Be wary of the Psychologist - B.F. Skinner.

 

American Psychologist - B.F. Skinner

The American psychologist, B.F. Skinner, is idealised by some and despised by others. For me, he's the enemy of autonomy and freedom. He believed that free will was an illusion and that behaviour is controlled by environment - "Behaviourism" which can be controlled by "Operant Conditioning", a system of rewards and punishment. No wonder some students in the U.S. burnt effigies of Skinner.

I've been trying to get a copy of his book Walden Two without success. The self-governing collectivist utopian community of Walden Two, believe they are exercising autonomy and free will in their decision making and day to day living, but is this really all an illusion, a fraud, bring perpetrated by its founder called T.E. Frazier. Is Walden Two just a psychological experiment?

I was aware that Skinner used his own children for psychological experiments in much the same way, as he used rats and pigeons. I gather he put one child in a Skinner (pigeon box) and they say, he rejected another child, to see how it would play out. His daughter, Deborah Skinner, rejects much of this, and says it isn’t true.  Although she doesn’t deny that she was put in an ‘aircrib’, ‘baby box’, ‘heir conditioner’, “call it what you will”, she says that she didn’t become psychotic, sue her father in a court of law, or shoot herself in a bowling alley in Billings, Montana.

I don't doubt that our environment and upbringing does have a major influence on what we become, but how many parents often become disappointed with the way their children turn out, in spite of their best efforts to control, influence, and shape their behaviour. This is because all of us are born with free will, and some people will misuse it, as Saint Augustine recognised.

Skinner is about manipulating and controlling behaviour in the interest of others, which appeals to many governments. China's "social credit system", defines good and bad behaviour and ranks citizens on their social and financial behaviour on a point system. Show more loyalty to the Chinese Communist government and you get more points. In Britain, the government have used "Nudge Theory" to influence behaviour. Psychologists were also used by the Americans to develop torture programs in Guantanamo Bay.