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Verbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner William James Lectures Harvard University 1948
Verbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner William James Lectures Harvard University 1948
by
B. F. Skinner
William James Lectures
Harvard University
1948
ii
In service of this second goal, the present document is not a
veridical copy, scan, or photograph of the manuscript. Rather, it is
a transcription, a text, and the reader should be aware of what that
implies. I have necessarily made some changes to the document, and
it is the main purpose of this preface to explain what those changes
are and what they imply for the scholar who wishes to cite the work.
In those cases where the correct form was uncertain, and where
the error affected the sense of the passage, I explained my decision
in the endnotes. My policy was to check Verbal Behavior for parallel
constructions, and if I could find none, I made no change and offered
a suggested reading in the endnotes.
iii
abbreviations in the manuscript (r, vb, acct, wd, spkr, mng, etc.) I
substituted full terms (response, verbal behavior, account, word,
speaker, and meaning, respectively). No doubt those were Skinner's
abbreviations, not those of his secretary, and I was tempted to
retain them, for they do indeed tell us something about how Skinner
wrote his drafts, and they impart to the manuscript a dynamic
quality. But the abbreviations distract the reader and interfere
with the smooth interpretation of the text. Moreover an important
purpose of this project was to produce a searchable document. The
scholar who wants to discover what Skinner said about meaning, or
when he first started using the term verbal behavior, would find
nothing at all in the present document under those terms if the
abbreviations had been retained.
iv
way of finding them, I adjusted the line spacing of Page 27 and was
able to fit them in at the bottom of the page. A third footnote
appears in the original manuscript on Page 80, flagged with an
asterisk. To differentiate passages keyed to my endnotes from those
keyed to Skinner's own footnotes, all endnotes are flagged with a
dagger(†). The endnotes themselves are differentiated by the page
numbers of the corresponding text, along with a few identifying
words.
David C. Palmer
Leverett, Massachusetts
June, 2009
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One. Verbal Behavior – The Age of Words Page 1
Chapter Two. Verbal Behavior as a Scientific
Subject Matter Page 20
Chapter Three. Types of Verbal Behavior Page 37
Chapter Four. Words and Things – The Problem of
Reference Page 57
Chapter Five. Multiple Sources of Verbal Strength Page 76
Chapter Six. Making Sentences Page 94
Chapter Seven. The Effect Upon the Listener Page 115
Chapter Eight. Understanding, Real and Spurious Page 130
Chapter Nine. Thinking in Words Page 147
Chapter Ten. The Place of Verbal Behavior in
Human Affairs Page 162
1.
CHAPTER I: Verbal Behavior - The Age of Words
We call this the Atomic Age, and for good reason; but it is
possible that we shall be remembered for our concern with the
expansive rather than the exceeding small - for having aspired
toward the heights rather than the depths - and that we are living
in the Age of Words. Nothing is more characteristic of our times
than the examination of linguistic processes. It is true, we cannot
claim to have discovered either the potency or the perfidy of words,
but we are perhaps the first to accept the consequences. Not only
have we recognized the importance of language in human affairs; in
some measure we have acted accordingly. This is true of every
important field of modern thought.
Logic has never been far from grammar, but the current relation
is especially close. Some logicians define their field as the
analysis of language, and frankly subdivide it into logical
semantics, logical syntax, and so on. When the modern logician is
not constructing or analysing formal languages, he may be found
criticizing both physics and metaphysics, not as heretofore for
their ideas, but for their grammar.
Psychology, in its original role as the science of mind, was
under the necessity of establishing contact with its subject matter.
Language appeared to be the natural medium, but there were
difficulties. Indeed, the need for communicating with the world of
mental process was generally felt to be a great nuisance. Under the
modern hypothesis that thought itself is largely verbal, the medium
has become a subject matter in its own right. Support for such, a
program came from an unexpected quarter. In analysing the techniques
of wit and other verbal processes, Freud reaffirmed a scientific
determinism in a field of behavior which had appeared especially
capricious and undoubtedly stimulated an analysis of the acts of
speaking and hearing.
1
George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man. Cf. from the same:
"The world may be wicked, cruel, and stupid, but it is patient;
on this point I will not be gainsaid, it is patient; I know what
I am talking about; I maintain the world is patient."
2
Arthur Machen, The Hill of Dreams.
28.
cant fact is not that one speaks loudly but that one speaks above
an energy level that would ordinarily prevail under the same con-
ditions.
Another complication arises from the fact that the strength of
the speaker's behavior is often not important to the listener and may
interfere with effective discourse. Society, taking the side of the
listener, restrains any extreme manifestation of strength and forces
speech toward a standard level of speed and energy. If a child speaks
softly, he is told to speak up. If he hesitates, he is told to hurry.
If his words come tumbling out, he is told to be deliberate. So also
with respect to the third indicator, to repeat oneself is bad form,
and the double negative, which is merely the innocent result of a
strong no, is called ungrammatical and illogical.
Our control over the verbal response Out!, as in the case of any
response showing a similar relation to a subsequent reinforcement, is
thus reduced to our control of the underlying drive.
30.
Any problem which arises here is not peculiar to the verbal field and
need not be solved for our present purposes. Unfortunately, the field
of human motivation is not well developed. Classifications of drives
and reductions to basic drives have met with only moderate success. We
may avoid the systematic issues with the following procedure. For
each state of affairs which can be shown to have a reinforcing effect
upon verbal behavior we assume a corresponding drive. We leave any
demonstration of covariation between particular drives and hence any
proof of larger common drives till a later date. This practice is
acceptable if we can find an appropriate controlling operation. We
always come back to these operations in achieving the prediction and
control of behavior, no matter what larger classification has been
achieved. Fortunately, suitable operations usually can be found. For
example, in addition to its effect in reinforcing a response, the
reinforcement itself usually alters the drive or suggests ways of
doing so.
###
37.
CHAPTER THREE: Types of Verbal Behavior
In the last lecture several points of method were illustrated
with a type of verbal behavior called the mand, in which the form of
response was related to a common, though not inevitable, consequence.
A special feature of the mand is that its form is not controlled by
any stimulus acting prior to the emission. The response is
functionally related to a drive, and we control it through any
operation which will change the drive. We cannot call the drive a
stimulus or make it part of a "total stimulating situation" because it
does not have the proper dimensions.
But prior stimuli are important. A child may emit the mand Candy!
in vacuo, so to speak, if the drive is very strong, but the response
will appear at a lower drive level in the presence of someone who
frequently provides candy, and at a still lower level in the presence
of actual candy. The reason for this is clear enough. The comparable
process in non-verbal behavior has been fairly thoroughly
investigated. The person who frequently provides candy has the status
of what is called a discriminative stimulus. In the presence of such a
stimulus, a response is likely to be reinforced; in its absence it is
likely to go unreinforced. The result is that the response is stronger
in the presence of the stimulus. The additional presence of candy
creates a situation in which a reinforcement is still more likely to
be received and which therefore acquires a still more powerful
control.
All stimuli which control particular verbal responses are of this
sort. They are not eliciting stimuli, either conditioned or
unconditioned. The close temporal and intensive relation between
stimulus and response which obtains in elicited behavior is lacking. A
stimulus simply makes a verbal response more likely to occur. In some
cases it may be the principal determiner and a response may appear
quickly and practically invariably when the stimulus is introduced.
The stimulus may seem to elicit, but it remains discriminative, even
so. It is not a simple stimulus-response formula because three terms
are always involved: a stimulus, a response, and a reinforcement which
is contingent upon both. The stimulus has whatever power it possesses
because it is the occasion for successful responding. Its control may
be no less lawful than that of an eliciting stimulus, but it is
different, not only in its temporal and intensive relations but in its
dependence upon certain sustaining conditions.
The only point at which the tact differs from the preceding cases
is in the nature of the controlling stimulus. This is true by
definition, but there are consequences which need to be pointed out.
In echoic and textual behavior it is fairly easy to identify the
controlling variable. The total range of variation of the class of
stimuli called the sound a or of the class of non-verbal stimuli
called the letter A is small compared with the class of stimuli
involved in a single tact. This difference is immediately felt when we
try to predict or control the behavior. What are the essential
properties of the stimulus which evokes the response chair? It is not
a new question, even in this form, but it is still unanswered.
The one useful sense in which we can say that the verbal
response itself is the fact or the idea or the proposition is that it
has the effect of singling out an aspect of nature. It is in this
sense that we can say that science is a set of propositions. Science
is not nature itself, for that existed long before scientists. Nor is
it sheer verbal form. Science, as knowing, is human behavior, and a
very large part of it is verbal behavior. Incidentally, it may be
that we have been delayed in arriving at a proper understanding of the
status of facts and ideas because a verbal response is, in a rough
sense, the name of itself. More precisely, we talk about talking by
emitting similar responses. Thus, when we talk about the verbal
response
161.
The sky is blue we are talking about some instance of verbal behavior
having that form. We deal with it in its relation to an event which we
must also describe with at least a synonymous expression. It is
little wonder that it has taken many centuries to get the matter
straight and that it may take another century or two more.
The value of the verbal response which asserts is demonstrated
by the enormous collection of the records of such assertions. Human
knowledge, apart from the behavior of the individual, is almost
entirely in this form - from copybook maxims to theoretical physics.
It is one of the tasks of a science of verbal behavior to clarify the
nature of such material, as we shall see next week.
###
162.
CHAPTER TEN: The Place of Verbal Behavior in Human Affairs
It is time to take stock. Our analysis of verbal behavior is
finished, but several questions remain to be answered. From the point
of view of scientific method, what sort of analysis is it? What basic
conception of verbal behavior has emerged? And if this conception is
reasonably correct, what is the place and function of verbal behavior
in human affairs?
First, a brief summary. We began with a decision to avoid
certain historical prejudices and to attack verbal behavior in the raw
form in which it was observed. Our subject matter was not taken to be
"symbolic" behavior or behavior possessing any special sort of
meaning. I think this provision has been respected. "Verbal behavior"
has throughout been so used in this crude sense. It has been broken
into parts - into "responses" - whenever a part could be shown to be
under the control of a separate variable, so that our units - the so-
called tacts, mands, and so on - have specified more than behavior
itself. But the additional material has always been on the side of the
independent variables. No change in the nature of the response itself
has been implied.
A special field of verbal behavior was defined in terms of the
necessary mediation of reinforcement by another organism. This was the
alternative to a definition as symbolic or meaningful behavior. It
has not only served to define a field which is usefully considered as
a whole; it has pointed up the special features of verbal behavior
more sharply than the doctrine of meaning. Uniquely verbal
characteristics have been derived from the definition more directly
and in greater number. Thus, the definition specifies, among other
things, that the effect of verbal behavior will be relatively
independent of its energy level; that thousands of different
responses can be executed with the same limited musculature; that
verbal behavior is normally very fast; that its strength is always
somewhat modified because its reinforcement is never inevitable and
may be long delayed; that a verbal response will always be
represented in some inorganic form, which can usually be preserved and
transmitted; that a speaker will also be a listener and that his
potentialities will be greatly increased in both roles when he listens
to himself; that responses of different form may lead to the same
effect; that responses of the same form may lead to different
effects; that verbal behavior is normally under the control of more
than one variable, with a wide range of consequences which include
some of the characteristics of style and wit, distortions of form, and
one species of understanding; that a verbal response can be controlled
by a single property or feature of the environment, as in abstraction,
and may be extended, metaphorically or otherwise, through a very
tenuous similarity in stimuli; that responses of novel form may be
emitted on novel occasions and may be effective upon a listener
without special preparation; and that verbal behavior itself may
become one of the variables affecting the later behavior of the
speaker - a characteristic which leads on the one hand to the problem
of awareness and on the other to an interpretation of logic,
mathematics, and other disciplines in which verbal behavior is mani-
pulated. This is no mean achievement for a definition which can be
stated in ten words. We need not be concerned with whether it does the
work of older definitions for it sets aside a much more comprehensive,
and at the same time a much more unitary,
163.
field.
Our fundamental datum was taken to be, not a verbal response as
such, but the probability that a particular response would occur at a
particular time. The notion of "probability" of response, or
"likelihood" of response, or simply response "strength" was essential
to the analysis at every stage. It was especially useful in
considering multiple causation and the secondary behavior of making
sentences.
We undertook to account for the strength of a verbal response
by examining every event which could be shown to have an effect upon
it. This led to a classification of the types of independent variables
and hence of the types of verbal responses. In three cases the
controlling variables were verbal, and a response was classed as
echoic, textual, or intraverbal according to the mode of
correspondence of formal properties of stimulus and response. In
another type of response - the mand - the principal variable was a
drive. The audience was defined as a prior stimulus controlling groups
of responses. The final case in which the independent variable is a
non-verbal thing or event has usually been regarded as crucial, it is
often the only case covered by a definition in terms of meaning, but
it was dealt with (under the name of the tact) with the same kind of
functional analysis as the other classes of responses. The relation
was seen to be susceptible to distortion through incidental or ac-
cidental reinforcing contingencies, and to yield to generic or
metaphorical extension as a normal behavioral process.
When two or more variables were operative at the same time, the
preferential strength of response was classified variously as "choice
of synonyms," "multiple meaning," various formal devices of prose and
poetry, distortion and intrusion of response, the use of supplementary
sources of strength in prompting and probing, as in the protective
techniques, and eventually, in considering the behavior of the
listener or reader, as an important contribution toward the
understanding of verbal behavior.
It follows from the formulation that upon any occasion which is
to some extent novel, a large number of responses will be strengthened
in some degree, some of which will be effective if emitted and others
not. The novel situation, which might include a novel listener, was
found to give rise to another sort of behavior on the part of the
speaker, who was shown to respond not only to the variables in the
external situation, but to his own verbal behavior at the same time.
The speaker characterizes his own responses as tacts, mands, and so
on; he indicates controlling variables; he suggests their adequacy or
inadequacy; he arranges his responses in the most effective order; and
he emits or withholds a response after taking the ultimate effect into
consideration. The result is that the listener is more effectively
controlled than if primary responses were emitted uncritically
according to strength or in order of stimulation.
Just as the scientific gain arises from the social gain which
probably preceded it, so both of these lead to what we might call the
personal gain. Once equipped with a large verbal repertoire the
individual emits responses which are not effective
170.
according to the original relations. Part of this is a sort of
emotional or aesthetic by-product. The autonomic responses of the
listener do not play any important role in either the social or
scientific uses of languages. But verbal behavior may come to be
emitted largely because of this effect upon the speaker himself. When
his behavior is recorded and read by another individual, there is a
similar personal gain, which is one of the principal contributions of
literature.
Another personal function requires a different explanation.
Verbal behavior provides a way of "doing something about" a state of
affairs when no practical action can be taken. This has been called
verbal magic, escape, sublimation, and catharsis. The starving man
talks about food, the lover pretends to converse with his beloved, the
aggressive person fantasies an episode in which he tells off his
enemy, Samuel Butler gives vent to his father-hatred by writing a book
in which a father figures in an unfavorable light, and Lewis Carroll
continues to torture young children, year in and year out, on the
verbal rack called Alice in Wonderland. In a causal account we have to
explain simply why behavior of this sort is emitted, and this is not
too difficult. The behavior, whether in literary disguise or not, is
strong for reasons which can at least be suggested if not proved. The
relief is another matter. The emission of large quantities of verbal
behavior seems to have curative properties. Various neuroses, not to
mention psychoses, have apparently been alleviated by a sudden and
exhausting logorrhea. Some therapists have concluded from this fact
that talking it out gives relief, that inability to talk it out has
caused the trouble. As Hamlet says, "But break, my heart, for I must
hold my tongue." But the therapeutic problem is beyond our present
range. In all cases of this sort we note simply that speakers emit
strong verbal behavior, the poet writes a poem as a hen lays an egg.
Both seem to feel better afterward.
The emotional and releasing effects of verbal behavior are
uppermost in literature. This is compatible with the view which has
been taken of literary behavior during these lectures. In writing a
story or poem the writer places himself in a position in which verbal
behavior is emitted without respect to external conditions and within
certain limits without fear of censure. The discovery of new literary
techniques has generally been the discovery of new situations or new
disguises in which verbal responses may be more freely emitted. The
result is a freer extension of the magical mand, a freer extension of
the metaphorical tact, the appearance of very weak intraverbal
connections, the capitulation to feeble multiple sources, the omission
of grammar and other autoclitics, and so on. Literature is therefore
an exaggeration of normal verbal behavior and is for that reason an
especially useful datum in a scientific analysis.
There is no conflict between the aims of literary and scientific
behavior. They are not opposed, but, if anything, complementary, and
neither ever appears in pure form. The mathematician prefers the more
elegant form, and literary people have been known to emit important
and relatively exact statements from time to time.