72 pages • 2-hour read
Science and Human Behavior
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Part 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 6: “The Control of Human Behavior”
Part 6, Chapter 27 Summary: “Culture and Control”
Skinner examines culture as an extension of behavioral control. He emphasizes that cultural practices arise when certain responses are reinforced while others are punished or ignored, noting that “right” and “wrong” eventually acquire the force of “conforming” and “nonconforming” (418). These contingencies shape everything from language and table manners to architecture and art, creating group-specific repertoires of behavior. Skinner draws on examples from anthropology and sociology, pointing out how practices may persist even after their original functional basis has disappeared, often supported by prestige or social distinction. He also underscores that cultural systems tend to be self-sustaining, as individuals both conform to and enforce group norms.
Expanding the scope, Skinner defines culture broadly as “all the variables affecting [the individual] which are arranged by other people” (419). This includes families, institutions, and peer groups, all of which exert overlapping and sometimes conflicting forms of control. He illustrates cultural change through the example of sexual behavior, contrasting older practices of repression and punishment with modern approaches that favor education and milder forms of regulation. Such shifts produce transitional cultural environments, where individuals are subjected to competing influences.
Skinner explores how culture shapes motivation, emotional dispositions, self-control, and self-knowledge. He introduces the idea of a “cultural character,” acknowledging that while certain repertoires may be common within a group, claims about national or group personality are often tenuous. For example, he critiques theories linking infant-rearing practices, such as swaddling, to adult submissive or aggressive behavior, warning against simplistic causal claims.
Part 6, Chapter 28 Summary: “Designing a Culture”
Skinner explores the possibility of deliberately shaping cultural practices. While many customs originate from chance circumstances—geography, leadership, religious innovations—they remain effective in guiding behavior. However, once their impact is recognized, societies begin to question whether cultural design can be made intentional. For Skinner, this leads to the question of whether culture can be systematically engineered to achieve desired outcomes. He believes that cultural design is not driven by future goals but by the reinforcement of past experiences, arguing that proposals for reform arise from prior evidence of beneficial consequences rather than abstract ideals.
This leads to the problem of value judgments. Skinner argues that statements using “should” or “ought” can be translated into scientific predictions of reinforcement rather than appeals to transcendent morality. By reframing values in terms of reinforcement, cultural design remains within the scope of behavioral science rather than philosophy.
Skinner introduces survival as a criterion for evaluating cultures. Just as operant conditioning parallels natural selection, cultural practices that enhance group survival are perpetuated, while harmful ones disappear. Nevertheless, he suggests that survival is an unstable metric—it may conflict with ideals such as happiness or freedom, and its usefulness depends on whether it can be estimated in practice. Skinner concludes that a rigorous science of behavior contributes by clarifying consequences, resisting the lure of immediate reinforcers, and encouraging experimentation.
Part 6, Chapter 29 Summary: “The Problem of Control”
In the concluding chapter, Skinner addresses the central dilemma of applying behavioral science to society. He acknowledges that while science has dramatically advanced methods of influencing behavior, it has no intrinsic safeguard against misuse, just as the technologies of modern warfare demonstrate. The question of “to whom is the control which it generates to be delegated?” (437) becomes both urgent and unsettling.
Skinner surveys four possible responses. The first is denying control by maintaining belief in human freedom, but he argues this is no longer theoretically tenable since behavior is demonstrably shaped by environmental variables. The second, refusing to control, is illustrated through Carl Roger’s psychotherapeutic approach, which minimizes external influence. Skinner notes that such refusal effectively cedes control to other agencies already active in shaping the individual. The third solution is diversifying control, as seen in democratic societies where competing institutions balance each other. Finally, the strategy of controlling control involves granting governments authority to limit abuses by individuals or organizations, though this risks sliding into totalitarianism.
He considers whether a safeguard against despotism exists. He proposes that the power of rulers ultimately depends on the productivity and resilience of those they govern, which in turn required conditions often described with terms like freedom, knowledge, and security. In this sense, long-term consequences function as an ethical framework. As he puts it, “It is much more difficult to use power to achieve certain ultimate consequences” (444), but science, by clarifying such outcomes, makes this form of collective self-control more probable.
The chapter further examines the fate of the individual in light of democratic traditions emphasizing dignity, freedom, and responsibility. While acknowledging the historical effectiveness of these ideas in countering despotic power, Skinner underscores that the scientific analysis of behavior leaves little room for the autonomous “inner man.” Instead, individuals are determined by genetic, environmental, and cultural variables. This perspective challenges Western democratic philosophies, yet Skinner suggests that dignity may reside not in clinging to illusions of freedom but in accepting the scientific facts of behavior.
Part 6 Analysis
This concluding section brings Skinner’s argument to its most urgent and consequential register. Where earlier sections laid out the technical foundations and applications of behavioral science, this final part turns directly to the ethical and philosophical stakes of control at the level of culture. Skinner frames the challenge starkly, arguing that the problem at the heart of The Ethical Implications of Control and Reinforcement is not whether humans will be controlled, but how and by whom.
Skinner rejects the idea that freedom is a refuge against behavioral science, declaring instead, “We all control, and we are all controlled” (438). By reducing human conduct to systems of reinforcement and punishment, he relocates ethical debates from the abstract language of morality into the terrain of consequences. His taxonomy of solutions to the problem of control—denial, refusal, diversification, and regulation—shows the range of human responses but also their limitations. For Skinner, the ethical imperative is not to eliminate control but rather to render it transparent, diversified, and subject to scientific experimentation. This ethic of pragmatism surfaces in his observation: “Perhaps the greatest contribution which a science of behavior may make to the evaluation of cultural practices is an insistence upon experimentation” (436). The ethical question, in Skinner’s framework, is inseparable from method—a culture that treats its practices as hypotheses to be tested is likely to lapse into dogma or despotism. Contemporary debates about AI governance and algorithmic control echo this concern, showing how the problem of ethical reinforcement has only grown more pressing in the modern era.
Equally significant is Skinner’s treatment of Behavior as the Product of Environmental Conditioning Rather Than Inner Will. He rejects the notion of an autonomous inner agent, writing that, “the free inner man […] is only a prescientific substitute for the kinds of causes which are discovered in the course of scientific analysis” (447). This insistence on determinism destabilizes cherished democratic ideals of freedom, dignity, and responsibility, which Skinner reframes as artifacts of cultural reinforcement rather than inherent truths. This deterministic view resonates with some contemporary scholarship, particularly Robert Sapolsky’s Determined (2023), which argues from neuroscience that free will is an illusion. However, the ongoing controversy surrounding compatibilism—the idea that responsibility and determinism can coexist—shows the unresolved legacy of Skinner’s position. His stark dismissal of inner will continue to provoke controversy and debate, reflecting how deeply entrenched notions of personal agency remain in both philosophy and law.
From these premises, Skinner advances the theme of The Potential for Social Engineering through Behavioral Science. His rhetorical question—“Why should the design of culture be left so largely to accident?” (427)—crystallizes his belief that cultural practices should be deliberately shaped rather than passively inherited. Laws, constitutions, religious codes, and educational reforms are, for Skinner, early experiments in cultural design; the science of behavior merely formalizes this process. However, the promise of deliberate cultural engineering is shadowed by its dangers. The example of Nazi Germany and propaganda campaigns underscores the risk that scientific tools of control may be co-opted for despotic ends. At the same time, Skinner’s optimism about science as a neutral safeguard reflects mid-century faith that appears more fragile in retrospect. Today, the same techniques of behavioral influence operate in corporate advertising, social media algorithms, and “nudge theory” in public policy, raising questions about whether deliberate design serves collective survival or entrenched power.
Part 6 captures Skinner’s ambition to elevate behavioral science from laboratory study to the design of entire cultures. The section makes clear that science alone cannot prevent misuse; rather, the survival of cultures depends upon practices of self-control, collective experimentation, and resistance to despotic concentration of power. While aspects of his vision—such as his overconfidence in scientific neutrality and his neglect of pluralism—mark the text as a product of its time, the core questions remain vital. The debates over free will and determinism continue, now enriched by neuroscience and cognitive science, while the ethical dilemmas of cultural engineering have only intensified in an era shaped by global technologies of control.
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