We know a great deal about human behavior, for we have observed it all our lives under a great variety of circumstances and have learned about it from others who have had similar experiences. We need to interpret familiar facts of this sort in the light of scientific analysis. Much of Verbal Behavior is theoretical in that sense and so are discussions of other kinds of social behavior which have appeared in four papers and in Walden Two. Similar issues arise in the practical application of basic analysis, and I have discussed some of them in The Technology of Teaching.
That is not a bad record for a Grand Anti-Theoretician, and to it must now be added the present book. It is theoretical in several senses. Part I traces the emergence of the concept of contingencies of reinforcement and its use in the interpretation of cultural practices and in the prediction and control of human behavior. Part II takes up the nature and dimensions of behavior, the ontogenic and phylogenic variables of which it is a function, and the contingent relations among those variables. Part III returns to theories which appeal to "events taking place somewhere else, at some other level of observation" and shows how they are replaced by an analysis of contingencies of reinforcement.
[From the Preface of Contingencies of Reinforcement (1969). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.]
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