Critical Response

Skinner has aroused more than his share of controversy. Those who are familiar with Skinner's ideas tend to have a strong positive or negative reaction depending upon their own presuppositions about human nature. The most common critical responses follow.

Free will and personal responsibility

Skinner's operant conditioning opposes the concepts of free choice and personal responsibility. He maintained that it is the environment that determines what a person was, is, and will be in the future. He accounts for genetic inheritance by referring to the environments that existed during evolutionary history. In short, he claims that environmental factors determine behavior in a way that free will and individual choice play no causal role.

According to Skinner, each person is unique, but not because of...