Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 15. Skinner: Behavioral
Analysis© The McGraw−Hill^463
Companies, 2009Extinction
Once learned, responses can be lost for at least four reasons. First, they can simply
be forgotten during the passage of time. Second, and more likely, they can be lost due
to the interference of preceding or subsequent learning. Third, they can disappear
due to punishment. A fourth cause of lost learning is extinction,defined as the ten-
dency of a previously acquired response to become progressively weakened upon
nonreinforcement.
Operant extinctiontakes place when an experimenter systematically with-
holds reinforcement of a previously learned response until the probability of that re-
sponse diminishes to zero. Rate of operant extinction depends largely on the sched-
ule of reinforcement under which learning occurred.
Compared with responses acquired on a continuous schedule, behavior trained
on an intermittent schedule is much more resistant to extinction. Skinner (1953) ob-
served as many as 10,000 nonreinforced responses with intermittent schedules. Such
behavior appears to be self-perpetuating and is practically indistinguishable from
functionally autonomousbehavior, a concept suggested by Gordon Allport and dis-
cussed in Chapter 13. In general, the higher the rate of responses per reinforcement,
the slower the rate of extinction; the fewer responses an organism must make or the
shorter the time between reinforcers, the more quickly extinction will occur. This
finding suggests that praise and other reinforcers should be used sparingly in train-
ing children.
Extinction is seldom systematically applied to human behavior outside therapy
or behavior modification. Most of us live in relatively unpredictable environments
and almost never experience the methodical withholding of reinforcement. Thus,
many of our behaviors persist over a long period of time because they are being in-
termittently reinforced, even though the nature of that reinforcement may be obscure
to us.
The Human Organism
Our discussion of Skinnerian theory to this point has dealt primarily with the tech-
nology of behavior, a technology based exclusively on the study of animals. But do
the principles of behavior gleaned from rats and pigeons apply to the human organ-
ism? Skinner’s (1974, 1987a) view was that an understanding of the behavior of lab-
oratory animals can generalize to human behavior, just as physics can be used to in-
terpret what is observed in outer space and just as an understanding of basic genetics
can help in interpreting complex evolutionary concepts.
Skinner (1953, 1990a) agreed with John Watson (1913) that psychology must
be confined to a scientific study of observable phenomena, namely behavior. Science
must begin with the simple and move to the more complex. This sequence might
proceed from the behavior of animals to that of psychotics, to that of mentally chal-
lenged children, then to that of other children, and finally to the complex behavior of
adults. Skinner (1974, 1987a), therefore, made no apology for beginning with the
study of animals.
According to Skinner (1987a), human behavior (and human personality) is
shaped by three forces: (1) natural selection, (2) cultural practices, and (3) the indi-
vidual’s history of reinforcement, which we have just discussed. Ultimately, however,
Chapter 15 Skinner: Behavioral Analysis 457