Behavioural Processes 75 (2007) 146155

Quantitative behavior analysis and human values

Charles P. Shimp
Department of Psychology, 380 South 1530 East, Rm 502, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0251, United States

Abstract
Many scientists believe that among the virtues of quantitative science are that its facts are free from personal, social, political, economic, and
other cultural influences, or at least, if they are not, they should be. Radical behaviorism suggests, however, that a science of behavior must apply
to peoples everyday professional behaviors, including those of quantitative behavior analysts. The behaviors of quantitative behavior analysts,
however, like the behaviors of everyone else, depend on the cultures to which they belong. A quantitative science of behavior must therefore
describe and explain the cultural and human values of quantitative behavior analysts. In this sense, a quantitative science of behavior must apply
to itself. No such reflexive behavior analysis currently exists and its development might shed considerable light on the basic nature of behavior
analysis.
2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Reflexive behavioral analysis; Human values

Scientists generally believe that science, especially quantitative science, offers a path to knowledge about the human
condition that is fundamentally different from that offered by
art, literature, politics, and music. Questions have long been
raised about the origin and legitimacy of this belief, however,
and I personally have come to question it for two reasons.
First, behavioral science, experimental psychology, and
quantitative analyses, as I have experienced them, have involved
implicit and unevaluated assumptions, incomplete descriptions
of empirical and theoretical methods, self-interest and conflicts
of interest, strongly held opinion accepted as fact, and political
conflicts and angry disputes, and I have come to see my own
contributions as having been only too human. Science offers no
data on how it is practiced that compel me to believe it is different in these ways from the human condition in general, and I
cannot find scientific justification for the conventional hope that
science has some property, as yet not understood, that guarantees
that if errors are made due to scientists being human, ultimately
these errors will be replaced by truth.
Second, I think it is an interesting and appealing feature of
radical behaviorism that it asserts that if we are to understand
science, the behavior of scientists has to be part of the subject matter of a science of behavior. This assertion opposes the
more conventional view that the scientific method can and must

Tel.: +1 801 581 8483; fax: +1 801 581 5841.

E-mail address: Charlie.shimp@psych.utah.edu.

0376-6357/$ see front matter 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2007.02.016

remove the human, subjective, value-laden component from our

knowledge of the natural world. This conventional view has the
problem that there is no scientifically compelling account, logical account, historical account, or any other kind of account, of
the scientific method. That is, science does not seem to understand itself very well, and what understanding we have seems to
involve hope and belief as well as scientific knowledge. Put differently, . . .science is not some exalted, incorrigible, Platonic
domain of Truth, but a human activity. . ., controlled by history
and circumstances and consequences (Marr, 1985, p. 137), and,
The Skinnerian will certainly be sympathetic to the view that,
like other operants, scientific verbal behavior is controlled by its
consequences (Marr, 1985, p. 132).
1. Quantitative analysts of behavior have not yet
provided a behavioral analysis of their own behavior
Herbert Simon wrote in the Forward to a book (Klahr, 2000)
titled Exploring Science, Some forty years ago came the beginnings of the so-called cognitive revolution, which gradually
diverted psychology from the dominant behaviorist framework
toward three new directions: a concern with a wider range of
tasks than were then in common experimental use, an interest in
the specific information processes within the human head that
convert stimulus into response, and a tolerance for a wider range
of methods of observation and experiment than were admitted
by behaviorism (Simon, 2000, p. ix). The book for which this
is the Forward describes empirical studies on components of

C.P. Shimp / Behavioural Processes 75 (2007) 146155

scientific thinking and scientific discovery. Immediately after

Simons Forward, the editor Klahr (2000, p. xi) in his
preface quoted Skinner, Here was a first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists; When you run
onto something interesting, drop everything else and study it
(Skinner, 1956, p. 223).
Simons and Skinners positions are sharply different, with
one being formal and mechanistic in the sense that it invokes
the information processing metaphor from computer science,
and the other being informal and human in the sense that it
describes impulsive behavior and does so in plain English. These
positions correspond to two opposing views on the nature of
science: one holds that science can and must be objective, and
the other holds that it inescapably involves human values such
as what one feels is interesting. This contrast has been noted
numerous times before in discussions of behaviorism (Catania,
1993; Hackenberg, 1993; Marr, 1984, 1985; Staddon, 1993),
with some advocating the former position and some advocating the latter. The former position gives little attention to how
the behavior of behavior analysts involves human values when
they develop, construct, and evaluate behavior analyses, including quantitative behavioral analyses. Perhaps as a consequence,
there is no behavioral analysis, and especially not any quantitative behavioral analysis, of the behavior of behavior analysts.
(To shorten this kind of complex syntactic construction, I will
use the acronym SQAB to refer either to the Society for the
Quantitative Analysis of Behavior, to its members in general, or
to an individual participant in it. Context will make clear which
meaning is intended.) In short, SQABs have not yet developed
an analysis of the behavior of SQABs that satisfies the evaluative standards of SQABs, and furthermore, it is unclear which
experimental methods and reinforcement contingencies could
provide the data upon which such a quantitative analysis could
be based.
The absence of a SQAB model for SQAB behavior tells us
something about SQABs, who otherwise appreciate the value
of describing what they do, how they do it, and why they do it
the way they do it (Catania, 2002; Ferster, 2002; Skinner, 1979).
This interest in self-analysis presumably derives at least in part,
of course, from the role model we have of Skinners professional
interest in his own scientific behavior, corresponding to his view
that radical behaviorism, as the philosophy of the science of
behavior, demands that a behavioral analyst should examine
whether her behavior as behavior analyst conforms to it. When
Skinner described his own scientific behavior, that is, he was
simultaneously describing it from the perspective of a science of
behavior and indirectly from the philosophy of radical behaviorism. His descriptions of his own behavior from a philosophical
perspective never progressed beyond plain English. He never
even hinted at how he might construct a quantitative account of
his own scientific behavior that would be in agreement with radical behaviorism (see Killeen, 1999, for related comments about
implications of Skinners quantitative skills for the development
of the analysis of behavior). Let us call such a quantitative selfanalysis a reflexive behavior analysis. Such an analysis would
apply behavior analysis to the behavior of behavior analysts and
ultimately would apply quantitative analyses to the behavior of

147

SQABs. This is my rst point: there is no quantitative analysis

of the behavior of behavior analysts. Put differently, by the standards SQABs use to evaluate their quantitative models, SQABs
know virtually nothing about what they are doing when they
develop quantitative models. By positivistic standards, that is
perfectly acceptable because model and researcher are entirely
different things, but by the standards of radical behaviorism,
that is unacceptable because model and researcher are interdependent and neither can be understood without understanding
the other.
2. What is known about how SQABs behave
While there is no quantitative account of SQAB behavior,
behavior analysts have at least begun to develop a kind of folk
psychology of what they do, a pre-scientific kind of reflexive
behavior analysis, just by introspecting, remembering, and talking about, their own behaviors. An almost defining example is
Skinners informal description of his own scientific behavior
(Skinner, 1956). Another example is Fersters (2002) description of how he and Skinner wrote Schedules of Reinforcement. A
third example is the series of case studies written a few years ago
by students who were at the pigeon lab at Harvard in the 1950s,
1960s and 1970s (e.g., Catania, 2002). Dozens of behavior analysts have written these plain English historical self-reports. This
kind of reconstruction of a scientists past scientific behavior is
a thriving area in the sociology and history of science, and it
may be the most common method by which behavior analysts
describe behavior of behavior analysts.
But notice two things, which jointly define my second point.
First, none of these analyses is experimental and in fact, it is not
yet clear how to translate any of them into any kind of reflexive experimental behavioral analysis research program. Some
are empirical in the sense that they deal with historical reality,
but none is experimental. Second, none hints at quantification
or acknowledges it would be possible in principle to develop a
quantitative analysis of the professional behaviors of a SQAB.
So far as I know, no behavior analyst has argued that a reflexive
behavior analysis is in principle impossible, although Staddon
(1993) has suggested that whether one is possible is beside the
point because it would be premature to try now to develop one.
In any case, behavior analysts are in practice conforming to
Herbert Simons portrayal of them, and are giving little attention to the development of quantitative analyses of the kinds of
complex scientific decision making and other forms of professional scientific activity that would inform a reflexive behavior
analysis.
3. The necessity of a reexive behavior analysis
The absence of a reflexive analysis of behavior is striking in
view of the implication of radical behaviorism that a reflexive
analysis of the behavior of SQABs is essential to the development of a science of behavior that in turn is essential to an
understanding of the human condition. I conjecture that the principal reason for this absence is the role model of the natural
sciences. The absence of a reflexive science of physics is to be

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expected because the conventional goal of physics is to exclude

the human element to the fullest extent possible in order to better understand the natural world. In fact, to this day, perhaps
the most common way of viewing the science of psychology
is in terms of a philosophical perspective originally designed
for physics. It is a perspective grounded in impersonal logic,
rationality, parsimony, hypothesis testing, falsificationism, and
objectivity. It is the continuing impact of positivism on the practice of psychological science.
There is a misinterpretation of the role of observation in
modern physics that leads some psychologists to believe physics
no longer conforms to this position. In some circles, the Heisenberg principle is viewed as making physics and the physicist
an interacting system. This does not seem to me to reflect the
practice of high energy physics, as represented in physics departments. Physics is not about the behavior of physicists. It is about,
for example, the impact of photons colliding with other particles on the behaviors of those particles. While a physicist
may have played a role in ensuring that photons struck those
particles, physics is not about the physicist, it is about particle
interactions. High energy physics texts are not full of equations describing the reinforcement contingencies operating on
the physicist who pressed a key on a computer keyboard that
set into motion processes resulting in photons interacting with
positrons. There is no such quantitative theory of the behavior of
physicists. The Heisenberg principle is important for showing
that particles cannot be studies in isolation. Their interactions
must be taken into account. It is not important for showing that
the behavior of physicists is part of physics. This perspective
excludes actual scientific behavior on the grounds that to include
it in the scientific method would be to acknowledge that science inevitably has a human element. There is divided opinion
about the relation between this positivistic philosophy and actual
experimental methods in behavior analysis, but opinion is more
uniform that radical behaviorism does not conform to positivistic
views (Catania, 1993; Hackenberg, 1993; Skinner, 1953; Smith,
1986). It does not reject a human element in a science of behavior, and indeed, my third point is that to understand a science
of behavior requires us not to exclude the human element, and
requires us to understand actual, everyday, scientific practice,
including scientific thinking and the behavior of individual scientists and the language they use (see also Lewontin, 1991 for
his example of how belief can and does affect science).
Empirical research on scientific behavior and on its development and training is a booming part of contemporary
psychological science (Freedman and Smith, 1996; Tweney,
2004, as is the search for ways to understand and train the
psychological processes required for scientific discovery and
problem solving (Gholson et al., 1989; Gorman, 1992; Killeen,
2001; Klahr, 2000; Klahr and Simon, 1999; Kuhn et al., 1988;
Kuhn and Dean, 2005; Smith et al., 2002; Tweney et al.,
1981; Zimmerman, 2000). Most but not all of this empirical
research conforms to the philosophy of positivism and looks at
plausible components of scientific behavior within the context
of a broad information-processing, decision-making perspective. There has been relatively little effort among experimental
psychologists to use what they have learned to inform their

understanding of their own scientific behavior (for interesting

exceptions, see Freedman and Smith, 1996; Smith et al., 2002).
In this sense, quantitative behavior analysts are in the same state
as experimental psychologists in general in terms of developing
a reflexive analysis. Neither group has progressed very far in
applying its work product to itself.
Psychologists who study actual scientific practice, and
attempt to develop methods to teach it to children and others,
have only seldom applied their findings to themselves because
they seem largely to accept the standards and methods of the
same positivistic philosophy of science that appears to guide
much of natural science. This same explanation does not apply,
however, to why SQABs have not applied its own methods to
itself, because it ostensibly is guided by radical behaviorism, not
positivism. Radical behaviorists are supposed to understand the
behavior of organisms, and that presumably means all behavior,
including scientific behavior, including even more specifically,
behavior of SQABs. So, I repeat my second and third points:
SQAB has not applied its own standards to an analysis of itself
but radical behaviorism says it should.
The application of behavior analysis to the behavior of behavior analysts by definition would reveal contingencies controlling
their behavior and explain why behavior analysts do what they
do in the laboratory and why they talk and write the way they
do. It might also facilitate better integration of basic and applied
behavior analysis because it is hard to tell what is basic and what
is applied when one is applying behavior analysis to behavior of
behavior analysts. It is applied in the sense that it extends a basic
science of behavior to everyday behavior of a special population,
behavior analysts, and it is basic in the sense that it clarifies the
social contingencies intrinsic to that science. Thus, a reflexive
behavior analysis blurs the distinction between basic and applied
behavior analysis, and possibly even completely undermines it.
More broadly, a reflexive behavior analysis would inform our
understanding of the relation between scientific behavior and
other human behavior (Smith et al., 2002).
4. Can a reexive quantitative analysis of behavior even
in principle be constructed?
Perhaps there is deeper reason why there is no reflexive
quantitative analysis of behavior than that SQABs follow the
path of natural science. Perhaps it is in principle impossible.
Just because radical behaviorism claims it is possible does
not guarantee it is. Perhaps conceptual and methodological
incompatibilities between a quantitative behavior analysis and a
reflexive quantitative analysis are so severe that the two analyses
are not reconcilable.
Consider two facts. First, consider the first time a well articulated quantitative model emerged from behavior analysis. Estes
(1950, 1959) was the first of Skinners students to develop and
elaborate a quantitative analysis of behavior. This first quantification from the tradition of behavior analysis very quickly
evolved into a research program having experimental methods
and theoretical goals sharply different from those of behavior
analysis, as can be seen by comparing Estes (1959) with Ferster
and Skinner (1957). Statistical learning theory can be seen as

C.P. Shimp / Behavioural Processes 75 (2007) 146155

the original quantitative analysis of behavior, and it quickly

shifted from a commitment to the experimental and functional
analysis of the behavior of individual organisms to more conventional methods in 20th century experimental psychology.
It involved an intentional use of formal logic, rationality, falsificationism, parsimony, and objectivity. In these ways, this
original SQAB resembled physics more than a science guided
by radical behaviorism. Estes (1957) was concerned, for example, about whether behavioral science more closely resembled
Newtonian or Maxwellian stages of development. So far as I am
aware, it showed no commitment to radical behaviorisms position according to which a science of behavior must necessarily
extend to the behavior of behavioral scientists (see Cole, 1992,
for related observations). It has been suggested that a similar
transformation has taken place in SQAB itself, so that as SQAB
has matured, it has increasingly deviated from its roots in radical
behaviorism (Catania, 1981). Historical evidence in these two
ways suggests that as behavior analysis becomes quantified, it
becomes less compatible with radical behaviorism.
Second, consider the masthead of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, where we read the journal . . .is
primarily for the original publication of experiments relevant to
the behavior of individual organisms. This goal is close to being
a defining property of the experimental analysis of behavior.
However, radical behaviorism requires that a science of behavior
address social phenomena, most especially, language, Skinners
treatment of which was notably qualitative, not quantitative, in
nature (Skinner, 1957). These two considerations give no support for a claim that a reflexive quantitative behavior analysis is
in principle possible.
Can we think of anything that might make us more sanguine
about the possibility of a reflexive quantitative behavior analysis? Can we imagine how it might be developed? If formal
logic, parsimony, or other conventions of scientific method cannot in general provide the basis for it, what can? Perhaps there
are informal rules of thumb for doing behavioral research that
might be turned into quantitative rules that might apply to behavior of behavior analysts? Consider Sidmans classic Tactics of
Scientic Research (Sidman, 1960). It recommended some rules
of thumb but neither derived them from a quantitative theory of
behavior analysis nor showed how they could be quantified. We
do not know, that is, that they are compatible with a quantitative
analysis of behavior. More generally, what guides do we have
for the development of any quantitative analysis of behavior at
all, reflexive or not? Here are a few examples of advice, most
of which I have been given (items numbered 1, 2, 4, and 5), or
have given others (items numbered 3 and 6), over the course of
my career. My point in reviewing these is to show their futility as facilitators of the development of a reflexive quantitative
analysis. I first state the advice and then give my commentary
on it.
1. Advice: Do not invent imaginary theoretical things, like
stimulus elements you cannot see. Commentary: This
advice may have hastened the split between statistical learning theory, which ignored it, and behavior analysis, many
of whose advocates accepted it. I believe this advice is an

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

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arbitrary constraint that only impedes the development of

a successful reflexive quantitative analysis, and it does not
derive from any quantitative behavioral model. It is a belief
some behavior analysts have about what modeling should be
rather than about how SQABs actually behave.
Advice: Beware all theory that involves concepts at some
level other than that of behavior. Commentary: The problem
with this is that it would suppress or retard the development
of all quantitative models of behavior because we do not yet
know what behavior is (Shimp, 2001) and we are still in
the process of determining what the idea of levels means.
Advice: Use single-subject methods and replicate and discover functional relations. Commentary: This advice implies
that a quantitative model should deal with individual behavior, yet as noted above, a reflexive behavior analysis would
have to address social phenomena, including the learning of
scientific language and mathematical behaviors.
Advice: Do not use cognitive vocabulary because it encourages severe conceptual mistakes. Commentary: This advice
prevents the use of plain Englishs heuristic power and I
believe erroneously implies that the use of behavioral language prevents severe conceptual mistakes.
Advice: You can safely conclude you know what you are
talking about if your theory accounts for 99% of the data.
Commentary: Accounting for 99% of the data does not mean
anything if the data accounted for is merely the data for
which the theory was invented in the first place and the theory
accounts for 0% of other forms of data.
Advice: The principal components of response strength
are latency or reaction time, average response rate, response
bout duration, etc., so record them and try to understand
them. Commentary: These behaviors ignore sequential patterning, or the local temporal structure of behavior, surely
including word order in a scientists verbal behavior, and so
fail to address behavioral units temporally more extended
but as unitized and fundamental as single responses, thereby
excluding much if not all scientific behavior.

This list is arbitrary and could be extended indefinitely, yet

gives a feel for the kinds of advice quantitative behavior analysts give each other on how to construct a quantitative science
of behavior. Is this advice coherent? Is it of practical utility?
Does it comply with radical behaviorism or with the evaluative
standards of SQAB? I believe the answer to all these questions is, We do not know. Where does all the advice come
from? It simply reflects values, strongly held opinions, and traditions in an emerging quantitative behavior analysis. It just
represents the contemporary culture of behavior analysis. It is
what behavior analysts currently do. We have seen, however,
that by their own standards, SQABs do not understand what
they do.
So far, we have seen that a reflexive quantitative analysis of
behavior must be constructed if radical behaviorism is to fulfill
its promise. We have seen also, however, that behavior analysts
do not have a SQAB-ish description or explanation of their own
behavior and the advice they give each other neither derives from
nor clearly contributes to a quantitative analysis of behavior. It

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would appear that a high priority project within behavior analysis

should be to develop a reflexive behavior analysis.
5. A thought experiment about two SQABs
So far we have seen that the first quantitative analysis of
behavior quickly turned away from radical behaviorism, that
some SQABs believe that SQAB itself is now doing the same
thing, and that it is not obvious how to use methods from the
experimental analysis of behavior to develop a reflexive quantitative analysis of behavior. Let us imagine one last way to try
to develop a reflexive quantitative analysis of behavior. Let us
try to develop it in a way that leads more directly to the social
perspective of radical behaviorism. First, pretend we can find a
member of SQAB to volunteer to serve as a participant, and second, pretend some SQAB behaviors can be identified so that we
can make some kind of reinforcement contingent on them. What
is the special behavior that makes a person a SQAB instead of
a poet, gardener, or physicist? What is a reinforcer for a SQAB
behavior? What is a SQABs behavior stream? How can we
discriminate between a SQABs quantitative behavior and her
non-quantitative behavior? Is attendance at a SQAB meeting
necessarily SQAB behavior? Is receiving outstanding student
evaluations in a class on quantitative models a reinforcer for
some or all of the instructors behaviors during the class? How
about a smile or verbal thanks from a student to whom an instructor successfully explains an equation? What about instructing a
student or technician who runs birds on a quantitative task? How
about successfully avoiding a committee meeting and using the
time to work on a publication to be submitted to the Journal
of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior? Should that behavior
be positively reinforced or punished? We have much to learn
about how to conceptualize SQAB performance in terms of
any stimulus-response-reinforcer contingency. In fact, the truth
seems to be that we have everything still to learn.
SQABs seem to respond to this uncertainty and ambiguity by
waiting to study their own scientific behaviors until it becomes
clearer what methods are suitable. This either could be efficient
or could simply postpone learning that there are no such methods. Let us imagine not procrastinating. Let us return to our two
imaginary SQABs and pretend that the SQAB conducting experiments on the other SQAB manages after some number of years
to publish a book resembling Schedules of Reinforcement, in the
sense that it displays hundreds of pages of cumulative records of
some kind of behavior characteristic of SQABs, maintained by
some kind of reinforcer applicable to SQAB-ish behaviors. The
experimenter SQAB runs onto something interesting and, like
Skinner, drops everything else to study it. Let us suppose one
morning she wakes up and decides to begin developing computer
models to simulate many of the cumulative records she published
in her Schedules of Reinforcement for SQAB Behavior. She does
this in part because she wants to instruct beginner SQABs on
what performance on various SQAB schedules of reinforcement
looks like. She realizes that any model to describe the quantitative behavior of the experimenter SQAB would have to describe
and predict her own sudden shift in performance from generating cumulative records to generating models. Any sudden shift

refers by definition to the local dynamics of behavior, and to the

local temporal organization of behavior.
She realizes that her model will therefore have to be a
dynamic molecular model, the kind I have described as a behaving model (Catania, 2005; Shimp, 1992, 1994; Shimp et al.,
1990). This is my fourth point: a reflexive quantitative analysis will have to include models that generate behavior streams
and that therefore admit to being evaluated in any terms anyone
wants, cumulative records, molecular, molar, or anything
else. Molar models may prove useful but, being based on longterm average performance, they do not behave. The matching
function does not actually behave. What behaves is the molar
theorist talking about the molar matching function. The molar
theorists behavior stream while talking about molar phenomena would reveal local and dynamic phenomena requiring not a
molar theory but a behaving model.
6. A thought experiment about a community of SQABs,
Walden IIR
Let us assume that as the original two SQABs continue to
work for years to develop a reflexive behavior analysis, other
behavior analysts hear about their project, become excited about
it, and join up. The growing community sees ever more clearly
that the distinction in such a community between experimenter
and participant makes no sense and only retards the development
of a reflexive behavior analysis, so the distinction is dropped. All
members see themselves as both acting on, and being acted upon
by, all other members. A specialized kind of community therefore develops, consisting entirely of SQABs. They attempt to
recreate the fictional community in Walden II (Skinner, 1948)
that was designed in accordance with a science of behavior.
More specifically, they attempt to design their new community
in accordance with the principles of the quantitative science of
behavior they themselves are constructing. Let us call this community Walden IIR, for reflexive Walden II. The key issue is
whether Walden IIR can simultaneously (1) develop a SQAB
model that accurately instructs it in how it should function and
(2) implement this SQAB model to successfully engineer its own
communitarian quantitative experimental analytical behaviors.
My fth point is that it is inconceivable that this community
would not to some degree interact intellectually and socially
with the larger, non-SQAB culture within which it functioned
(see also Lewontin, 1991). If this point were made about any
group other than scientists, few would find it more than a truism. Scientists, however, are supposed to be different. Or, at least,
science is supposed to be different. To prevent sciences contamination by human values requires scientists to exclude their own
scientific behavior from the content of science, because behavior is indisputably influenced by culture and human values, and
science should not be. Many scientists concede that scientists
might be affected by culture but believe these effects can be
reduced, minimized, or eliminated through vigilant attention to
political, economic, and other cultural forces. This goal was part
of positivisms original proposal, to save society from its own
inevitable and unending disputes over intrinsically subjective
differences by developing a science-based culture. Contempo-

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rary indications that this goal is still influential are many. The
National Science Foundation (NSF) maintains, for example, that
science should develop according to its own internal logic and
empirical discoveries, and should not be subject to political control. NSF continues to battle congress and the public over this
issue, as in the appropriateness of NSF funding for stem cell
research. In our imaginary experiment, Walden IIR similarly
finds itself developing in ways that depend on its cultural context. Some members of Walden IIR, those influenced by radical
behaviorism, are not troubled by this interaction between science and society because they believe a science of behavior
must necessarily involve human values.
These members of Walden IIR wonder how the culture of
Walden IIR makes their behavior different from the behavior of
non-members, so they begin to develop a quantitative behavioral
anthropological analysis of SQAB and non-SQAB behaviors.
This turns out to be an enormous project with ramifications
across every intellectual domain, so they found a Walden IIR
University with academic departments to reflexively examine
how the various conventional academic disciplines change when
their practitioners are SQABs.
Other members of Walden IIR see the ever-expanding
encroachment by cultural variables in SQAB models as a troubling sign that they have not adequately freed themselves from
the unscientific values in the surrounding culture, and they
redouble their efforts to develop ways to isolate Walden IIR
from its surrounding culture so that its principles, functions,
and methods can be universal, unambiguous, logical, parsimonious, basic and fundamental. These SQABs become so
impatient and exasperated with cultural studies in Walden IIR
that they break off, leave Walden IIR University and return to
conventional natural science departments in long established
universities. These SQABs argue that it was a fatal mistake of
radical behaviorism to include the behavior of behavior analysts
in the subject matter of a science of behavior because it opens
the door to questions about political governance, issues of how
Walden IIR resources should be allocated to different SQABs
having different commitments to art, literature, and the performing arts and in general to exactly the subjective aspects of human
behavior a quantitative science conventionally views as outside
its scope.
The older remaining members of Walden IIR note that this
split resembles that between Skinner and Estes, when Skinner
followed the position of radical behaviorism and Estes, along
with the great majority of experimental psychologists, followed
a more positivistic path. These older members also note that
this split would resemble the culture wars (Snow, 1959) if
it were not that the members of Walden IIR are attempting to
integrate quantitative behavior analysis and human values. For
this reason, Walden IIR is not a community dedicated to the
development of quantitative theory for social behavior in general. It is designed specifically for the unique social behavior of
SQABs, which would be the same as any other social behavior only if it were conceded that SQAB behavior that leads
to a SQAB model is no different from the social behavior of
medieval mystics, basketball players, a knitting group, or of a
collection of scam artists. Presumably no one expects a SQAB

151

model to emerge from the deliberations of a group working to

defraud Medicare. This must imply there is a difference between
SQABs and scam artists. What makes the difference? The scientific method? Maybe some SQABs believe in the scientific
method but Skinner did not; it seems to me that the resistance by
many SQABs to the formalization of methodology by philosophers of science suggests they do not either, and neither do I.
If not the scientific method, then what? It must be something
about the behavior of SQABs. That means to understand the
work product of SQABs we need to understand what SQABs
do. I think radical behaviorism requires that there is something
unique about a science of behavior, and if it is not that it uniquely
and reflexively applies to the behavior of its own practitioners,
what is it? Surely it is not the classic reinforcement contingencies invented in the 1930s, or single subject research, or any
other existing set of methods. To determine what it is, I suggest
SQABs might want to evaluate the reflexive implications of their
theories for their own behaviors. For example, powerful quantitative models of social behavior are being developed, such as that
by Kirley (2006) on how dominance hierarchies can be emergent properties of self-organizing systems. It will be important
to determine if such models can describe actual SQAB behavior.
Some observers of social psychology suggest the answer is yes,
and others suggest no. Jones (1985) suggested social psychology
has two components, a quantitative natural science component,
and a social constructionist component. He categorized himself
as belonging to the former, and others as belonging to the latter. I
categorize both radical behaviorism and myself as belonging to
the latter (Shimp, 2001). Perhaps a Walden IIR could clarify the
difference between natural science and a quantitative science of
human behavior that successfully addressed cultural values, that
is, could clarify our understanding of the difference between a
science of behavior and science in general.
7. Implications of the thought experiments: human
values in quantitative analyses of behavior
My sixth point is that after the departure of natural scientists from Walden IIR, the remaining SQABs will see that their
last frontier is to understand the contingencies that link human
values to a science of behavior, including a quantitative science
of behavior (Kuhlmann, 2005; Rakos, 2006; Wolpert, 2005).
From this perspective, the goal of Walden IIR is to find a way to
integrate conventional quantitative natural science, on the one
hand, and social constructionism, on the other (Hacking, 1999;
Pickering, 1995; Shimp, 2001; Smith et al., 2000). Walden IIR
therefore explores such cultural themes as metaphors, partisanship, peer review, and conflicts of interest (see Killeen, 1999, for
related comments about human values in quantitative models).
7.1. Metaphors and models
Quantitative models are not entirely quantitative: they are
developed, evaluated, and presented in the context of natural
language, and this language includes metaphors (Leary, 1990).
For example, Catanias (2005) computer simulation model is
derived from a 1930s hydraulic metaphor for the reflex reserve.

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The model invokes the science of hydraulics in only a loose

sense, not in the complex, quantitative, realistic sense in which
hydraulic engineers might design and construct a dam spillway or an oil distribution system within an automobile engine.
The engineers have no interest in how well their quantitative
model conforms to a plain English metaphor. In contrast, the
reflex reserve model is designed to feel as though it conforms to
simple hydraulic engineering principles stated in plain English.
So, although the quantitative model might appear to be only a
sequential string of binary numbers rapidly processed by a digital computer, several cultures implicitly affect its nature and
development, including the culture of plain English and Catanias intuitions about how hydraulics work and his knowledge of
the history of the reflex reserve metaphor, the culture of SQAB,
the culture of the computer industry, and so on. In this sense,
human values are embedded in Catanias computer model, and
to understand the model requires understanding their effects
on it.
7.2. Peer review in SQAB
Much has been written about scientific peer review and its
impact on science (Blackburn and Hakel, 2006), including how
cultural variables such as gender and ethnicity of author can
affect peer review. Cultural variables presumably affect peer
review by SQABs (Shimp, 1990, 1999, 2004), especially in view
of my first point; one scarcely can know what good SQAB work
consists of, or what good peer review of SQAB work is, if there
is little understanding of what SQAB is in the first place.
Davison and Nevin (2005) provide an excellent example of
how an analysis of peer review might facilitate the development
of a science of behavior. They clarified how scientific culture
tends to suppress the publication of failures to replicate. Their
scholarship described reinforcing contingencies that operate on
behavior of behavior analysts and hint at the kind of experimental
research that might be conducted in Walden IIR.
Also, of course, Skinner (1979) provided many retrospective,
verbal self-reports of some of the contingencies of peer review
that operated on his scientific behavior. He presumably would
have agreed that to understand the effects of peer review on
the development of SQAB, we will need a SQAB analysis of
peer review by SQABs, that is, a reflexive peer review that will
explain the contingencies determining peer review behavior of
SQABs.
7.3. Partisanship in SQAB
Consider this paper. This is not a neutral, objective, impartial presentation of facts. It instead advocates a point of view
according to which the development of a successful quantitative
behavior analysis will depend critically on inventing methods
to study the behavior of quantitative behavior analysts. The partisan nature of scientific papers is not always this obvious, but
if human values are embedded in a science of behavior, then
those values presumably affect much or all of the behavior of
behavior analysts. I suggest that we basically cannot communicate without advocating, or at least indirectly expressing, our

own personal values. Partisanship is especially clear in teaching, where some positions are described sympathetically and
others are not. How often do behavior analysts sympathetically describe cognitive psychology (see, for example, Skinner,
1977)? We need a model to describe or explain the contingencies
operating on behavior analysts that explain why the answer is;
almost never.
7.4. Conicts of interest
Science is rife with conflicts of interest that pose serious
ethical problems (Shamoo and Resnik, 2003). For example, a
scientist once told me that a grant proposal had been sent to him
to review and that he himself had just submitted a proposal to the
same grant review panel. His own proposal was in competition
with the one he was asked to review. He told me with a smile
that he had rated it just a little bit lower than he would have
had it not been in competition with his own. Another example,
one familiar to any faculty member who has ever served on a job
search committee, is the advocacy of candidates whose hiring
would facilitate the advocates own research career. Conflicts of
interest like these are so common in scientific practice that they
might make one wonder if they were actually part of the scientific
method, were it not that, according to the conventional account,
they are betrayals of the scientific commitment to impartiality
and objectivity (Lewontin, 2004). From the perspective of radical behaviorism that sees science practice as the behavior of
organisms who just happen to be scientists, this dishonesty and
betrayal is to be explained in terms of the contingencies that
maintain them, and the kind of sharp contrast between science
and values inherent in conventional accounts attribute, for better
or worse, too much impartiality to science.
8. Summary and conclusions
The quantitative analysis of behavior does not have a reflexive
analysis of itself, that is, there is no quantitative analysis of the
behavior of quantitative behavior analysts that satisfies behavioranalytical evaluative standards. This does not distinguish it from
any other quantitative science, none of which has a quantitative reflexive analysis of itself. There is no reflexive analysis
of contemporary experimental cognitive psychology, for example, and cognitive psychologists do not generally appear to be
troubled by the lack. There are many studies showing how cognition differs across cultures, but cognitive psychologists generally
appear to believe they can rise above these differences and avoid
the potential implication that their own cognition, and therefore
the science they construct, is itself culture dependent. Cognitive
psychology does not derive, however, from a philosophy that
requires a cognitive analysis of cognitive psychologists. Its philosophy seems generally indistinguishable from that of physics,
for which there intentionally is no reflexive physics because a
goal of physics is precisely to remove the behavior of physicists
from descriptions and explanations of the physical world. Many
scientists have seen the utility of psychological and social analyses of scientific behavior (Fleck, 1935/1979; Lewontin, 1991;
Mach, 1914), but so far as I am aware, no one has successfully

C.P. Shimp / Behavioural Processes 75 (2007) 146155

developed a quantitative reflexive analysis of any quantitative

science.
The quantitative analysis of behavior may represent the only
quantitative science without a reflexive analysis that derives
from a philosophy that implies it should have one, but this
implication often seems forgotten. Quantitative behavior analysts admire the role of mathematical theory in the physical and
biological sciences and generally seem to view the role of mathematics in the development of modern science as a kind of role
model for how SQAB can and should develop. Thus, SQABs
feel that quantification can increase rigor, reduce ambiguity,
improve clarity, simplify, facilitate beautiful formal descriptions,
provide a means by which to derive new predictions, clarify
how to interpret variability, etc. SQABs virtually by definition
believe quantification in these ways facilitates the development
of a quantitative science of behavior resembling the established
natural sciences. In this, SQABs resemble natural scientists as
well as Skinner, who wrote that science . . . is a disposition
to deal with the facts rather than with what someone has said
about them (Skinner, 1953, p. 12). Skinner often likened a science of behavior to the natural sciences, and rejected that there
was anything special about it, and he objected to the idea that
. . . science is appropriate up to a certain point, but. . . there
must always remain an area in which one can act only on faith
or with respect to a value judgment (Skinner, 1953, p. 8).
He objected further that . . . the kinds of intellectual activities
exemplified by value judgments or by intuition or interpretation have never been set forth clearly. . . (Skinner, 1953, p.
8). That is, human values play no greater role in a science
of behavior than in physics or biology, which is to say, none
at all.
At the same time, however, Skinner linked a science of behavior to the behaviors that in plain English involve values. The
sentence preceding the claim that science deals with facts rather
than about what someone said about them was the following:
Science is first of all a set of attitudes (Skinner, 1953, p. 12).
On the assumption that attitudes are behaviors, this implies science is behavior, including the behavior of plain English. He
went on to say, Science is, of course, more than a set of attitudes. It is a search for order, for uniformities, for lawful relations
among the events in nature (Skinner, 1953, p. 13). The search he
referred to was by humans and consisted of behavior, not something apart from behavior. Skinner obviously wanted to eat his
cake and to have it too. He wanted the analysis of behavior to be
a natural science and to apply to behaviors that involve human
values. He wanted a natural science of human values. Analogously, he argued tirelessly for the development of an empirical
science of behavior but described his own scientific behavior in
an entirely human, non-quantitative, even anti-quantitative way
compared to how Estes (1959) described the first quantitative
analysis of behavior. It is as though Skinner resisted applying what most people think of as science to his own scientific
behavior.
Thus, Skinner in Science and Human Behavior subscribed
simultaneously to the position that a science of behavior was
similar to the natural sciences, implying that it would evolve into
a quantitative science, and to the position of radical behaviorism

153

that demands that this power of quantification be turned onto the

behavior of scientists themselves. He seemed to resist doing so,
and SQABs to this day have scarcely begun to do so. I have
briefly described some of the problems inherent in developing a
quantitative science of behavior that is compatible with radical
behaviorism. It is one thing to apply methods of behavior analysis, even functional analyses, to behavior of behavior analysts;
it is something altogether different to develop a quantitative
science of behavior of the behavior of quantitative behavior analysts. Not having significant training in mathematics, Skinner
may not have been aware of the perhaps irreconcilable problem he was defining, a coordination of a quantitative science of
behavior with a reflexive quantitative science of behavior.
In short, behavior analysis, like the Western culture within
which it developed, may be divided over whether quantification is a virtue or a vice (Catania, 1981; Mazur, 2006). Within
the broader culture, on the one hand, quantification is seen as a
virtue in societys methods to promote fairness, social justice,
and accountability. Standardized test scores are used in decisions about funding of public schools and quantitative measures
of productivity are used in decisions about tenure and promotion
in academia. Many similar examples of the use of quantification to replace unfairness caused by idiosyncratic and subjective
judgments could be identified. On the other hand, quantification
can be seen as an evil and be denounced for its dehumanizing tendencies. Turning humans into numbers can be seen as less than
admirable when school childrens test scores negatively affect
their treatment by teachers, when number of publications by a
candidate for tenure completely replaces informed professional
judgment by peers, and so on. The most critical literary opposition to the quantification of human values of which I am aware
is that of Zamiatin (1921). Orwell (1949) and Huxley (1932)
are related examples in the sense that they show negative consequences of putting society on a scientific footing. Skinner in his
own person seems to have shared his cultures divided opinion
on the merits of quantification of human behavior.
This division on the merits of quantification emerges in a surprising and interesting way in the behavior of SQABs. SQABs
are ordinarily enthusiastically in favor of quantitative analyses,
but they have not rushed to apply quantitative behavior analysis to their own behavior. My rst point is simply that there is
no SQAB analysis of the behavior of SQABs. I coined a term,
reflexive quantitative analysis of behavior, for this kind of missing analysis, to remind us that by our own SQAB standards, we
do not understand, or are even aware of, the contingencies that
control the behavior of quantitative behavior analysts.
This is not to say that behavioral analysts have not tried in
any way at all to describe their own behavior. These efforts have
been largely limited to historical verbal self-reports, a form of
scientific inquiry not generally viewed with the greatest enthusiasm among behavior analysts. So, my second point is simply
that from the perspective of radical behaviorism, this diagnoses
how far a science of behavior must progress before it can be
said to understand itself. Skinner obviously considered his own
behavior to be appropriate for analysis by the science of behavior, defined in terms of a functional analysis linking stimulus
contexts, behaviors, and contingencies. Neither he nor anyone

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C.P. Shimp / Behavioural Processes 75 (2007) 146155

else has as yet demonstrated or explained, however, how such

a functional analysis could be quantified. This is particularly
interesting because my third point is that from the perspective
of radical behaviorism, a reflexive analysis is not a luxury, it
is a requirement: the behavior of behavioral scientists, like the
behavior of everybody else, should be part of a science of behavior. Experimental psychologists (Klahr, 2000; Kuhn and Dean,
2005; Simon, 1986; Smith et al., 2000) have begun to investigate the nature of various components of scientific thinking and
scientific discovery and even to develop a few empirical and
computer simulations of bits and pieces of what is ostensibly
scientific behavior.
To construct a reflexive science of behavior I am inclined
to think that we will need to develop behaving models that
generate actual behavior streams because otherwise, we will
not be able to capture rapid shifts and other dynamic properties of scientific behavior. My fourth point is therefore that we
need to develop process models (Staddon, 2006), process models that behave (Catania, 2005; Shimp, 1992; Shimp et al., 1990;
Staddon, 2006), and other powerful techniques such as dynamic
systems theory (Butner et al., 2006). If we want to understand
our own scientific behavior, we will need to use computer simulation methods to develop process accounts that describe and
explain real-time behaving because mathematical analyses for
such complex behaviors will not be workable.
The development of a quantitative model of behavior of
SQABs requires a community of SQABs and presumably, such a
community would to at least some small degree act like ordinary
human beings and their behavior would reveal what are typically
called human values. The members of Walden II (Skinner, 1948),
an analogous community in the sense in which it tried to use a
science of behavior to engineer its own structure and function,
certainly revealed human values, and after all, part of Skinners
purpose was to use the science of behavior to re-engineer human
society precisely to improve the quality of human life. Thus, the
development of a required reflexive quantitative analysis will
of necessity take place in a real community, not in laboratory
isolation of individual SQABs.
Real communities involve human values often expressed in
natural language, and different communities can have different
languages. Therefore, the construction of a reflexive quantitative
analysis of behavior will have to describe and explain human
values as expressed in different languages and cultures. This
kind of statement may seem self-contradictory if we assume
that behavior analysis should be at the pinnacle of empirical
rigor and if we see quantitative models as guaranteeing objectivity, logic, parsimony, and so on. If we see behavior analysis
as fundamentally involving human beings behaving as behavior
analysts, however, then it is clear that human values must be
implicit in behavior analysis, in SQAB, in a science of behavior,
in radical behaviorism, and in a reflexive quantitative analysis
of behavior.
Some of the these human values are much easier to see than
others. Some of the contexts in which they are most clearly
seen involve metaphors, peer review, partisanship, and conflicts
of interest. Presumably, a reflexive analysis of the behavior of
behavior analysts would turn up many, many more which, once

identified and experimentally analyzed, could do to the practice

of behavior analysis what Skinner hoped a science of behavior
would do to human society in general.
Therefore, my fth point is simply that SQAB functions as a
culture within a larger culture. My sixth point is that Walden IIR,
an imaginary community of quantitative behavior analysts trying
to develop a reflexive quantitative science of behavior to apply
to themselves would therefore not pretend that a quantitative
science of behavior can be constructed independently of human
values, and would study how human values affect the development of a quantitative analysis of behavior. Walden IIR would
necessarily involve human values from the broader culture, and
Walden IIR would provide the broader culture with improved
means to quantify social justice, educational standards, and all
the myriad ways in which quantification can contribute to society.
My overarching point is that SQAB looks like one thing
from the perspective of how well SQAB methods and theories
describe the laboratory behaviors that SQABs conventionally examine. From this perspective, SQABs have successfully
developed models that in various local contexts perform reasonably well. SQAB looks like an entirely different thing, however,
from the perspective of how well its methods and theories have
been shown to describe the scientific behaviors of SQABs: From
this perspective, it appears not to have methods, data, or theory,
by which to understand itself. There is, therefore, an immense
chasm between the claims SQABs make about the generality
and basic nature of SQAB models on the one hand and how
well they describe and explain scientific behavior of SQABs
on the other hand. It should be an exciting adventure to determine if a quantitative analysis of the behavior of SQABs can be
developed. The answer will determine whether radical behaviorism simultaneously defines both a science of behavior and the
relation between science and society.
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