The Behavior of Organisms

Skinner reports a program of controlled lever-pressing experiments with rats and builds from them a general account of how behavior changes. He separates two classes: respondent behavior, drawn out by a stimulus, and operant behavior, emitted and then shaped by what follows it. Rate of responding becomes the measurable index of strength, and reinforcement the operation that raises it. From these parts he assembles a lawful picture in which the environment selects behavior through its consequences.

For clinical work, this is the point at which changing behavior becomes a matter of arranging consequences rather than reading their meaning. The single-organism method, with behavior recorded continuously rather than averaged across a group, set the template for later behavioural treatment and for the behavioural component of combined therapies. The claims stay narrow by design, drawn from animal work and stated without reference to inner life, which is part of what gives the argument its precision.