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.Thus, in one case apatient was taught to replace attacking the staff with squatting (Ayl­lon believed that the attack behavior had been instituted by operantcontingencies and could be obliterated by alternative contingencies).But when Ayllon tried to train the patient to approach the staff, he at-tacked them once again (squatting was merely masking the propensityto attack).In another case Ayllon successfully taught a woman to sup-press her complaints about bizarre bodily symptoms.But after a rela­tive came in to ask her to sign over some property, the talk returned.Gerald Davison argued that the operant-controlled renunciation ofthe bizarre talk merely masked an underlying emotional state that wasits real cause.An analysis of the treatment of one of Krasner and Gericke s pa­tients, Susan, raises the same issues.62 She insisted on always wearingwhite clothes.The ward staff used that desire to control her in-wardBehaviorists as Social Engineers | 171behavior.They forced her to wear black and put her onto a tokeneconomy so that she could earn the right to wear white.Behaviorally,the program was successful.But Susan had a delusional system inwhich black represented sin and evil, white purity and goodness.Krasner and Gericke gave no evidence to show that the delusional sys­tem was changed.Using these examples, one can formulate a funda­mental objection to operant explanations for actions and beliefs.Iwould argue that if delusions, irrational fears, and other psychologi­cal forces operate out of sight, we have no reason to assume that tokeneconomies will abolish them.Operant procedures may produce peo­ple who seem reasonably well socialized and relatively rational, orwho operate in terms of generally accepted social norms and prac­tices.There is, however, no reason to assume that social practices witha semblance of normality are controlled by the same forces operatingin society at large.Second, all Skinnerians are guilty of the inductive fallacy.To illus­trate it we can return to the practical joke Ayllon and Haughtonplayed on the psychiatrists at Weyburn.They argued that they hadproduced a bona fide symptom by using operant techniques (both psy­chiatrists interpreted the patient s behavior as a genuine symptom).Byimplication, they concluded that every symptom has an operant ori­gin.But even if operant conditioners produced hundreds of symp­toms, it would not follow that all symptoms were operants.An example of the third logical error (the failure to distinguish be-tween necessary and sufficient causes) occurs in Ayllon and Azrin sstudy.They left us with no doubt that the delivery of tokens, and onlythe delivery of tokens, controlled the in-ward actions of their patientsat Anna State Hospital.But while we cannot deny the fact that tokendelivery controlled behavior, we cannot affirm that token delivery wassufficient as well as necessary.Behavior modifiers interpret tokens asmere reinforcers that automatically induce behavior.But that does notmean that patients interpret tokens in this way.That is, the patientscould have been acquiring tokens and apparently complying with Ayl­lon and Azrin s demands to serve purposes of their own.Fourth, we have the error of denying the antecedent.For example,the staff is ordered to stop paying attention to the manifestations ofan eating disorder.The disorder stops.Behavior modifiers concludethat the same phenomenon that stopped the disorder (attention)caused it in the first place.But that, says Davison, is analogous to con-172 | Behaviorists as Social Engineerscluding that because aspirin cures headaches its absence causes them.As he puts it,  knowledge about how to change a phenomenon is nottantamount to knowing how it originated. 63 Behavior modifiers re­fusal to engage in causal analysis renders their explanations nugatory.They follow Skinner in their belief that to explain is to produce phe­nomena under specified circumstances.But production is not equiva­lent to explanation; however carefully one controls all the overt or ob­servable conditions in an experiment, undetected causal factors couldbe operating.Davison illustrates the point beautifully by referring toRimland s theory of autism.64 Rimland argued that because autisticsare neurologically incapable of making connections between socialinput and socially appropriate actions, only overt reward will haveany effect on controlling their actions.However, Rimland believedthat behavior modification s role is limited to the control of action [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]