B. F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity attempted to reinforce the scientific psychologist’s belief that all behavior is directly related to the environment and conditioning. In Skinner’s worldview displayed here, the individual does not act upon the world; the world acts upon the individual. Skinner is a materialist, a determinist, and an empiricist who sees the world as a box wherein there are no universals, only particulars. Every effect has a material cause and there is no overall big picture or set way the pieces of life fit together. Skinner’s goal is not to understand man, something he is not sure is possible, but instead he tries to predict and control behavior. Skinner’s view outraged religious leaders and others who thought his attempt to undermine “freedom” and “dignity” and replace them with a controlled external environment to manipulate behavior was absurd. As Skinner wrote, “To man qua man we readily say good riddance” (Skinner 191).
Skinner argues that all human behavior results in three consequences. The behavior is either reinforced (increasing its likelihood), punished (decreasing its likelihood), or results in no reinforcement or punishment (decreasing its likelihood). In other words, Skinner argues that people act good because they are rewarded for it and people act bad because they are rewarded for it. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner argues that if we construct society with the appropriate reinforcements and punishments, we will be able to extinguish all undesirable behaviors. Skinner felt concepts like freedom and dignity were mentalistic constructs, unobservable and useless for a scientific psychology. He argues that things like morality, freedom, morals, archetypes, coping mechanisms, self-actualization, and others also represent these constructs. The most important example is the homunculus, the little man that lives inside us and tells us and is used to explain o...