: But as we're sort of entering this suite of episodes
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  Speaker 1: and you're maybe wondering, why are you spending so much
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  Speaker 1: time talking about Skinner? As I said, for one thing,
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  Speaker 1: the science and philosophy that he developed laid the groundwork
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  Speaker 1: for the careers that we now have. Yeah. And so
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  Speaker 1: there's something to be said about that contribution. Definitely. But
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  Speaker 1: I also do want to point out that we are
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  Speaker 1: not worshipful of Skinner.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Skinner is not a god. He is not infallible. He
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  Speaker 1: is not our leader or our saint. We don't worship anyone.
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  Speaker 1: But he was a very important figure in the development
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  Speaker 1: of the philosophy of the science in which we earned
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: our degrees and in which we make our living and
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: has informed sort of a lot of the ideas and
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: beliefs that we have. It is shaped like that philosophy
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  Speaker 1: has shaped our approach to the topics that we bring
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: up and discuss in this podcast.
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  Speaker 2: So.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: It felt like it was worth spending a little time
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: to pay homage to where we came from and sort
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: of how we got here, if you will, or why
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  Speaker 1: we do what we do.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So the next few episodes in
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  Speaker 2: our final series of episodes... We were to discuss various
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: aspects of BF Skinner, his life, his work, his philosophy,
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: his inventions, his books. I mean, we were to talk
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: about so much about him in, like you mentioned, in
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: the hopes of like, there's probably going to be stuff
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: in here that, you know, if you're in behavior analysis,
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  Speaker 2: there may be some stuff that you learn because we're
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: learning stuff as we go through this too. And I
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: think it's kind of fun to deep dive on somebody
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  Speaker 2: who is as influential as he is. So I think
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  Speaker 2: we're going to have a good time with this one.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm looking forward to it.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Can't wait to talk about corn pudding.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So this first discussion is largely going to be
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: just about his life. We're going to just walk through
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Skinner's whole sort of timeline. It's going to be obviously
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: truncated from the perspective of detailing minute by minute everything
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  Speaker 1: that happened to him. Also, I don't know what happened
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: to him minute by minute. And I don't think it
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: would make for a great podcast episode, but we're going
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: to hit like sort of the major highlights, the important moments,
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  Speaker 1: the things that sort of shaped him into the person
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  Speaker 1: he became and whatnot. So this first discussion, we're just
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  Speaker 1: going to talk about the life of the man. And
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: then later we'll be taking on more specific topics related
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  Speaker 1: to him, things that he wrote and invented, as you
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: already said, all that. So yeah, let's go ahead and
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  Speaker 1: dive into this then. Yes. The fun fact of the episode,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: revealing right at the top of this discussion, starts with, well,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: it's BF Skinner, but what does the BF stand for?
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  Speaker 1: And why did he go by initials instead of his
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  Speaker 1: first name? Again, many of you who are trained in
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: the field know this already, but his full name was Burrus,
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  Speaker 1: spelled B-U-R-R-H-U-S, Burhus or Burrus, Frederick Skinner. So that's the BF,
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  Speaker 1: Burris Frederick BF Skinner. His friends called him Fred, but yeah,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: his first name was Burris. So he writes that Burris
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: was his mother's maiden name and was, quote, always troublesome
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  Speaker 1: and must be spelled out and explained, end quote. Which
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  Speaker 1: I think is a very humble way of saying that
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  Speaker 1: he hated it and just didn't want to use it anymore.
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  Speaker 1: So mostly went by Fred, otherwise went by BF. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So he was born on March 20th, 1904, the first
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  Speaker 2: of two boys in Susquehanna, which by the way, if
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: you ever spend any time in New England, there are
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: a lot of words that do not sound the way
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: they are spelled for lots of reasons. Worcester is one
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  Speaker 2: example in Massachusetts.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, that's very true.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: I think there's something really interesting about this because there
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: is so much, like, indigenous language inside of some of
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: the cities and places there, too. So, like, and enunciation
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  Speaker 2: and all that's different. Now, this is in Pennsylvania, and
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  Speaker 2: he was born to William Arthur Skinner, a lawyer and
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  Speaker 2: a first-generation American on his father's side, and Grace Madge Skinner, nay, Burris.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: making Skinner a second-generation American on his father's side. Susquehanna
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  Speaker 2: is a small railroad town, which as of 2020 had
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: a population of 1,365 people. So you can imagine how
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: large it might've been in 1904. And that is not very.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Small little town. And he grew up there, but
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: aside from losing his younger brother at the age of 16,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: his brother was 16 who passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage.
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  Speaker 1: Skinner actually mostly described his early life growing up in
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Susquehanna as warm and stable. Yeah.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: From an early age, Burris, I don't know. Should we
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  Speaker 2: call him Skinner? I don't know. Can we decide on
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: maybe a format for that? Do we want to go
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: with Skinner or do we want to go with Burris
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: or Fred? I mean, we're not friends with him, so
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: we couldn't call him Fred.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Mostly throughout this, I think I refer to him as Skinner.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think if we go back and forth,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: it's okay. We're obviously only talking about primarily one person here.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: He's a focal point.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, either Burris or Skinner, or if we're feeling nasty, Fred.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: We're feeling nasty. Yeah, we're going to be, yeah. No,
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: I feel like Skinner makes sense. So Skinner was, from
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: an early age, he was inventing and building things. So
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: a cart that accidentally had a steering wheel that worked backwards.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: He built a perpetual motion machine, which didn't work because
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: they break the laws of physics and are impossible. He
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: and his friends built a cabin in the woods. They
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: picked elderberries and built a flotation system to separate ripe
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: berries from green berries. They went around selling elderberries door
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: to door. And while working at a shoe store while
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: in high school, he built a contraption, which I think
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: that contraption feels like a very perfect word for Skinner.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: He built a lot of contraptions, but built a contraption
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: to distribute green dust, quote unquote green dust, that helped
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: a broom pick up dirt while sweeping.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: They're still doing ads for that today. All right, we're back.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: We've been describing a lot of Skinner's early life and
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: that he was quite the inventor as he was growing up.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Parents seemed pretty supportive of this, that they were happy
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: to let him sort of do his thing and make
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: mistakes and learn from those mistakes. I got that it
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: was not a super religious household that he grew up in.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: And he noted that he didn't know that his parents,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: his grandparents at least were religious, except for one time
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: hearing them exclaim something about someone not believing in Jesus
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Christ or something of that nature.
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  Speaker 2: Sure.
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  Speaker 1: But anyway, so it seemed like he kind of grew
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: up in a, it wasn't like anti-religious, but maybe more
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  Speaker 1: on the secular end type of households.
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  Speaker 2: Sure.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe it was those things where they like say, I
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: pray for you and God bless you and that sort
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: of thing. But that was not a particularly significant part
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: of their time growing up.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: And it would kind of make sense to me that
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  Speaker 1: that was the case because he was very much a
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: lover of literature. He loved to read. He read a lot.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: He quoted books a lot. When he was told that
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: he was wrong about something, he went and researched that thing. Specifically,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: at one point, someone misquoted, I think it was Shakespeare,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: and they quoted Francis Bacon. And then Skinner was like,
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  Speaker 1: that's not right. And they're like, you don't know what
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: you're talking about. So he's like, went and read everything
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: by that person, by Francis Bacon. So he kind of
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: became his own little mini scholar of Francis Bacon. Yeah.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: So while he was attending Hamilton College in New York...
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: he decided he wanted to be a writer because he
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: loved literature, he wanted to write. However, upon embarking on
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: his writing career, he wrote very little, just a handful
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: of things here and there, some articles, et cetera, like
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: newspaper articles, yeah. But he did stumble upon books by
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: John Watson and Ivan Pavlov while working in a bookstore
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: and was intrigued by their writing and very eager to
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: learn more about what they were doing. And so that
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: sort of set him on a new path when he
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: discovered those.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So at the age of 24, Skinner enrolled in
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: psychology at Harvard University and found a like-minded mentor in
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: William Kosher, who was the chair of the new physiology department.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Kosher was considered a bit rebellious, which I think a
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: lot of psychologists at the time, the really fun ones,
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: were a little bit rebellious. You know what I'm saying?
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: And believed in studying the, quote, whole organism, believed in
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: studying the whole organism instead of focusing on and placing
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: exclusive importance on individual components. He was happy to let
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: students experiment and follow their hunches.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: So he granted his students a lot of freedom and
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: he really encouraged them to pursue their curiosities and to
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: just kind of like experiment with stuff and see what happened.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: And with this freedom, Skinner started building contraptions, apparati, if
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: you will, to experiment with rats. He built some mazes.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: He also apparently constructed several things to use for his
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: various experiments and And through what he later described as
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: happy accidents, he developed a device to specifically record and
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: measure whenever a rat pressed a lever. And he wanted
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: to have an ongoing record, if you will, of every
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: lever press so that he could look at patterns in
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: the data.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the device continually fed paper through like kind of
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: like this, this whole contraption at a constant rate. And
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: every time the animal pressed the trigger or lever or
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: button or whatever it was, a little needle with ink
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: that rested against the moving paper would tick upward and
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: the apparatus gradually moved across the paper, specifically the paper feed.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: with every response from the animal recording their total responses.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: And Skinner called this the cumulative recorder. And we'll talk
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: more about this in a different episode. I have seen
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: one of the original cumulative recorders, and it's really cool
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: to see. It's really like, you're just kind of like,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: this is just an interesting device that exists in the world.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: And super impactful.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: If you were to imagine sort of the old timey
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: look of a polygraph machine with those needles that like
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: go back and forth, it kind of looks like that,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: except for instead of the needles going back and forth,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: they only move one way across the page until they
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: reach the far end. Then they go all the way
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: back really quickly and start over. But it's same basic
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: setup of like a sort of feeding paper through at
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: this constant rate and then would move every time there's
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: a response. And that allowed to see sort of changes
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: in the rate of the response because the paper moved
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: at a constant rate, the needle ticked at the constant rate.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: with respect to presses at least, it moved a consistent amount.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: So with every press, you would get essentially a pattern
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: in the data that would show these really clear curves
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: that either sloped or slanted in particular directions, and then
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: that would That would depict something really interesting about the
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: pattern of their behavior. Right. And through these experiments, he
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: discovered that the behavior as animals shifted and responded to
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: not just in relation to the preceding stimulus. Because this
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: was the idea essentially hypothesized and described by Pavlov and
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Watson was this idea of reflexes. where you had, there
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: was an onset of some kind of triggering event. And
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: then following that event, you would have the organism's behavior
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: that followed. And that was called SR psychology for stimulus response,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: because that was this new way of thinking about behavior
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: was this like, well, you have, rather than it being,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: there's all these internal states and these internal things are
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: what caused behavior to happen. you have an external stimulus
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: and a behavior that follows. And that does a really
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: good job describing a lot of how and why behavior happens.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: But Skinner then saw something else that was that as
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: they received food pellets following their lever pressing, their rates
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: of behavior changed according to very reliable patterns, where the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: thing that preceded the lever press was not as predictive
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: of what their behavior would be, But the consequence that
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: followed the lever press, them receiving these food pellets, all
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: of a sudden became very predictive of, and you would
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: be able to see these very clear, reliably reproducible patterns
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: in the data that adhered to these schedules of reinforcement,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: which were how often and under what conditions those food
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: pellets were delivered. So, If they were, for example, delivered
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: every single response, you'd see a very reliable pattern happen.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: If they only happened after so many responses, but on
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: a fixed rate, then you would see very specific behavior
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: happen where you'd essentially have a constant sort of low
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: lever pressing. Yeah. If they happened at intervals, you would
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: see a very reliable pattern happening where they wouldn't respond.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: And as it got closer to the end of the interval,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: they'd start responding a ton. If it happened... completely unpredictably,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: then you'd see these super high rates of continuous responding.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: So anyway, the point being that he could produce these
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: patterns based on the consequence that followed the behavior and
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: do so very reliably. And that was a big discovery.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Huge, huge. So through his observations, he started synthesizing a
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: theory to describe the massive amounts of data that he
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: was collecting. Thus was born the theory of reinforcement. And
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: essentially that what happens immediately after behavior could increase or
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: decrease the likelihood that behavior would occur again. So this
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: is not something that is new in terms of human
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: history in that clearly reinforcement has happened since organisms have existed, right? Like,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: That is essentially, by its very nature, the reason why
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: we still exist. But he finally discovered these patterns in
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: a way, or could at least describe these patterns in
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: a way that were more systematic and give it more
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: language than we had before.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was able to synthesize these observations into a
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: description that really facilitated research to move forward in a
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: much faster and productive way. Because you're absolutely right. Yeah,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: like without reinforcement, like we would have never evolved to
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: this point. No organism would have. And so it's not
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: like he didn't invent reinforcement. He uncovered this process as
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: part of how behavior at all is shaped and develops. Right.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: But that was, again, a big discovery because although people
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: had had like a vague understanding. about this in the past,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: no one had ever cobbled together something so comprehensive and cohesive.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: in a description as what he had done. Right. And
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: there were many people who didn't even necessarily believe that
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: this was, it played that important of a role or
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: believed it didn't play a role at all. Like there
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: was definitely people who thought that too.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: So this helped cement that. In fact, it did. He
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: was correct. Yep. And I mean, he was standing on
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: the shoulders of people who came before him. So like
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: some of the experiments that like Thorndike had done with
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Cats in the Box, I think we talked about Thorndike
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: actually in Learning Curves at a very, very early episode.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: in this podcast, because again, this was all sort of
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: in the zeitgeist, things that it was like sort of
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: moving in that way that people understood this. Actually, J.R. Cantor,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: who we talked about a bit, he had more or
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: less talked about this as well as part of his
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: sort of philosophy. He just hadn't necessarily been doing the
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: similar types of experiments or describing them in the same way,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: but definitely understood that the outcomes of behavior warfare were
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: important and understanding how then behavior shapes and emerges too.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And he wrote about that even before many of Skinner's
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: publications came to, came to light. So, Anyway, he eventually
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: graduated from Harvard with his PhD in 1931, but he
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: continued to work at the university and further develop and
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: explore his research on operant conditioning, is what he called it,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: for the next several years. Yeah.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: So in 1936, this was a big year for Skinner.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: This was the year that he took on a teaching
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: position after he left the advertising industry. Here's one of
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: the ads as an example. I'm just kidding. Skinner didn't
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: do that. That was Watson. We know Watson was working
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: in marketing. Skinner wasn't doing that. That's right. So in 1936,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: he took a teaching position at the University of Minnesota,
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: and he married Yvonne Blue in 1936. And the couple
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: eventually had two daughters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And that would
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: be Julie in 1938 and Deborah in 1944. So in 1938.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: So this is when Julie was born, he also published
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: a summary of all of the research and the synthesis
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: of data he'd been collecting over 10 years across his
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: experiences at Harvard, as well as some in the University
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: of Minnesota. And this culminated in his first book ever,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: The Behavior of Organisms. And this is considered the founding
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: text for the experimental analysis of behavior, the field that
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: would essentially arise out of this. If you read through it,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: it does kind of almost sound like a collection of
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: his observations and like a sort of summary of thoughts
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: about many of the experiments that he did. It is
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: a very dense book about a lot of research.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Almost like if you compiled just like 200 articles together
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: and like, or maybe a hundred articles together in one place,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: that's sort of how it reads. So it's, it's very scholarly,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: if you will, that he published in 1938. And that
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: essentially set the foundation for what would become the experimental
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: analysis of behavior. Yeah.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: So, of course, if you're hearing these timeframes, these timelines,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: you're probably thinking, like, well, this seems like a pretty
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: important year or decade for the United States, at least.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: What might have been happening around then? Well, World War
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: II was ramping up, and as the United States officially
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: entered the war, Skinner became interested in helping the war effort.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: And I think that, you know, there's important cultural factors
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: here too. Like there was so much propaganda and stuff
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: going on about like supporting the war effort. And it
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: was like, even you can help your troops. Like it
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: was like, there was a lot of that going on.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Like that was such a big part of the culture.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: So it stands to reason that like, And people are
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: going to want to do a lot of stuff. And
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Skinner was actually pretty interested in this. So at the time,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: the missile guidance systems were basically non-existent. They did not
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: have missile guidance systems at the time. And a lot
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: of times the bombs that were dropped or the missiles
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: that were fired were not as accurate, especially as they
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: are today. And even then, they're still not perfect and
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: still a problem. But Skinner proposed to teach pigeons to
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: guide missiles and actually received funding to do this very thing.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: So in this very creatively named Project Pigeon, Skinner created
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: an apparatus inside the nose cone of missiles and trained
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: pigeons to peck buttons inside this apparatus to then direct
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the missile towards specific targets. And he succeeded with aplomb.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: He was able to demonstrate that pigeons could reliably and
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: accurately peck the correct buttons even while falling continuously and
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: being constantly bombarded and exposed to the sounds of explosions
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and war and gunfire and stuff like that. He trained
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: them to maintain their performance even when faced with those situations.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He had received a grant for this. I believe
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: it was something close to $ 35, 000 as a grant for this.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: And it is the equivalent of like almost a million
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: dollar grant that he received for this in today's money.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: So like it's about $ 850, 000 in today's money. So he
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: received money to do this. It's pretty interesting to think
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: about that. But At the time, though, because, you know,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: sometimes what happens is different researchers or different organizations start
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: to engage in duplicative tasks. Radar technology was secretly being
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: developed at the same time, and eventually the pigeon technology
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: became obsolete for the war effort, so it wasn't necessary. However, Skinner, opportunistically,
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: was able to observe that pigeons can peck much faster
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: than rats can press levers... And this meant that he
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: could make discoveries much faster using pigeons as subjects instead
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: of rats. And he reportedly never worked with rats again
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: because pigeons were a better subject, according to him.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: So yeah, as you said, for those of you worried
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: about the poor pigeons and the nose cones of missiles,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: and I would have been too, it seems that none
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: of them ever actually ended up going into a bomb
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: and directing that bomb at a target.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: But out of this, we got a bunch of new
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: research because Skinner was like, wow, these were This was
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: much faster to train them than it would have been
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: to train a rat to press a lever. So let's
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: keep using them. Sidestepping that part of the experimentation he
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: was doing at the time, he's still a person who
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: has a family and he's being a good dad and
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: a good husband to his family. He also learned, as
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: far as I know, he also learned a lot about
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: the practical issues in parenting from raising a daughter with
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: his wife. So when she was pregnant again in 1943-
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: And the pigeons in the missile were a twinkle.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: In his eye.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: She asked him if he could design a better, safer
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: crib for the new child that was coming. She cited
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the fact that cribs have bars that kids' arms and
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: legs can get caught in the bars. They can hurt themselves.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: They're very low to the ground, which requires a lot
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: of bending over. The blankets in a crib can suffocate children,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: but you also don't want them to get too cold.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: So taking these into consideration, he did exactly as he
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: was asked and built a brand new type of crib
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: to address these safety and practical concerns. Yes.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: And so his quote unquote baby tender, as he called it,
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: was extremely successful. for his family. However, it did not
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: catch on and in fact became confused with experimental chambers
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: he designed for pigeons and therefore even called a Skinner box,
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: the name for his operant experimental boxes. Although to be fair,
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: to be clear, I should say, that's not at all
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: what it was. And this could have been cool and
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: probably allowed for some cool developmental studies, but that's not
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: what it was for. And we'll talk more about that
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: in a later episode. But the thing that we're talking
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: about here, this quote unquote baby Skinner box or the
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: baby tender was not at all. It was very confused.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: People were very confused by it. Yeah.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: And it literally was just a crib. It was just
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: like a new take on a crib. He was very
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: proud of it. He tried to market it. He had
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: some interest, but it really never caught on. But he
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: was like, I mean, this solves a lot of problems
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: people are having. So it seems like a good idea.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: And everyone's like, yeah, but you're Skinner and you experiment
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: with pigeons in a box.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: You experiment on babies. And that was not at all
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: what he was doing. Right.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: And that would come back over and over again. Anyway,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: on that point, he was harangued by rumors and misconceptions
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: that his daughter spent all of her time in the
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: crib and that he experimented on her and that she
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: eventually died by suicide, with the implication being that her
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: suicide was due to her time in the experimental chambers.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Every single part of this is completely false. Yeah. She
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: spent no more time in her crib than any other
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: baby would have spent in there in this. Cause it's,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was a crib. It was, it was
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: used as a crib and nothing more. Like you put
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the kid in the crib, right?
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: It was a safety device. Yeah.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: You just, you keep them in there for their sleeping.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: And like, if they're going down for a nap or like,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: if you just need them to have a place to
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: keep them for a minute while you're doing other things,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: it was just a crib. Like, So she didn't spend
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: any more time in there than any kid would have
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: spent in any other crib. It's just a crib. Right.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: He also never performed any experiments on either of his children. Also,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Debra's still alive. Like this whole idea about her time.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: She's still currently alive. She's a successful artist and lives
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: with her husband in London. Some of her art is
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: around and available to see. So like, yeah, the whole
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: thing was just utter nonsense came out of nowhere by
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: stupid people. And yeah, Continued, perpetuated in certain circles, but
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: all of that was wrong. Yeah. As far as we
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: can tell, he was a good dad and the crib
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: was just a practical thing to help make it a
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: little easier. Like we'll talk more about it, but like
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: it was raised up a little bit so you didn't
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: have to bend over as much. It had plexiglass so
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: that you could see them, but that they couldn't fall through. Well,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: we'll describe it more in a separate discussion, but it
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: was really just a practical crib and that's all that
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And also, too, if you've never had a chance,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: I've gotten to see some of Deborah Skinner's paintings, and
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: they're beautiful. I mean, she is truly a talented artist.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: I got to do some subject matter expert work. work
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: at the BACB, and they had a series of her paintings,
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: her watercolors hung up in the hallways right around the
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: corner from Jerry Shook's personal library. So like some really
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: cool things like artifacts exist there. And so I got
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: to see some of her works, and they were just
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: absolutely beautiful. Yeah. So, like, I would hang them up
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: at my house because I was like, this was just,
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: they were just gorgeous. Like, just aesthetically, very aesthetically pleasing.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Now, in 1945, Skinner's family moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: he became the chair of the psychology department at the
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: local university. And it was here that he began building
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: the foundations of the field that would eventually become behavior
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: analysis today.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: So that was 1945. I believe that was the year
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: that he published Walden 2. And we'll talk more about
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: that in a separate discussion. Best-selling book of his, though.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: In 1946, they held the first ever meeting for the
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Society of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, which eventually led
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: to the development of a journal to publish the research
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: being shared and pioneered by the people attending to and
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: participating in the Society and And that journal was its
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: debut issue published in 1958. So we're almost at 70
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: years of that being a journal.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Which is really, really cool. Now, Skinner was
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: invited to join the psychology department at Harvard in 1948.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Did you try and say Harvard? Harvard. Yeah, I couldn't
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: help it. When I see Harvard, I can't help but
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: think of Ben Affleck. So Harvard, pack the cap. So
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: he was asked to join the psychology department at Harvard
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: in 1948, where he had a whopping 400 students enroll
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: in his course. He reportedly struggled to keep up with
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: producing the materials needed to teach the course, but again,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: this proved a fruitful circumstance, and he assembled the materials
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: he produced into what would become his book, Science and
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Human Behavior.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Yes. And I believe that his first time at Harvard
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: for teaching was like an invited presentation and then essentially
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: was invited to just be on faculty at Harvard. Yeah.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: And then he was going to spend some time there.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: So that was 1948. In 1953, he attended Deborah's fourth
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: grade math class for Father's Day. And while he was
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: in this class, he observed teaching that he described as
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: violating everything he had learned about shaping and how learning happens. Yeah.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Which is pretty good.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: He was very kind and very soft in the way
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: he described things, I think. Yes.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: He observed and noted that some students would fly through
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: exercises they already knew how to do and were essentially
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: learning nothing. Other students who didn't know the work weren't
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: actually given adequate instruction that would help them and then
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: blamed for their failures. And that, like, it was just like,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: this just, none of this makes sense. Like, you aren't
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: shaping behavior correctly. by allowing it to contact successful approximations
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: toward what it needs to become. Some students have work
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: that's too easy, some that's too hard, and then you
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: blame the students when you don't actually teach them what
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: to do. All of this sort of had him motivated
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: to want to do something about the situation. Yeah.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: And so this inspired him to build his first teaching machine,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: which was a device designed to deliver instruction and feedback
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: to support learning through practice. And again, we'll talk more
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: about this in a different episode. But for now, here's
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: an ad for the teaching machine that was really cool.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: We're back. There are no ads for The Teaching Machine
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: because although The Teaching Machine had some interest from manufacturers
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: and publishers and academic publishing groups and whatnot, and it
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: had promise, most investors saw it as too risky of
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: an investment, thought it was too complex, that it wouldn't
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: be able to be really rolled out and utilized in
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: a wide-scale way, that it wouldn't necessarily have support from
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: other educators. And to be fair, like, it really wasn't
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: doing a lot in the way of instructing. It was
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: mostly just presenting opportunities to practice on a randomized order
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: so that they could get lots of opportunities to practice
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: the thing. Nevertheless, there was not enough appetite among sort
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: of publishing company investors to build a lot of these.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: And the idea behind teaching machines was instead sort of
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: converted into books in a line called programmed instruction. Similar idea,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: like it was sort of follow the same logic. But
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: even then, they essentially decided to stop publishing these books
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: in 1968. And that year, Skinner published a book about
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: education topics called The Technology of Teaching as sort of a...
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: what would you call this? It was like an obituary,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: if you will, to his teaching machines, but also like a,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: here's what I've learned and things that you could and
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: should know that might help with education in the future.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think that there's something really valuable
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: inside of this, right? Like, so in a lot of situations,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: like his inventions or his discoveries didn't persist in in
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: the form that we knew them as. So it didn't
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: persist as a teaching machine itself, but he did learn
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: more about the principles of learning inside of that. And
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: this is where you get so much of his works.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: He goes, yeah, sure. The teaching machine is maybe, when
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: we think about it today, is maybe cumbersome and a
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: little bit, I mean, a little bit outdated, very outdated
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: when we have computers and stuff like that. But the
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: idea of the way that the instructional design part of
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: it worked and the principles of learning inside of that
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: those persist. And that's essentially what he has done, has
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: gone like, yeah, this worked in this context this way,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: but the ideas and the principles and the science persist
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: beyond that. And that was his strength. I think that's, like,
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: when we really talk about it, that's the strength that
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: Skinner brought to the table was going, yeah, we did this,
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: and here's what we learned. And he did a really
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: great job of describing what he learned as a result
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: of those things. And those things that he learned haven't
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: changed very much since then.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. A lot of the similar ideas that came out
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: of this were used in bi-precision teaching and bi-precision teachers.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: They were used in the personalized system of instruction or PSI,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: which is still being implemented today in some places. So
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: the ideas never went away and actually did sort of
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: grow and evolve on their own sort of separate trajectories
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: and So, like, the invention itself didn't necessarily find a
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: lot of commercial success, but the ideas have led to
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of other things down the road.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Right, right. Now, starting in 1937, Skinner had started working
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: on a book in an attempt to explain language and
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: cognition using everything he had learned from the experimental analysis
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: of behavior. He worked on it on and off for
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: 20 years, finally publishing his magnum opus treatise. Treatise? Treatise. Treatise. Yeah. Treatise. Treatise. Treatise.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Language is so funny. Treatise. And this book was Verbal
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: Behavior in 1957. And this drew a lot of criticism
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: from Noam Chomsky. And also, just, we'll talk about this more, but,
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, at the end of the day, like, this
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: was an incomplete work of sorts.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: For lots of reasons, but that's because science is often
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: incomplete when it's discovered, so.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: But this drew a lot of criticism from Noam Chomsky,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: who had invented his own asinine, non-evidence-based, and ultimately debunked
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: theory of language and cognition. We'll talk more about that later.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: But it's so funny because Noam Chomsky is also still
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: touted as this brilliant man. And not to say that
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: he wasn't brilliant, but his ideas around language were very,
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: very wrong.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, he definitely became more well-regarded in sort
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: of the social justice and political space and a lot
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: of his teachings and writings there. Yeah. And I can
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: appreciate some of that. But my first exposure to Chomsky
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: was in his combative relationship with Skinner. And yeah, he
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: just made up this idea about language that was just
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: bonkers and Yeah. Totally backwards. And ultimately, like, again, we
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: showed that pretty much everything he thought was wrong. Yeah.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: But he did also like this really not what most
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: people know Chomsky for is because afterward he sort of
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: more gotten to the political arena of things.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: That's how I met him. Like when I when I
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: I knew about Noam Chomsky coming into behavior analysis and
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: when I read about his arguments about verbal behavior, I
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: went the anarchy guy.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Like, I remember being like, I was like, that guy,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: the guy that published all these, like, really cool political
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: books and pamphlets, like, that's the guy that was mad
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: at Skinner? Like, it was so, it was such a
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: weird thing, because I had already had, like, a relationship,
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: like a, or like an influence by Chomsky coming into this.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I was in the opposite direction. Started with
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: a bitter taste and then had to find things to
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: appreciate about it. But yeah, I think after his attempts
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: at foray into hypothetical imaginations about language, that's not really
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: what he was known for anymore. Yeah, yeah. Which, for
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: the better.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Anyway, over the next couple of decades, Skinner, working in
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: these teaching capacity, ended up with some brilliant and innovative
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: students who would greatly propel the field forward and I mean, honestly,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: I think some of the reason that what was so
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: successful about all the things he developed was the fact
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: that he had a new generation of people to take
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: these ideas and really allow them to grow and expand
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: and become something just much bigger than I think was
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: even maybe envisioned at the outset for the experimental analysis
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: of behavior, what would essentially become behavior analysis. And of course,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: there are a couple of duds who would try and
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: drag the field backwards, Richard Herrnstein. But he did have
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: some really great and important students while he was teaching
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: that definitely were instrumental in continuing to propel behavior analysis
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: forward and upward.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Now, Skinner became increasingly concerned with societal issues
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: and believed that the experimental analysis of behavior offered potential
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: solutions to help address the many issues facing society at large.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: He published some of these ideas in the book Beyond
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Freedom and Dignity, which resulted in some relatively high-profile TV
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: interviews and high publicity, not all of it good at
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: he implied humans did not have free will. As a
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: quick side note, we have done an episode on this,
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: but the short version is, it depends on how you
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: define free will. Either we don't have it, or it's
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: a useless concept that means nothing. But I think people
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: took that as people don't have choice or whatever it
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: might be. And people really struggle with this idea of
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: being governed by things in our environment. And I think
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: that people had a hard time wrapping their heads around it.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: It is also free will is essential. To believe that
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: there is any justification for divine retribution for your actions. Right.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: So you can't have a reasonable commandment from some kind
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: of deific or deity figure that says that if you
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: do these things wrong, then I will punish you. If
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: the things that you do wrong are things that were,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: let's say... not in your control if you're compelled to
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: do them. And so the crux of the argument here,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: where some people sort of saw the writing on the wall,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: if you will, I was not saying this correctly, people
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: could derive the implication of this that essentially was very
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: similar to the experience Darwin went through when he was
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: writing about evolution. And Darwin was observing the natural world
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: around him going, uh, I think life may have evolved
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: and not just spontaneously popped into existence in the way.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: Cause like all of my observations tell me that like
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: the best explanation, the most parsimonious explanation is that these
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: are biological traits that are shaped over time. Right. And, Actually,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: I would also say I think the entire philosophy of
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: behaviorism only makes sense in the context of evolution as well.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: And I think it is a complement to and extension
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: of Darwin's ideas that we even get the experimental analysis
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: of behavior.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: And it is a perfect companion to it. It makes
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: all of the sense in the world to think about
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: how evolution or the development of behavior was part of
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: the development of evolution and how species evolve. Right. Anyway,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: in that similar vein where we both had that species
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: are not created and also it doesn't make sense to
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: believe that their behavior is something they should suffer for
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: a million years of punishment or an infinite amount of
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: time in punishment because that behavior was shaped by their environments.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Like of the three legs you had to stand on,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: two of them are now gone. And so– The implications there,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: I think, were clear for an audience who is not
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: prepared to accept that kind of narrative and still aren't.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: I think most people still really, really struggle with the
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: idea that we don't have free will. Yeah. At this point,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: it feels like an argument almost not worth having, but
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: I am still happy to have it if someone wants to.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: But I think that's part of where he drew ire
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: from an audience.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Sure. I think that's completely fair.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: I think he would have drawn more ire if he'd
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: also just placed a bunch of ads in it. Ew.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: God, ads in his books? Gross.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: All right, we're back. We've been sort of describing why...
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: Skinner drew some criticism for some of his work, particularly
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: when we got to Beyond Freedom and Dignity, a title
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: that itself is fairly provocative.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Right. And, you know, he continued to draw criticism. Just
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: this was a constant thing. I mean, to me, it
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: sounds like so much of the concern around Skinner's views
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: were that people felt that they were overly simplistic. They
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: felt like, we can't just be reduced to behavior. We're
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: complex creatures. I mean, he was separating out mind from
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: body and all those things. He's saying, no, they're not different.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: They're the same thing. They're part of the entire constellation
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: of variables that are you know, the organism. So like,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: I could see people being upset from that perspective, especially
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: given that like psychology started with being more than behavior, right?
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Like that's kind of really where people were really looking
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: at that. So, you know, he continued to face criticism
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: from people who didn't understand or who were confronted by
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: misrepresentations of his work. So that was the other side.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: It's like people just didn't, they misrepresented his work, the
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: air crib being one of those examples. So in part
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: to address some misunderstandings, he wrote a book, another book
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: about behaviorism, which he published in 1974. So he went, oh,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: you don't understand my work. Here's another work for you
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: to understand my work.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. And although the book was about behaviorism, the
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: actual title was about behaviorism. Yeah.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: You might, you might hear us say he wrote a
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: book about behaviorism. Like, well, of course he did. All
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: of his books are about behaviorism. I'm like, but the
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: title of this one is about behaviorism.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: One thing I want to point out, too, that we
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: talked about at the top of the episode is that
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: we don't worship people in our field. He makes an
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: explicit point in the first chapter of that book to say, hey,
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: I am just somebody who likes to study this stuff.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: You don't need to take my word for it. Go
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: study this stuff. He makes it explicitly clear that he
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: also does not want to be worshipped as somebody. So
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: if you're a behavior analyst and you're like, oh, Skinner
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: is just da-da-da-da-da, it's important to know that he didn't
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: even want that.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He stated very clearly, he thought that he was
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: not special, that everything that he contributed was happy circumstances,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: that he happened to be in the right place at
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: the right time. He happened to have the right environment
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: to facilitate him exploring his curiosities. And that he was
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: quite clear, I think, on this point that he did
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: not see himself as being like some great, magnificent person
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: and that he just got lucky. And I think that
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: most real behavior analysts would understand and feel the same
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: way about both him and themselves, and to whatever extent
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: they may have made also valuable contributions, is that they
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: also got lucky. Anyway, that is, I think, an important feature, yeah,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: because as you said, we don't worship any of this. Like,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: he went on to publish some memoirs, some other sort
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: of more personal books, one called Enjoy Old Age as
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: he was getting up there, one called The Particulars of
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: My Life, And so there was a lot that he
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: was sort of doing in his final years. But in 1989,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: he was diagnosed with leukemia, but he did remain as
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: active as he could, even given his diagnosis. Obviously, he
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: was in a somewhat limited capacity to do much. Our
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: treatments for cancer were not as good in 1989 as
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: they are now, although I Very likely he would have
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: followed a similar path anyway, given that we've only gone
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: so far with treatments of these things. Anyway, he continued
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: to write and give talks, even giving a presentation at
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: the American Psychological Association only 10 days before he died.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: although I'm sure he didn't know at the time that
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: it was 10 days before he died.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: He received during this a Lifetime Achievement Award from the APA,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: and then he converted the talk that he gave there
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: into an article which he finished writing the day that
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: he died, which was August 18th, 1990.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: Wow. I mean, that's incredible. I mean, his legacy of
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: the theory of reinforcement and the use of scientific method
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: to objectively study behavior has expanded to a field consisting
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: of tens of thousands of professionals and a wide variety
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: of applications, including sports, pharmaceuticals, animal care at zoos, organizational structure, education,
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: workplace safety, and now to cognitive psychotherapy and many others
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: as well, and continues to advance. Wow.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, there's so many. There's so many ways
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: that this has been applied and adopted and integrated into
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: other things. And like functional psychotherapy has sort of a
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: leg here, dialectical behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy. There's
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of these that all sort of developed from
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: this and just so many other things that feel like
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: they're maybe even outside of the scope of what you
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: might've expected something like behavior analysis to be. But it
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: actually has expanded quite broadly and quite successfully in many
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: of these places. Skinner received many awards and accolades throughout
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: his life. Some hailed him as a hero. Others reviled
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: him as a villain. But I think as far as
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: we can tell, Skinner was a very well-intentioned man doing
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: his best to use science to help people. He wasn't perfect.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: He wasn't infallible. He wasn't even completely right about everything.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: And he started something that has been used by people
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: in some horrible ways. Like very terrible things have been
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: done with the tool of behavior analysis that was given
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: to them. But I think it's been used by many, many,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: many more people In compassionate, productive, and helpful ways. Like
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: I would say that this has helped a lot more
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: than it has hurt. And it's not to say that
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: the cost of people suffering that did happen at the
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: hands of people who are trying to implement the ideas
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: that came from behavior analysis was worth it. Because I
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: think human suffering was never worth it.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Agreed.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: But at least we have a lot more good to
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: say about what has happened from this than there is bad.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: And I think that that has definitely helped it continue
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: to thrive and be a successful field because so much
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: good has come out of it. And I think the
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: amount of good that has come out of it has dwarfed,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: utterly dwarfed, the bad that has come out of it.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: And I wish that the bad never had happened, but...
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: Maybe we can see that as opportunities to learn and
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: do better.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: And I think that has continued to more or less
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: be the case.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Now, Skinner's science and philosophy did not capture the
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: entirety of human experience either, though he did write about
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: just about everything that we could think of off the
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: top of your head. He's got some comment about religion
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: and politics and all the things that come along, right?
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: It did not solve the problems he thought it would solve.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: But many, since his time, have continued to elaborate on,
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: iterate on, and expand upon his work well beyond what
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: he had done. And they've gotten closer to his vision
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: of what was possible with behavior analysis. I mean, the
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: amount of things that we have been able to do
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: since his work first came out is pretty astounding. And truly,
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: the applications of our work are pretty incredible when you
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: really think about the power of what we can do.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: I think that he would be both pleased and very
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: humbled by how much it has developed since his passing.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: How much it has grown and evolved and become what
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: it has become. I think that he would see this
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: both as And sort of like, wow, I was like
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: a small piece of this important piece. But like relative
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: to what we have done with it, it's kind of
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: a small piece. And in a good way, I think
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: that's that would be like I would be very proud
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: to have a legacy where I'm like, wow, I feel
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: like this. I was such a small piece of something
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: that became so much bigger, but I'm so happy I
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: could have been part of it at all. Yeah. Even
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: if I was sort of the founding part of it,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: just like this thing has outgrown me considerably, I would
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: be very proud of that personally. So I feel like,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: and given how we've seen him sort of write and talk,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: like that seems very in line with how I sort
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: of understood him. Yeah. And I'll share that on a
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: personal note, the foundational concepts in this field have entirely
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: shaped like my worldview, right? In a way, it feels
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: cohesive and comprehensive to me. It is more satisfying in
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: the way that it addresses topics than anything else I
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: have ever encountered. Everything makes sense through this lens in
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: a way that it didn't in any other lens that
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: I have encountered. And it has helped me see humans
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: more compassionately, to allow me to be more patient, to
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: be kinder. And it's helped me connect with many people
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: and families I otherwise would not have. This is a
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: science and philosophy and his work and specifically that was
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: not complete, but science never is. Right. It is, however,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: the best thing we've got for trying to be humans
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: together on this planet. That is the best thing we've
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: come up with so far. And yeah, sure, a lot
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: of problems have come out of it, but I think
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: there is also a lot more potential for solutions to
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: come out of it than any of the other systems
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: we've had that mostly have just created problems.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I, that's sort of where I want to
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: land on this because, you know, I think everything I
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: think and do is now has the foundational concepts that
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: are part of the philosophy of behavior analysis. And again,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: that's how the world makes sense to me. And it just,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: it doesn't not work. And to be fair, like my
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: worldview is not just based on Skinner's work. Like it
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: is also based on Cantor's work. Like a lot of
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: that has shaped it as well. And Linda Hayes, who
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: has built on Cantor's work that has shaped a lot
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: of those similar thoughts. And there's so many people that
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: have happened before and since that have contributed to that.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: But the way that I describe it is behavior analysis
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: or behavior analytic. And that foundation was more or less
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: established by Skinner.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, I agree, too. I think that once
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: I discovered behaviorism, I went, oh, this makes sense. It
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: makes sense not because it just feels good. It's because
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: there's evidence that also supports it feeling good. Like, that's
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: the way that I feel about it, right? Like, as
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: I go, like, yeah, this makes sense to me. And also, look, there's, like,
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: a huge body of literature to back this up and
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: verify that this feels like I'm seeing it. So there's
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: something really special about that.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for me, it really sealed the deal when I
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: got to see it in action. I was like, oh,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: my God, like you took something I would have thought
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: was impossible and you made it quite possible.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: And behavior like seeing someone go go from something that
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: was a skill so far outside of their repertoire that
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: you would have thought that they would never be able
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: to get there. And then they got there with some
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: basic shaping. And like, sure, it took a while, but
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: like they eventually got there to the point where I'm like, okay,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: so pretty much anything is possible inside of human behavior.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: Like if you have the time, resources, and effort to
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: shape a behavior, like whether it's yours or someone else's,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: like it will eventually get there.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: If you know what you're doing. That blew my mind.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: You know, just the practical application of it really working
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: in real time, that blew my mind. Yeah. If you
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: had thoughts that this is just how people are born,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I have seen things that have convinced me
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: that is just never the case. Everybody has a certain
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: capacity in sort of what their parameters and limitations of
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: what they might be able to achieve are. I know
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: I use this example a lot, but I cannot fly
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: using just my wings because I don't have wings. Right.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: So like that is a capacity that is set by
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: my biology. But there are a lot of things inside
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: of human capabilities that I definitely can do if my
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: behavior is shaped to the point where I could get
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: there because I've seen it happen and the data are there.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: And like that was the other thing, too, is like
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: this is such a data driven field. It's like we
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: don't have to impose our feelings or hopes or ambitions
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: upon this. We can just see what's working, what isn't.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: And if it's not working, then you change it. And
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: if it is, then keep doing what you're doing.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: You'll only know that because you have data to tell
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: you that it's doing that thing. So that was extremely
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: appealing to me is that like, let's just get rid
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: of the like, oh, I think this is getting better
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: part and be like, no, here's actual data.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: That suggests one thing or another. Right.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: Nailed it. Absolutely.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, great. Well, closing thoughts that you might have since
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: we're talking about the guy.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: You hit it on the head. I think that for me, behaviorism...
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: you know, for all the flack that it gets because
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: people will misconceive it as reductionist, I think that it
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: is arguably the most compassionate, or to me, feels like
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: the most compassionate way to go about practice if it's
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: done well and done with care, right? I think that,
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: you know, yes, there are horrible things that have been
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: done in the name of behaviorism, and that's unfortunate because
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: I don't think that that's the spirit of the field.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: I think that ultimately the spirit of the field is
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: that And the spirit of the philosophy is to reduce
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: suffering by making teaching and practice more efficient so that
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: people can contact more of their reinforcers and they have
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: more degrees of freedom as a result of that. I
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: think that this has also opened up the doors for
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: me to be more inquisitive. I think that I can
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: go back and when somebody does something, I can go
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: back and go like, well, what led them to that?
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: Like what circumstances brought them here? Because, you know, I
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: think of like that phrase, like, you know, everybody's doing
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: the best they can in their circumstances. And I think
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: that that is true. And I think people have problematic
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: behaviors for sure. But I think at the end of
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: the day, Like everybody's doing the best they can. And
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: it has made me at least pause more to take
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: a step back and go, what led them here? How
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: did they get here? Why are they doing this? and
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: allows me to approach it a little bit differently. That
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean I don't get frustrated about stuff, but it
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: has allowed me to kind of at least pause more
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: than when I was younger and think more deeply about
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: the circumstances under which somebody has engaged. And so, I
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: think that that has made me a better human as
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: a result of understanding the sequence of events that lead
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: somebody to a particular decision or a particular action or
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: anything like that. Like, it has made me just, I
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: think a better human. And that's not just Skinner, right?
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: Like I think that we were talking about this before,
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: like getting into it, like behaviorism is not solely Skinner, right?
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: Like it's, you brought up Pavlov, you brought up Watson,
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: we brought up Thorndyke, all these people, these contributors. And
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: there are lots of other contributors too. Like, you know,
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: like you brought up Linda Hayes, you brought up, like,
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: there's so many people that are in this space that
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: are doing this work in different ways and making an impact.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: And I think that you know, Skinner himself stood on
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: the shoulders of giants. Like you don't have behaviorism if
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: you don't have initial writings of philosophy from like Aristotle
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: and Socrates and all those folks too. So yeah, I
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: think that it's really important as we go through this, too,
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: to remember that everything is an iterative process. It's building
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: upon and building upon and building upon. And Skinner was
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: doing just that. He just happened to write about it
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: a lot. And he happened to just, like, I don't
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: want to say discover, but give us language to describe
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: the things that were already happening, right? And do it
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: in a way that was systematic and discover ways to
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: explore those and I think that we're a little bit different.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: So I'm very grateful. I'm very grateful for the science
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: of behavior and the work that he did, because I
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: think that, again, you and I, you brought it up
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: at the beginning of this episode that like, if it
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: wasn't for the groundbreaking work that he was doing and
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: the way that he talked about this stuff, we wouldn't
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: be here as a podcast.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: You know, we'd be talking about something very different if
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: we were on a podcast, like who we, who you
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: and I wouldn't have connected.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: Very likely if it wasn't for this, you know, and
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: there's lots of friendships and relationships that I have with
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: people like, like people that I've grown to care about
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: and love deeply that are a result of this field.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: And I am so grateful for it. Yeah.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Very well said. You know, and I do
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: appreciate the point that you said that like, it's everyone's
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: doing the best with what they've got, um, except advertisers.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: All right. We're back. We're wrapping this up. Advertisers do
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: the worst with what they've got.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. That's a choice.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Maybe also Stephen Miller doing the worst with what he's got. Yeah.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: And he doesn't have much, but he's really stretching it.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Really leaning into the hardcore evil as much as
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: he possibly can. Yeah.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Let's do evil for the sake of evil. And then
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: that's tattooed on the inside of his eyelids. Yep. Yep.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: Lest he forget someday that that was his mantra.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Anyway, we like to recommend some things that are usually
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: unrelated to our topic at hand, which will be the
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: theme today. But after we get through some credits, we're
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: going to get the recommendations. And it's very fun. I've
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: even thought that maybe we do a whole episode where
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: we just do recommendations because it's that much fun. You're
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: here for this, so let's do some recommendations for today.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: But first, I would like to tell you, if you'd
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: like to support us, we have a few more episodes
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: coming out, so we definitely could use your support if
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: you'd like to. You can leave us a rating and
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: a review, like, subscribe, or tell a friend. All of
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: that helps the algorithm reach more people. And while we're
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: trying to reach more people, that's a great thing for us.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: So we appreciate your willingness to go out and do
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: that thing. We are almost at 500 episodes. That doesn't
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: even include the minis that we've been releasing. So if
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: you would like to go back and check out some
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: of our past work, there's lots of stuff out there
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: that we are quite proud of that we have made.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: And that will be up at least for a while.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know when these things go away, but our
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: distribution service that we are maintaining is going to be
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: paid for a while. So it'll stick around at least
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: for a bit. Yeah. Otherwise, you can support us again
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: for a little time that we've got going on. You
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: can join us on Patreon. If you do that, you
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: get early episodes, ad free episodes, and I will read
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: your name in the list of our supporters. at the
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: end of each of our discussions. So I'd like to
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: do a giant shout out and thank you to Mike M, Megan,
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Mike T, Justin, Kim, Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Kiara, and Charlie.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: Thank you all so much for having been with us
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: this whole time, helping us be a podcast, doing your thing.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: You are the best.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: We love you so much.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: Also, I need a team of people to help me
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: make this podcast, writing and fact-checking from Shane and myself.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Thank you for recording with me today, Shane.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson and our producer, engineer,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: recording technician, almighty God Emperor Penguin is Justin, who is
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: the best.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: And of course, thank you all for listening because we
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: need an audience to be a podcast. But I think
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: that is what we have to say for credits before
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: we get to recommendations. Am I missing anything?
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. I think you covered it.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Let's recommend some stuff. recommendations. All right. I'm recommending this
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: is a soft recommend, which means like I recommend it
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: more or less, but with some caveats. So this is
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: a TV show on HGTV called the scariest house in America.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: It's hosted by Retta. Essentially what they do is they
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: pick a few regions around the country and they drive around.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: People submit to have their houses feature. They sort through
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: all their applications and they go and they pick out
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: five houses per region. And then they explore those houses,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: and then eventually they decide on one house per region
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: for each of the five regions. And then they select
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: one of those houses of the five finalists to receive
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: a $ 150, 000 renovation.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: This was, as far as I can tell, sort of
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: a spinoff show off of one called Ugliest House in America.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: And the scariest house is a lot more themed around
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: houses that are very old, usually have a history with
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: like people who have died there. And then reportedly by
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: the occupants, the house is haunted. And man, do they
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: lean into that in a very unnecessary way. So I
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: am really not a fan of people taking ghosts very seriously.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: Doing it for fun and like being silly, perfectly good
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: with that. But these are like, they seem to be
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: leaning into this for the hamminess of it all. And it's,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: I just find it a little disingenuine, I guess is
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: maybe the word I'd use for it.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: But the show itself is still really fun. Like essentially
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: like they explore all these wonky, crazy houses and then they,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: go in and they do this renovation where they make
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: it look all nice and they fix a bunch of
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: stuff that's broken and they help a family out. And
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: because it's like, it's basically like $ 150, 000 prize, like some
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: families really get a boost that they could use, which
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: I appreciate. So, and it's, you know, one of those
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: HGTV shows. So it's, it's always well done in that way. Yeah.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: So anyway, it's, it's a fun show. Like I said,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: I don't love that they lean so hard on the
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: ghosts thing, but the scariest house in America is a
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: really fun renovation show anyway. So I recommend checking that out.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: I know a lot of it's streaming on HBO at
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: the time of our recording this.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: I like it. I like it. I mean, I do
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: like some spooky things, so that's fun. Sure. Yeah. All right.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: I'm going to recommend a book. Speaking of like behavior
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: analysis and kind of like the advancement of stuff, this
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: book is called Carry Your Heart, Indigenous Helping Wisdom and
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: the Science of Psychological Flexibility written by Dr. Louis Bush. Wow.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: He is a Canadian behavior analyst and psychologist, psychotherapist. This
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: is his bio. Oh, Louis Bush is a bear clan
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: member of the Cree nation. It's the, um, this is
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: why is seek. I believe is how it's pronounced. Cree nation,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: a registered psychotherapist and behavioral scientist. He actually studied and
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: did a residency at Harvard, uh, Where Skinner was working
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: and as part of like a behavior analysis program. So
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: the book is this really cool melding of indigenous knowledge
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: and experience and psychological flexibility and act and what that
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: all looks like together. And this is one of the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: most impactful books I've ever read.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: And I'm not saying that because I know Louie personally.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: It's one of those, I read it, I finished it yesterday.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: He had me crying on the plane because so much
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: of it has to do with just connecting with who
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: you are and identity and culture and what that means
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: and indigenous knowledge systems and all this stuff. And so
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: I just strong recommend, if you are somebody who is
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: interested in ACT in particular, this is a great read
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: in that space. It's called Carry Your Heart, Indigenous Helping
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: Wisdom and the Science of Psychological Flexibility by Louis Bush.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: And it's his debut book and it is unbelievable. So
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: I recommend everybody check it out.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: I'm very glad you went last because I would not
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: want to follow that recommendation.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: It's hard, right?
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: All right. So, Scariest House in America TV show. You
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: can disregard that. Carry Your Heart by Lewis Bush is
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: the book that you're recommending. Anyway, if you'd like to
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: tell us your thoughts on what we've said about Skinner
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: so far, you can email us directly at info at WWD,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: WWD podcast.com, or reach us on the social media platforms.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: And we do look forward to hearing from you. I've
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: been a little bit more attentive to blue sky lately.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: So if you're on there, it's possible you will stumble
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: upon me while I'm also on there. Anyway, I think
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: that's what we have to say about our topic for now.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: Is there anything that you'd like to add or that
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: I missed before we say our goodbyes?
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: No, I think that covers it. All right.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: Thank you all so much for listening. This is Abraham.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: And this is Shane.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: We're out.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: See ya.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: going to www.wwdpodcast.com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: have an awesome day.