Science and Human Behavior by B. F. Skinner

Author:B. F. Skinner [Skinner, B. F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The Free Press
Published: 2014-01-25T05:08:47+00:00

CHAPTER XVI

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THINKING

THE BEHAVIOR OF MAKING A DECISION

In self-control the alternative courses of action are specifiable in advance, and the issue is resolved before control is exerted. The techniques of control can be efficiently designed to achieve a particular state of affairs. There are instances of the manipulation of one’s own behavior, however, in which the outcome cannot be predicted. Some sort of “self-determination” is involved, for example, in deciding which of two courses of action is to be followed. The task is not simply to make a selected course of action probable but to decide an issue. The individual sometimes does this by manipulating some of the variables of which his behavior is a function. The techniques are more limited than in self-control because the outcome cannot be specified in advance.

In making a decision, as in self-control, the manipulated variables are often private events within the organism. As such they present a special problem, to which we shall return in Chapter XVII. Familiar instances in which the variables are accessible to everyone will suffice here. The processes appear to be the same whether the variables are public or private. “Making a decision” also resembles self-control in that some of the techniques are used in essentially the same way in controlling the behavior of others. This is not true when we persuade someone to behave in a given way since our variables operate in favor of a single alternative, and no decision is involved. When we attempt to help someone “make up his mind” without prejudice to any course of action, however, we employ the techniques which the individual may use upon himself in reaching a decision.

Although variables in the field of motivation and conditioning are used in making a decision, they are less specific and their effect is often delayed. For more direct results we resort to the manipulation of stimuli. If all relevant courses of action show some strength before we decide among them, our techniques consist of finding supplementary sources of strength which, when applied to the behavior of others, would be classified as prompting or probing (Chapter XIV). In deciding whether to spend our vacation in the mountains or at the seashore, for example, we may pore over travel magazines and vacation booklets, find out where our friends are going and what weather is predicted for each place, and so on. This material may, if we are unlucky, simply maintain the balance between the two courses of action, but it is more likely to lead to the prepotent emergence of one of them. “Deciding,” as the term will be used here, is not the execution of the act decided upon but the preliminary behavior responsible for it.

The process of deciding may come to an end before the act is executed when some relatively irrevocable step is taken—for example, we may decide about the vacation by making a down payment to hold a reservation. A common conclusion is simply to announce our decision. By saying that

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