Chapter 16 Skinner: Behavioral Analysis 483would use in controlling someone else’s behavior, and ultimately these variables
lie outside themselves.
Skinner and Margaret Vaughan (Skinner & Vaughan, 1983) have discussed
several techniques that people can use to exercise self-control without resorting to
free choice. First, they can use physical aids such as tools, machines, and financial
resources to alter their environment. For example, a person may take extra money
when going shopping to give herself the option of impulse buying. Second, people
can change their environment, thereby increasing the probability of the desired
behavior. For example, a student wanting to concentrate on his studies can turn
off a distracting television set. Third, people can arrange their environment so that
they can escape from an aversive stimulus only by producing the proper response.
For example, a woman can set an alarm clock so that the aversive sound can be
stopped only by getting out of bed to shut off the alarm.
Fourth, people can take drugs, especially alcohol, as a means of self-control.
For example, a man may ingest tranquilizers to make his behavior more placid.
Fifth, people can simply do something else in order to avoid behaving in an unde-
sirable fashion. For example, an obsessive woman may count repetitious patterns
in wallpaper to avoid thinking about previous experiences that would create guilt.
In these examples, the substitute behaviors are negatively reinforcing because they
allow a person to avoid unpleasant behaviors or thoughts.
The Unhealthy Personality
Unfortunately, the techniques of social control and self-control sometimes produce
detrimental effects, which result in inappropriate behavior and unhealthy personal-
ity development.
Counteracting Strategies
When social control is excessive, people can use three basic strategies for coun-
teracting it—they can escape, revolt, or use passive resistance (Skinner, 1953).
With the defensive strategy of escape, people withdraw from the controlling agent
either physically or psychologically. People who counteract by escape find it dif-
ficult to become involved in intimate personal relationships, tend to be mistrustful
of people, and prefer to live lonely lives of noninvolvement.
People who revolt against society’s controls behave more actively, counterat-
tacking the controlling agent. People can rebel through vandalizing public property,
tormenting teachers, verbally abusing other people, pilfering equipment from
employers, provoking the police, or overthrowing established organizations such
as religions or governments.
People who counteract control through passive resistance are more subtle
than those who rebel and more irritating to the controllers than those who rely
on escape. Skinner (1953) believed that passive resistance is most likely to be
used where escape and revolt have failed. The conspicuous feature of passive
resistance is stubbornness. A child with homework to do finds a dozen excuses
why it cannot be finished; an employee slows down progress by undermining the
work of others.