Word: behaviorâ
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These are some of the teachings of sociobiology, a new and highly controversial scientific discipline that seeks to establish that social behavior???human as well as animal?has a biological basis. Its most striking tenet: human behavior is genetically based, the result of millions of years of evolution. Some sociobiologists go so far as to suggest that there may be human genes for such behavior as conformism, homosexuality and spite. Carried to an extreme, sociobiology holds that all forms of life exist solely to serve the purposes of DNA, the coded master molecule that determines the nature of all organisms...
...guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select?doctor, lawyer, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities." The goal of this Watsonian behaviorism was the prediction and control of behavior???which suited Skinner to perfection...
Behavioral engineering goes on every minute of the day. A member who gets angry, who makes demands or who gives ultimatums is simply not "reinforced," to use the behavioral term. He is ignored. What is considered appropriate behavior???cooperating, showing affection, turning the other cheek and working diligently?is, on the other hand, applauded, or "reinforced," by the group. Members are singled out for compliments if they do a job well; signs are put up telling who cleaned a room, for example. Smokers who wanted to break the cigarette habit formed a group to help one another. Cigarettes were...
...have many fatuous hopes of taking over. We would like, very much, a fair shake. We are each half of a person, we are each less than we could be. If we did not have these rigid sexual roles, we would all have so much more room for spontaneous behavior???for doing things that we feel like doing, for following our own instincts, for being imaginative, for being creative. The great thing about it all is that we could not only change this, but in the process, really improve everything else as well...
...differ in their creeds, their aspirations and the cut of their coats; it is hard to find two people who accept the same God in their hearts, though they may worship in the same church. But there is a certain dogma of behavior???the unwritten doctrine of good taste?that binds together in liberty of thought, forbidding any individual to thrust upon another his tailor, his ambition, his belief in God. When Sinclair Lewis, able novelist, violated this universal doctrine in a church in Kansas City, he offended equally believers and skeptics, as hundreds of editorials in last week...
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