Must People Be Forced To Use Behavior Analysis?

Abstract

It was characteristic of Fred Skinner that even as he faced his own death, he was concerned about the problems to be faced by others in the future. During my last visit, just before Christmas in 1989, he talked about his progress on his essay, "To Know the Future" (1990), which he was preparing for a volume of reflections by eminent men and women. Our conversation ranged over a number of social issues, and ·· like his essay -ended on a note of cautious optimism. As such, it was quite unlike the pessimistic tone of his talk on "Why we do not act to save our world" (1987). He had, of course, been concerned for many years about the problem of knowing and acting on behalf of the future. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), he discussed the global problems of overpopulation, resource depletion, environmental pollution, and the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, and considered ways in which the cultures of the world could bring these terrifying aspects of the future to bear on the present behavior of their members. In his fmal article, 20 years later, he related these concerns to the limits of scientific knowledge: 'We may suffer overcrowding, shortages, and pollution, but they are the present; they are bits of the future that are we have already reached. Only through science do we know how serious they will eventually become, and only through science are we aware of current dangers such as those of solar and nuclear radiation. But science is ahnost wholly known by description -indeed, the less reliable kind called prediction." (1990, p. 105). Science can also tell us what to do to alter the trends that are leading toward this frightening future, he said, but physics and biology and their associated technologies cannot tell us how to induce people to do these things. To return to Beyond Freedom and Dignity: "What we need is a technology of behavior. We could solve our problems quickly enough if we could a!ljust the growth of the world's population as precisely as we adjust the course of a spaceship, or improve agriculture and industry with some of the conlidence with which we accelerate high-energy particles, or move toward a peaceful world with something like the steady progress with which physics has approached absolute zero (even though both presumably remain out of reach). But a behavioral technology comparable in power and precision to physical and biological technology is laclring'' (1971, p. 5).