JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 1997, 30, 545±568 NUMBER 3(FALL 1997) SKINNER AS SELF-MANAGER ROBERT EPSTEIN CAMBRIDGE CENTER FOR BEHAVIORAL STUDIES AND SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY B. F. Skinner was a remarkably productive, creative, and happy individual, in large part because of his expertise in self-management, a set of self-change skills that derive to some extent from his own scienti®c and theoretical work. Skinner's ardent defense of deter- minism appears to con¯ict with his views on self-control; although determinism can be reconciled with these views, we would be best served by dispensing with the ``ism'' and focusing instead on relevant data and data-driven theories. Contemporary research on self-control has diverged from Skinner's formulation in a number of ways, especially in focusing on cognition and choice. The extraordinary success Skinner had in applying self-management principles to his life should inspire us to take a closer look at the potential value such principles may have for society. DESCRIPTORS: B. F. Skinner, self-control, self-management Give a man a ®sh and he won't be hun- Skinner was, and still is, controversial. His gry. book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, was a Teach a man to ®sh and he will never best-seller in 1971, but most of the reviews be hungry. were caustic. Skinner was a fascist, some The Talmud said. His views were Machiavellian. He would rob us of our freedom and our dignity Two decades ago, when I was 23, my and use the behavioral sciences to control mother announced to the members of her our every move (consider Agnew, 1972; mah-jongg club that I was spending the Chomsky, 1971; Claiborne, 1971; Marwell, summer working with B. F. Skinner. Trying 1972; Rubenstein, 1971; ``Skinner's Uto- to be gracious, one of her friends replied, pia,'' 1971; cf. Carpenter, 1974; Catania & ``How nice! Isn't that a toothpaste compa- Harnad, 1988; Machan, 1974; Modgil & ny?'' Modgil, 1987; Proctor & Weeks, 1990). It annoyed me to be reminded that not In 1968 Skinner was awarded the Nation- everyone knew who Skinner was. He had al Medal of Science by President Johnson; in been my idol since I learned about his work 1971, he received the Gold Medal of the in a college psychology course in 1971, and American Psychological Foundation; and in I had spent the next 5 years collecting and 1972, he was given the Humanist of the Year reading everything he had ever published. To Award of the American Humanist Associa- me, he was the most outstanding scientist tion. His early research with rats and pigeons and thinker of our time, and behaviorism, had helped to lay a foundation for the dis- the school of psychology he had helped to create, was the key to solving humanity's ills. ciplines variously called behavior therapy, Not everyone shared my views. In fact, behavior analysis, behavior modi®cation, the experimental analysis of behavior, and be- I am grateful to Julie S. Vargas and the B. F. Skinner havioral medicine, which, between them, ac- Foundation for providing access to Professor Skinner's count for more than 20 academic journals study. (also see Bellack, Hersen, & Kazdin, 1990; Direct correspondence to the author at 933 Wood- lake Drive, Cardiff by the Sea, California 92007 Blechman & Brownell, 1988; Catania & (E-mail: [email protected]). Brigham, 1978; Eysenck & Martin, 1987; 545 546 ROBERT EPSTEIN Gentry, 1984; Melamed & Siegel, 1980; volume of his autobiography, and the fol- Rimm & Masters, 1979; Sjoden, Bates, & lowing year I was admitted to the doctoral Dockens, 1979). Skinner's work also in- program in psychology at Harvard, where he spired improvements in child-rearing tech- was Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology niques (Becker, 1971; Patterson, 1975; Emeritus. Stewart & Vargas, 1990), training methods Each day of our collaboration brought for developmentally disabled children (Her- new projects and new excitement, and, as I sen, van Hasselt, & Matson, 1983; Matson got to know Skinner better, my awe began & McCartney, 1981; Thompson & Gra- to subside. He insisted, for one thing, that bowski, 1977; Whitman, Scibak, & Reid, I call him ``Fred,'' and it's hard to be in awe 1983), psychopharmacology and substance of someone named Fred (his full name is abuse treatment (Blackman & Sanger, 1978; Burrhus Frederic Skinner). We worked to- Goldberg & Stolerman, 1986; Grabowski, gether every day for 5 years at his home, at Stitzer, & Henning®eld, 1984; Iversen, Iver- his of®ce, and, ultimately, at the Columban sen, & Snyder, 1987; Krasnegor, 1979; Mc- Simulation Laboratory, a new laboratory we Kim, 1986), management and productivity created roughly 20 years after he had aban- techniques in business and industry (Con- doned his laboratory research career (Baxley, nellan, 1978; Daniels & Rosen, 1983; Res- 1982; Epstein, 1981; Skinner, 1983b). cigno, 1984), classroom management tech- Fred's manner was casual and far from in- niques (Axelrod, 1983; Fagen & Hill, 1977; timidating. He often leaned back in his chair Jones, 1990; Kaplan, 1991; McIntyre, 1989; as he spoke, and his eyes sparkled with the O'Leary & O'Leary, 1977; Peterson & Te- energy of a man in his 20s, even though he nenbaum, 1986; Sabatino, Sabatino, & was past 70. He told jokes and recited lim- Mann, 1983; Skinner, 1969; Wheldall, ericks, and he loved to hear new ones. 1987), and computer-aided and pro- ``There once was a family named Stein,'' he grammed instruction (Atkinson & Wilson, told me one day, ``There was Gert, Ep, and 1969; Bullock, 1978; Holland & Skinner, Ein. Gert's poems were bunk, Ep's statues 1961; Lumsdaine & Glaser, 1965; Mager, were junk, and no one could understand 1984; Ruskin, 1974; Skinner, 1968; Skinner Ein!'' Fred grinned ear to ear, and so did I, & Krakower, 1968). even though I wasn't sure at the time who The controversies, the accomplishments, two of those Steins were. (Some of Fred's the honors, the weighty credentialsÐall jokes were, understandably, a little out of made B. F. Skinner a formidable character date.) indeed. It was with more than a small degree Gradually, I found myself relating to Fred of fear that I wrote to Skinner at his Harvard Skinner as a person and even as a friend. The address in 1976 and asked to meet with him. awe was gone, but not for long. You see, as Because I was a graduate student working I got to know Fred better, I began to admire with one of his former students, he invited him in a new way, one that never subsided, me to visit him at his home in Cambridge. one that is still important for all of us: Fred Anxiously, I circled his neighborhood for 2 was, quite simply, a brilliant ``self-manager.'' hours before the time of the scheduled visit, and, to my amazement, when the appointed The Evolution of Skinner's Views on moment ®nally arrived and Skinner swung Self-Control and Self-Management open his front door, I did not throw up. In Self-managementÐthe deliberate appli- fact, we got along so well that within a few cation of principles of self-changeÐwas not weeks, I found myself editing the second just an academic topic for Fred. Nor was it SKINNER AS SELF-MANAGER 547 something he practiced occasionally. It was were in place, the sign was up out of a lifestyle, especially in his later years. I can't the way, but when I took them off the overemphasize the importance of this dis- hook at night, the sign dropped to the tinction. Below I will summarize his pub- middle of the door where I would lished work on self-control and self-manage- bump into it on my way out. (Skinner, ment and will subsequently offer examples 1976, pp. 121±122) of how he used self-management techniques. Presumably, prompted by the sign, he hung But a few examples and a brief analysis can't up his pajamas thereafter. One behavior begin to capture how pervasive self-manage- (constructing the device) had changed the ment was in his life. It was much more than probability of another (hanging up pajamas), a few gizmos and timers. It was what many and the ®rst occurred in order to affect the would call an attitude. He managed his own second. behavior almost continuously. When I was One behavior often changes the probabil- in graduate school, a fellow student men- ity of another accidentally, but this is not tioned that Fred seemed to dispose of en- self-management. This phenomenon, called velopes and junk mail in an especially ef®- automatic chaining or simply autochaining, is cient way. I had never noticed this before, commonplace, and it also plays an impor- but it was true. When he opened his mail tant role in creativity and problem solving in the morning, he usually positioned his (Epstein, 1990, 1991, 1996). You may turn chair and trash can so that the very slightest your head for no apparent reason, see a mag- ¯ick of his wrist did the job. This was no azine, and begin reading. Turning one's head accident, and it was part of the reason he changes the visual ®eld, as does walking into was able to reply to virtually every letter he another room or opening the refrigerator, ever received, even until the end (Vargas, and behavior changes as a result. It is the 1990). deliberateness that distinguishes self-man- We manage our own behavior when we agement from autochaining.1 deliberately alter the variables of which that behavior is a function; that is, when we act 1 I have used the language of intentionality in this in some way in order to change our subse- paper to communicate more readily with my readers, quent behavior.