While he might not be a household name for most people, B.F. Skinner is one of the most important psychologists in history due to his work and theories around behaviorism. As VeryWellMind reported, Skinner was called the “most influential psychologist of the 20th century” in a 2002 survey of psychologists.
Born on March 20, 1904, Skinner became a leading psychologist, behaviorist, inventor and social philosopher who received his PhD in psychology from Harvard University in 1931. He then became a professor of psychology there in 1948, serving as the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard from 1958 until his retirement in 1974. But despite his work in psychology and similar fields, he originally wanted to be a writer. So he’s a good choice for our quote of the day, which focuses on not letting failure stop you from trying again.
Per Harvard, Skinner was influenced by a specific philosophy of psychology called behaviorism. Whereas Freud and Jung’s psychoanalytical theories look at the way people’s inner unconscious or hidden desires and memories can impact their actions, behaviorism rejects all of that. It doesn’t even accept the concept of “mind” in impacting psychological explanations, either. Skinner believed that the “goal of a science of psychology was to predict and control an organism’s behavior from its current stimulus situation and its history of reinforcement.” Essentially, as VeryWellMind put it, he believed that “all human action was the direct result of conditioning” and free will is an illusion.
Most notably, Skinner came up with the concept of operant conditioning. This is a “type of learning in which behavior changes based on its consequences,” per VeryWellMind. You reinforce a behavior that you want to strengthen, and you punish a behavior that you don’t want someone to do again. He also invented gadgets such as the Skinner box and the cumulative recorder.
With all of his theories, inventions and books he wrote (more than 20, plus he did write 180 articles, per the B.F. Skinner Foundation), it’s easy to see why he was so influential in his field and beyond. And today’s quote carries a lot of wisdom regarding perseverance and not giving up.
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Quote of the Day by B.F. Skinner
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“A failure is not always a mistake; it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.”
This quote comes from Skinner’s 1971 book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, in a chapter titled “The Design of a Culture.” The book description calls this work “profound and profoundly controversial,” and in it he “makes his definitive statement about humankind and society.”
Ultimately, this book “urges us to reexamine the ideals we have taken for granted and to consider the possibility of a radically behaviorist approach to human problems,” even if that seems incompatible with human nature or current systems. And in doing so, Skinner imagines a world we can build where “humankind can attain its greatest possible achievements.”
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The chapter this quote appears in is all about the intricacies of designing a society, as the title suggests. He talks about the psychological implications of forced conditions on people and of having people work to survive. He also writes that a lot of cultural design and discussions of modern issues revolve around metaphors and people’s feelings, which, to him, don’t lead to solutions.
He then writes about utopian literature and how someone could design a utopian society and find solutions to do so through a sort of cultural engineering. This is all, of course, a thought experiment, with Skinner shooting off ideas about why, theoretically, one could eventually exist.
In the paragraph that he writes the above quote, he states that, given the history of people trying to set up utopian societies, it makes sense that many people think of “utopian” to mean “unworkable.” However, he posits that if certain attempts for a utopia have failed, that means there are also failures of current structures that have failed as well. Then he says the quote above: “A failure is not always a mistake; it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.”
Even though those cultures or societies have failed in the past, and might not be possible right now, better designs await. Sure, there are a lot of great arguments as to why a utopia could never exist with humans as they are. But if you just stop looking for answers on how to get there altogether, we definitely won’t ever experience one.
If you don’t subscribe to Skinner’s theories, you might have a hard time agreeing with his ideas about a utopian society and how to create one (or if one could even exist). But the ultimate point of his quote stands.
Outside of the context of his book and this chapter, the quote can absolutely inspire people to persevere. Even though it can be easy to see a failure or misstep as a mistake and you might want to just quit, it’s important to remember that it’s not an indictment of who you are or what you’re capable of. And if you stop altogether, you really will fail because it'll be like you didn't even try in the first place: nothing will come out of quitting.
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More Quotes from B.F. Skinner
“A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.”“Behavior is determined by its consequences.”“The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.”“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”“We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.”“It is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It's a question of what's to be done from now on.”Up Next:
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