February 15, 2016

February 15, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971, p. 185) Skinner suggests “We must know how the environment works before we can change it to change behavior. A mere shift in emphasis from man to environment means very little.” Although Skinner went to great length to explain why in the science of human behavior “the environment takes over the function and role of autonomous man (p. 185)”, he never spoke of the two ways of talking, which emphasize or ignore this science. 

Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which the speaker aversively influences the listener, is simply too coarse to address the complexity of environment-behavior functional relations.  The public speech which is necessary to convey radical behaviorism is Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB).  Only in the absence of aversive stimuli do we and can we engage in SVB. Moreover, SVB can only be prolonged to the extent that we can maintain the environment in which it occurs. 

Although he has never talked about this, Skinner’s public speech contained a lot of SVB and relatively little NVB. Most behaviorists, however, were mainly affected in their private speech, but not in their public speech. Their public speech contains as much NVB as non-behaviorists. The fact that they became knowledgeable about behavioral science makes them have more NVB than people who are not that adamant about what they know. 

Novice behaviorists learn how to write and speak in their new language, but their NVB public speech was never addressed, let alone corrected. Consequently, most rejection of behaviorism in academia has nothing to do with resistance against behaviorism, but with the way in which its representatives have talked about it.  Most criticism is based on misunderstanding of behaviorism. Why did this misunderstanding occur? Why do many people still demonize it? The misunderstanding of behaviorism in particular and of science in general is a function of our unscientific way of talking called NVB.