Science and Human Behavior: Extended Edition

When the manuscript of Science and Human Behavior landed on the desk of Skinner’s publishers in January 1953, they were dismayed. “It simply does not look like an ordinary textbook,” they grumbled. But they are grumbling no more, for the book has been continuously in print ever since. The reason for this longevity is, of course, that what the book lacks in glossy photographs, tables, graphs, optical illusions, and personality inventories, it more than makes up for in its elegance, parsimony, and scope. The small family of behavioral principles that have emerged from the animal laboratory play a fundamental role in all behavior. They are natural selection’s powerful solution to the problem of shaping adaptive behavior in mobile organisms in unpredictable environments. SHB_COVER_HD SAHB_NA SAHB_BACKCOVER