Behaviorists Quotes & Sayings

The dangerous consequence of the dominance myth is that owners try to physically dominate their dog in an attempt to change the dog's behavior. This "solution" is likely to cause the exact opposite of the result they want. A recent study by veterinary behaviorist Dr. Meghan Herron found that confrontational techniques are, in fact, more likely to escalate aggression, resulting in more dog bites to owners. — American College Of Veterinary Behaviorists

If men were the automatons that behaviorists claim they are, the behaviorist psychologists could not have invented the amazing nonsense called 'behaviorist psychology.' — Robert A. Heinlein

Carrot-and-stick reinforcement' the behaviorists are telling us is needed for this bird to carry out these operations, thirteen different types of construction jobs? B. F. Skinner did a very good thing: in World War — William Peter Blatty

This idea that children won't learn without outside rewards and penalties, or in the debased jargon of the behaviorists, "positive and negative reinforcements," usually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we treat children long enough as if that were true, they will come to believe it is true. So many people have said to me, "If we didn't make children do things, they wouldn't do anything." Even worse, they say, "If I weren't made to do things, I wouldn't do anything."
It is the creed of a slave. — John Holt

Behaviorists tell us that we tend to overweight and overreact to the most recently received information. If we do, we will find that the information that we thought was so important becomes tempered, and reduced in significance, by new and related information that follows. — Robert Haugen

I'm all for past influences; the question is whether they are deterministic. Freud and the behaviorists argue that what we are at any given moment is billiard balls whose past determines our future course. That doesn't take into account that we are forever generating internal representations of positive futures and choosing among them. — Martin Seligman

After endless textbook readings and interviewing 'experts,' I still could not grasp the full concept of 'love,' the mystique of it, why people killed for it, or died for it. Even the experts were confused. Biologists said the phenomenom we called love was just a bombardment of chemicals that affected our brain: dopamine, which grabbed us the throat in the guise of lust, and oxytocin, which settled us down to the mundane complacencies of marriage. On the other hand, Behaviorists thought love was really the search for God. No one agreed. The thing most humans thought we knew about love, we didn't know at all. And all that we did not know was astonishing. Even more astonishing was what passed for love. — Kiana Davenport

Human nature must not be altered in order to have a problem-free world. Man is not just a problem-solving being, as behaviorists would wish us to believe, but a problem-recognizing and -accepting being. — Allan Bloom

I would never talk just to be social. Now, to sit down with a bunch of engineers and talk about the latest concrete forming systems, that's really interesting. Talking with animal behaviorists or with someone who likes to sail, that's interesting. Information is interesting to me. But talking for the sake of talking, I find that quite boring. — Temple Grandin