1. The Engineered Self: Behaviorism, Conditioning and Control

2. Thorndike’s Puzzle Box c. 1898 Yerkes Papers, Yale Manuscripts & Archives

3. From Human Psychology to Animal Psychology Edward Thorndike’s Puzzle Box Models of Learning Systems of Reward and Punishment 1910 Journal of Animal Psychology, editors Robert Yerkes and John B. Watson

4. John B. Watson (1878-1958) Operationalize Behavior Psychology’s goal: the prediction and control of behavior

5. “I don’t believe the psychologist is studying consciousness any more than we are and I am willing to say that consciousness is merely a tool, a fundamental assumption with which the chemist works, the physiologist and every one else who observes. All of our sensory work, memory work, attention, etc. are part of definite modes of behavior.” Watson to Yerkes, 1910

6. Testing tonic grasp reflex in Newborns, 1916

7. Conditioning: U: Unconditioned, C: Conditioned S: Stimulus, R: Response Watson (1929)

8. “Little Albert” Experiments

10. Watson and “Little Albert”

11. “Treat them as if they were young adults…Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning…Try it out. In a week’s time you will find how easy it is to be perfectly objective with your child and at the same time kind. You will be utterly ashamed of the mawkish, sentimental way you have been handling it.” Watson, The Psychological Care of the Infant and Child (1928)

12. 1932 ALDOUS HUXLEY (1894-1963) Brave New World Revisited 1958

13. B.F.Skinner (1904-1990)

14. Original, non-electrified Skinner Boxes

15. Pigeon Pecking in Skinner Box OPERANT CONDITIONING

16. Skinner and his Skinner Box Behavior of Organisms 1938

17. Modernized Skinner Box

18. Debbie in a Baby Tender

19. Skinner’s Baby Tender Eve Skinner playing with Debbie

20. Skinner’s Baby Tender Photo from Time Magazine

21. B.F. Skinner, “Baby in a Box” October, 1945 Skinner tried to market invention as “Heir Conditioner”

22. Walden Two (1948) Beyond Freedom & Dignity (1971)

23. Skinner Caricature Darwin Caricature c. 1970 1871

24. “A scientific analysis of behavior dispossesses autonomous man and turns the control he has been said to exert over to the environment…. Man himself may be controlled by the environment, but it is an environment which is almost wholly of his own making…The evolution of a culture is in fact a kind of gigantic exercise in self-control.” Beyond Freedom & Dignity, pp 205-206

25. September, 1971

26. Skinner in his own “box” c. 1980 Photo Dana Fineman/SYGMA

27. Token Economies Behavior modification system designed to increase desirable behavior and decrease undesirable behavior with the use of tokens. Individuals receive tokens for desirable behavior. The tokens are later exchanged for a meaningful object or privilege. Allyon & Azrin, The Token Economy: A Motivational System for Therapy and Rehabilitation (Prentice-Hall, 1968). Instituted in mental hospitals and prison settings beginning in 1960s Aim was to establish patients’ daily living skills.