Symposium: Recollections of B. F. Skinner

This symposium was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Pavlovian Society, Lord Baltimore Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland, September 27, 1991.     

The politics of consulting for organizational change

This paper analyzes forms of political involvement among consultants engaged in planned organizational change. This analysis is intended to contribute to research and theorizing on organizational change and to help consultants and managers cope with the challenges posed by organizational politics. Four consulting styles are distinguished, those that vary in the sources of consultant power, the consultants’ degree of involvement in organizational politics, the processes on which consultants and their clients rely to implement organizational change, and the consultants’ definition of the main client. Factors accounting for variations in the use of the four consulting styles are noted, along with conditions that may influence the effectiveness of these styles. Implications for consulting practice also are discussed. He is also head of the department’s Graduate Program in the Sociology of Organizations. This article is a revised version of part of a paper presented at the World Congress of Sociology, International Sociological Association, Madrid, July, 1990. Thanks to Jean Bartunek, Jo Ann Harrison, Dafna Izraeli, Bruce Phillips, and Aryeh Shirom for their very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.     

Transformations from adjectives to Scales for the Adjective Check List (ACL): ACLTRANS FORTRAN IV program

The ACLTRANS ANSI FORTRAN IV program transforms the 300 adjectives on the Adjective Check List (Gough, 1950. 1960) into 37 raw and T-standard psychological scales. This program has three advantages over scoring based ob theAdjective Check List Manual (Gough & Heilbrun, 1965, 1980, 1983): ease and speed of computing the raw scale scores; exact partialing of number of adjectives checked from standardized scale scores; and choice of parameter norms for standardization. By using the ACLTRANS program, the researcher can be confident of quick and accurate scoring, as well as appropriate standardization.     

Aggression and power restoration: The effects of identifiability and timing on aggressive behavior

The study was designed to demonstrate that one function of aggression is the restoration of power. It was predicted that, after an individual had his power reduced, greater aggression would be emitted when the individual could be identified as the attacker by his victim than when he could not. It was felt that only when the aggressor was identifiable could he completely restore his power vis-à-vis the victim. A second aim of the study was to investigate the effects of timing of aggression on the intensity of aggression. It was predicted that in a learning situation, if aggression were utilized solely as a teaching device, greater aggression would be emitted by the “teacher” when the “learner” made mistakes early as opposed to late in the task. However, if the individual were motivated to restore his power by aggressing, greater aggression would occur when the mistakes were made late since having to wait should frustrate the teacher's desire to restore power through aggression. The design of the study was a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial in which subjects were either insulted or not, given the opportunity to aggress either anonymously or when clearly identified, and able to aggress either early or late in a learning task. The results supported the power-restoration hypothesis: Subjects who were insulted aggressed more when identifiable than when anonymous. Also, there was greater aggression in the early as opposed to late conditions under all circumstances except in the insultidentifiable condition.     

The control of responding by auditory stimuli: interactions between different dimensions of the stimuli.

Sounds have position in addition to other dimensions, such as intensity and frequency. Position rapidly gains control of spatially contiguous responses and this may interfere with control of responding by other acoustic dimensions. These experiments investigated interference of a tone-noise discrimination by the discrimination of acoustic position. Squirrel monkeys were studied when responding was differentially reinforced in the presence of both spectral content (tone-noise) and positional differences between the stimuli, and when responding was differentially reinforced only in the presence of spectral differences. Under the first condition, responding rapidly came under the control of the position of the noise in the two monkeys tested. The position of the tone controlled responding in one monkey; in the second monkey, responding came under the control of the spectral content of the tone. Under the second condition, responding was initially under the control of the noise in all three monkeys tested. This persisted for the duration of the condition for two of the monkeys; in one monkey, responding came under the control of the spectral content of the noise. Under the second condition, responding was also initially under the control of the position of the tone for all monkeys, but control by spectral content of the tone relatively rapidly developed in two of three monkeys.     

The control of responding by sounds: unusual effect of reinforcement.

Naive rats were trained to respond on one lever in the presence of noise bursts from one speaker and on a second lever in the presence of noise bursts from a second speaker. The speakers were mounted behind the levers. When responding on the lever adjacent to the sounding speaker was reinforced, control developed within fewer than five trials. When responding on the nonadjacent lever was selectively reinforced, responding on the lever adjacent to the sounding speaker increased in probability for several sessions. Naive rats were trained to respond on the nonadjacent lever following preexposure to the sound. Responding on the lever adjacent to the sounding speaker increased in probability, showing that novelty was not responsible for the effect. Naive rats were run on automaintenance procedures in which there was no explicit pairing of sound and magazine operation, 100% pairing of sound and magazine operation, or magazine operation following 40% of sound presentations. None of the rats acquired the response of approaching and sniffing the sounding speaker, indicating that sound-magazine pairing was not responsible for the effect.     

Ethical Egoism, Utilitarianism and the fallacy of pragmatic inconsistency

In this paper I shall consider the difficulty for Ethical Egoism, Act Utilitarianism and later what I shall call Cumulative Effect Utilitarianism, that they both commit the fallacy of pragmatic inconsistency. I shall distinguish various forms of the fallacy of pragmatic inconsistency; in particular I shall distinguish between the fallacy of direct and indirect pragmatic inconsistency, and shall argue that though both Ethical Egoism and Act Utilitarianism probably commit both, Cumulative Effect Utilitarianism does not.How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath To say to me that thou art out of breath?William Shakespeare,Romeo and Juliet. But when I tell him he hates flatterers, He says he does, being then most flattered.William Shakespeare,Julius Caesar.     

Psychiatric Symptomatology and Family Functioning in Children and Adolescents with Spina Bifida

The purpose of this study was to (a) examine the occurrence of psychiatric symptomatology in children and adolescents with spina bifida, (b) investigate the relationship between psychiatric features and aspects of disability, and (c) explore the impact of spina bifida and psychiatric status on family functioning. Fifty-four children and adolescents ages 6 to 18 years (M = 12.94, SD = 3.59) were examined. Parents completed the Child Symptom Inventory (CSI) and the Family Assessment Device (FAD). Using the CSI, a psychiatric diagnostic screen, 43% of the sample obtained one, and 13% obtained two or more screening cutoff scores reflective of psychiatric diagnoses. The two most prevalent diagnostic categories were Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (33%) and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (13%). The sample as a whole exhibited elevated levels of clinical symptoms, with internalizing symptoms more prominent than externalizing symptoms. No differences in diagnostic categories or overall symptomatology were found based on age, gender, ambulation status, or lesion level. Overall symptom counts were positively correlated with scales on the FAD reflecting problematic family functioning (.42–.65). Results suggest that psychiatric symptomatology occurs at a high rate in children and youth with spina bifida. Although ADHD was the modal diagnostic category, the sample as a whole exhibited extensive psychiatric symptoms independent of specific diagnostic categories. Psychiatric symptoms were also associated with increased problematic functioning in families.     

Differences in the Manifest Dream Content of Anglo-American,Mexican-American,and African-American College Women

This study compares the manifest dream content of African-American college women with that of their Anglo-American and Mexican-American peers. The dream elements examined are characters, emotions, environmental press, achievement outcomes, and social interactions that are aggressive, friendly, or sexual. The results show a statistically significant difference on only one measure: environmental press. That is, the dreams of African Americans reveal a significantly stronger perception of themselves as victims of their fate rather than directors of it.