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B.F.Skinner. Walden Two. New York: Macmillan, 1976. Print.
A fictional outline of a modern utopia where human problems are solved by scientific technology of human conduct. Two professors and two veterans with their girlfriends travel to a progressive community called Walden Two. There they meet T.E. Frazier the key planner of the community who uses their week visit to introduce them to his experimental way of life.
The beginning of this novel is preceded by a forward by the author reflecting on his novel 28 years after it was published. This quote reveals his purpose:
"It is now widely recognized that great changes must be made in the American way of life. Not only can we not face the rest of the world while consuming and polluting as we do, we cannot for long face ourselves while acknowledging the violence and chaos in which we live. The choice is clear: either we do nothing and allow a miserable and probably catastrophic future to overtake us, or we use our knowledge about human behavior to create a social environment in which we shall live productive and creative lives and do so without jeopardizing the chances that those who follow us will be able to do the same. Something like a Walden Two would not be a bad place to start."
Cognitive psychology is the study of mental processes such as "attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and thinking. It is also the main reason my B.F. Skinner's ideas about behavior are so controversial, he completely disregards cognition. Near the end of Walden Two, Frazier admits to Burris that "I'm-not-a-product-of-Walden-Two!" (Skinner 233). Frazier knows too much how the behavioral engineering works for it to work on him. Cognition is a huge problem for him.
In Walden Two, positive reinforcement is used to condition behavior. The founder, Frazier, is adamant about the community's use of reinforcement over punishment. Reinforcement increases behavior by adding a positive stimulus or removing a negative stimulus, where as punishment decreases behavior by adding a negative stimulus or removing a positive stimulus. It is widely known that reinforcement is exponentially more successful than punishment.
"The things that can happen to us fall into three classes. To some things we are indifferent. Other things we like- we want them to happen, and we take steps to make them happen again. Still other things we don't like- we don't want them to happen and we take steps o get rid of them or to keep them from happening again."
- T.E. Frazier (Skinner 244)
Operant conditioning deals with the modification of "voluntary behavior" or operant behavior. It uses reinforcement to condition behavior in rats, pigeons, and even humans. In Walden Two the citizens "feel free" and are happy even though their behavior has been carefully conditioned by the powers that be. This is a huge issue for Professor Castle, who can not get past what he sees as despotism to recognized the benefits on the citizens of Walden Two.
B.F. Skinner was a behavioral psychologist who's research was highly controversial. Skinner believed that human free will is an illusion and that any human action is the result of the consequences of the same action. He studied the result of consequences on behavior or operant conditioning. He created the "Skinner Box" which he used to study operant conditioning on rats and pigeons. He is the author of Walden Two, a outline of a utopia created by his principles of behavior.