Skinner's Perspective On Human Behaviour

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Introducing a new perspective in changing human behaviour, B.F. Skinner tells us that it is not enough to use the mere idea of biology and physics in solving human problems. Skinner points out that some of the physical of biological technologies that we have are irrelevant and has never been applied in coming up with a solution to solve these problems. No matter how hard we try. The field of human behaviour is quite a difficult one in psychology. There are different theories into which it explains how human behaviour came about. In Skinner’s winning novel piece, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, he is convinced that human behaviour is driven by the environment and biology. Freedom and dignity have played an important role in our struggle against…show more content…
One of Skinner’s point in his book is that we need to re-evaluate how evolution of man is ought to be in the future with the changes in the “faults” of our traditional conceptions of being a free man in which he stated that the evolution of man is carried out by our environment. Skinner re-channels our idea of an autonomous man into something which he believes can help our society grow more adequately in future. It critiques our past assumptions about human behaviour in relation to environment as an inadequate mechanism of human development because it is unable to explain how the two functions together for…show more content…
Looking at science of behaviour in securing human development, a variety of stimulus-response behaviours arises in addressing the issue of human-made catastrophes. A Marxist perspective as critiques would call it. The problem with Skinner’s optimism towards his idea of controlled society is that human have different conceptions on what an autonomous man is or how “freedom” is practiced in different cultures. Skinner’s proposal to control society where we could attain an efficient human growth through conditioning human behaviour and controlling human’s social environment created a sort of like contretemps between theorists, Skinner’s optimism towards the possibilities of behavioural science in addressing global catastrophes did not have a positive view on others. Reading upon different critiques on Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity, critiques emphasized that Skinner’s idea on controlled human behaviour is a mere mockery of his lab experiments on
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