46 pages • 1 hour read
B. F. SkinnerBeyond Freedom and Dignity
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1971A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Punishment”
Content Warning: This section of the guide quotes a racist portion of Skinner’s text.
Skinner posits that most people are consistently threatened by punishment, meaning they are neither free nor dignified. Punishment is sanctioned by society and used to prevent unwanted behaviors. It is often ineffective and followed by recidivism once the punitive conditions have ceased. The threat of further punishment and residual negative emotions, like guilt or shame, can prevent re-offense or can result in other methods of evading punishment, such as obscuring unwanted behaviors through fantasizing and rationalization and avoiding environmental, physiological, or emotional triggers. These steps to avoid punishment can be taken individually or can be implemented by others, such as locking away one’s possessions to prevent theft or by prohibiting the sale or consumption of drugs and alcohol.
Unintended consequences may follow punishments or avoidance of punishment; for instance, a person may defect from the punishing body. The unwanted consequences of punishment can be evaded by redesigning society to make punishable behavior less prevalent. Some, like critic Joseph Wood Krutch, reject this idea and feel that people should have to prove their goodness. Skinner counters that credit for behavioral changes that result from punishment should go to the environment and not to the reformed individual. He suggests society be redesigned around promoting good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior.
Autonomous man is credited for behaving well when environmental influences on behavior are less visible or are social in nature. Punishment and dignity are negatively correlated; if a person behaves well without punishment, they experience more dignity, but as punishment increases, dignity declines. Goodness and freedom are also often correlated, with many believing a person needs the freedom to choose in order to prove their goodness. Children or others who are not held accountable for their behavior, however, are often supplied with safe environments, as opposed to freedom, where they can learn how to properly behave, thus avoiding punishment.
Punishment arises from the idea that people are responsible for their behavior. Legal responsibility is determined through an examination of facts, such as whether an illegal behavior was committed intentionally. Skinner counters that intentions arise from prior experiences and environmental conditions: “A person does not act because he ‘feels angry’; he acts and feels angry for a common reason, not specified” (72). Behavioral responsibility and punishment are irrelevant in conditions where people may automatically behave well. Studies show some undesirable behaviors are influenced by medical and socioeconomic conditions. Skinner argues that altering the environment to eliminate punishment and to provide instruction on how to avoid punishment makes the world safer. Science has uncovered genetic behavioral influences, which further challenge the notion that people should be held responsible for their behavior. People are more likely to accept that behavior is determined when exploring how it negates punishment.
Exoneration is the antithesis of responsibility. Controllers and acting individuals can pass the blame to one another to exonerate themselves, or individuals can be exonerated through genetic sources of behavior. Despite slow behavioral changes and the fact that punishment inflicts pain, society generally supports and justifies punishers. This is exemplified through an excerpt from French philosopher Joseph de Maistre, which idealizes the role of an executioner. Historical support of punishment has led to the continued use of punitive actions to control behavior, and suggested alternatives are perceived as threatening freedom and dignity. Skinner posits there are better methods of behavioral control.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Alternatives to Punishment”
Skinner explores “weak” alternatives to punishment—permissiveness, maieutic practices, guidance, material dependence, and perspective-changing.
Permissiveness holds that people will behave properly if given complete freedom from controlling forces, such as government, organized religion, and formal education. Although permissiveness absolves controllers of responsibility, it passes behavioral control to other social and environmental influences.
Maieutic practices are illustrated through Socrates’s midwife metaphor in which a behavioral midwife helps “birth” behaviors. Psychotherapy, in which patients are encouraged to arrive at their own conclusions, uses such midwifery. Maieutic practices exonerate the controller, give credit to the acting individual, and are applicable when the acting individual has a general knowledge of the topic or situation. Skinner expounds: “We read books which help us say things we are on the verge of saying anyway but cannot quite say without help” (86). Similar to persuasiveness, maieutic practices pass credit to unrecognized controlling forces.
Skinner compares the concept of guidance to training plants to grow in certain ways. Guidance is clearly recognized in education, where children are guided through the learning process until they reach maturity. The benefits of guidance are similar to those of midwifery—controllers avoid taking responsibility, and individuals are awarded credit for their progress. Skinner argues that it is the controlling measures used in guidance that cause behavioral changes.
Rousseau posited that a dependence on things, such as a child learning through books rather than from a teacher, could refute social control. A dependence on things saves the practitioner’s energy and awards credit to the learner. Skinner counters that things cannot take control to shape behavior, that sometimes the results of thing-dependence are destructive, and that such dependence cannot create self-reliance.
While changing the environment to control behavior is frowned upon, changing a person’s mind is not, likely because free will is attributed as causing the altered mindset. To change someone’s mind requires environmental changes. These may be made through hints, suggestions, urges, persuasions, or reasoning. Changes of mind only take place if the tendency to behave as intended exists. While they are discussed in terms of mental states, such as beliefs or opinions, they emerge as changes in the probability of behaviors.
Overt or forceful methods of changing minds, such as propaganda or brainwashing, are socially unacceptable. Less obvious methods are accepted because they are ineffective at changing behavior, and the controlling agent is exonerated from responsibility. The freedom provided by weak controlling agents is illusory; the controlling agents are less visible and are not attributed to autonomous man.
Chapters 4-5 Analysis
Skinner explores methods commonly used to control behavior and asserts that they are ineffective. Skinner presents punishment and the so-called “weaker” forms of behavioral control as opposing the aforementioned concepts of freedom and dignity. People widely accept punishment and its alternatives despite the fact that they challenge both freedom and dignity: If people are behaving well because they fear punishment, they are neither free nor do their positive behaviors warrant dignity or credit.
Punishment and its alternatives are ineffective for different reasons. Skinner argues that those who undergo punishments often re-offend once punitive conditions have been lifted. Alternatives to punishment are ineffective because they are indirect, passing off behavioral controls to less visible forces rather than allowing freedom. Skinner explores The Ethical Implications of Behavioral Modification, asserting that a scientific approach to modify human behavior is a more ethical choice than relying on punishment, under which discomfort is utilized to modify behavior, or less direct methods, which decrease the visibility of behavioral controls.
A potential critique is that Skinner’s arguments are often instigated by speculations and unsubstantiated claims. When introducing the topic of punishment, Skinner speculates:
People still control each other more often through censure or blame than commendation or praise, the military and police remain the most powerful arms of government, communications are still occasionally reminded of hellfire, and teachers have abandoned the birch rod only to replace it with more subtle forms of punishment (61).
One could argue that Skinner provides no evidence or context for his assertions. He uses a confident and matter-of-fact tone intended to deter skepticism, and sarcasm when addressing society’s demand that people must prove their goodness rather than live in conditions that promote inherent goodness: “There are, of course, valid reasons for thinking less of a person who is only automatically good, for he is a lesser person” (66). He implies that people are not inferior for behaving well in an environment that promotes inherent good behavior.
Skinner uses exemplum as a form of analytical proof. In his declarations that alternatives to punishment leave individuals subjected to the influences of less visible behavioral controls, Skinner employs hypothetical examples as supporting points. For instance, he writes: “The nondirective psychotherapist may free his patient from certain harmful contingencies in his daily life, but the patient will ‘find his own solution’ only if ethical governmental, religious, educational, or other contingencies induce him to do so” (98). His arguments lack citations; a potential critique is that this makes it difficult for readers to verify Skinner’s claims.
A further critique is that Skinner’s writing contains biases, such as sexism, that emerge through the entirely male perspective of the text. The text also reflects racist beliefs commonly held during Skinner’s era, captured in Skinner’s declaration that “if some races are less intelligent than others, the teacher cannot be blamed if he does not teach them as well” (77).
