Theories_of_Personality 7th Ed Feist

Feist−Feist: Theories of

Personality, Seventh

Edition

V. Learning Theories 15. Skinner: Behavioral

Analysis

© The McGraw−Hill^471

Companies, 2009

forcement, and the contingencies of the social environment. Therefore, the act of
physically restraining a person does no more to negate freedom than does any other
technique of control, including self-control.

Self-Control
If personal freedom is a fiction, then how can a person exercise self-control? Skin-
ner would say that, just as people can alter the variables in another person’s environ-
ment, so they can manipulate the variables within their own environment and thus
exercise some measure of self-control. The contingencies of self-control, however,
do not reside within the individual and cannot be freely chosen. When people con-
trol their own behavior, they do so by manipulating the same variables that they
would use in controlling someone else’s behavior, and ultimately these variables lie
outside themselves.
Skinner and Margaret Vaughan (Skinner & Vaughan, 1983) have discussed sev-
eral 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 re-
sources 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 be-
havior. 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 ex-
ample, 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 undesirable

Chapter 15 Skinner: Behavioral Analysis 465

Physical restraint is one means of social control.