The social environment of any group of people is the product of a complex series of events in which accident sometimes plays a prominent role. Manners and customs often spring from circumstances which have little or no relation to the ultimate effect upon the group. The origins of more explicit controlling practices may be equally adventitious. Thus the pattern of control exercised by a strong leader, reflecting many of his personal idiosyncrasies, may result in an established governmental classification of behavior as legal or illegal and may even set the pattern for a highly organized agency. The techniques which a saint employs to control himself may become part of the established practices of a religious agency. Economic control is determined in part by the resources available to the group, which are ultimately a matter of geography. Other fortuitous factors are introduced when different cultures intermingle or when a culture survives important changes in the nonsocial environment. A cultural practice is not the less effective in determining the behavior characteristic of a group because its origins are accidental. But once the effect upon behavior has been observed, the source of the practice may be scrutinized more closely. Certain questions come to be asked. Why should the design of a culture be left so largely to accident? Is it not possible to change the social environment deliberately so that the human product will meet more acceptable specifications?
In many cultural groups we observe practices which might be described as “making changes in practice.” The great religious books supply many examples of the deliberate construction of a social environment. The Ten Commandments were a codification of existing and proposed practices according to which, henceforth, behavior was to be reinforced or punished by the group or by the religious agency. The teachings of Christ were more clearly in the nature of a new design. In governmental control, the enactment of a law usually establishes new cultural practices, and a constitution is a similar undertaking on a broader scale. Experimental curricula in schools and colleges and books on child care which recommend substantial changes in family practices are attempts to manipulate important parts of a culture. The social environment is changed to some extent when a new technique of psychotherapy is derived from a theory or from an experimental study of human behavior. Social legislation creates an experimental environment in which behavior is more often reinforced with food, clothing, housing, and so on, and in which certain kinds of deprivation are less likely to occur. Planning the structure of a large industry or governmental agency is an experiment in cultural design. These are all examples of the manipulation of small parts of the social environment; what is called “Utopian” thinking embraces the design of a culture as a whole.
The deliberate manipulation of the culture is therefore itself a characteristic of many cultures—a fact to be accounted for in a scientific analysis of human behavior. Proposing a change in a cultural practice, making such a change, and accepting such a change are all parts of our subject matter. Although this is one of the most complex of human activities, the basic pattern seems clear. Once a given feature of an environment has been shown to have an effect upon human behavior which is reinforcing, either in itself or as an escape from a more aversive condition, constructing such an environment is as easily explained as building a fire or closing a window when a room grows cold. A doctor tells his patient to stop eating a certain food so that he will no longer be troubled by an allergy because he has observed a connection between the food and the allergy. The psychotherapist tells his patient to change to a job to which he is better suited so that he will suffer less from a sense of failure because a similar connection has been established. An economist advises a government to impose heavy taxes in order to check inflation because still another relation has been observed. All these examples involve many detailed steps, many of them verbal, and we should need a more detailed analysis of scientific thinking than can be undertaken here to give a reasonable account of particular instances. But the basic process is clear enough to permit some interpretation.
When we speak of the “deliberate” design of a culture, we mean the introduction of a cultural practice “for the sake of its consequences.” But as we saw in discussing “voluntary behavior” in Chapter VII, it is never a future consequence which is effective. A change in practice is made because similar changes have had certain consequences in the past. When the individual describes his own behavior, he may speak of past consequences as the “goal” of his current action, but this is not very helpful. We can best understand the cultural designer, not by guessing at his goals or asking him to guess at them for us, but by studying the earlier environmental events which have led him to advocate a cultural change. If he is basing a given proposal upon scientific experiments, we want to know how closely the experimental and practical situations correspond. We may also want to examine other “reasons for making a change” which are to be found in his personal history and in the recorded history of those who have investigated similar areas.
Such an interpretation of the behavior of the cultural designer brings us to an issue of classical proportions. Eventually, a science of human behavior may be able to tell the designer what kind of culture must be set up in order to produce a given result, but can it ever tell him what kind of result he should produce? The word “should” brings us into the familiar realm of the value judgment. It is commonly argued that there are two kinds of knowledge, one of fact and the other of value, and that science is necessarily confined to the first. Does the design of a culture demand the second? Must the cultural designer eventually abandon science and turn to other ways of thinking?
It is not true that statements containing “should” or “ought” have no place in scientific discourse. There is at least one use for which an acceptable translation can be made. A sentence beginning “You ought” is often a prediction of reinforcing consequences. “You ought to take an umbrella” may be taken to mean, “You will be reinforced for taking an umbrella.” A more explicit translation would contain at least three statements: (1) Keeping dry is reinforcing to you; (2) carrying an umbrella keeps you dry in the rain; and (3) it is going to rain. All these statements are properly within the realm of science. In addition to this, of course, the word “ought” plays a large part in the control exercised by the ethical group and by governmental and religious agencies. The statement, “You ought to take an umbrella,” may be emitted, not as a prediction of contingencies, but to induce an individual to take an umbrella. The “ought” is aversive, and the individual addressed may feel guilty if he does not then take an umbrella. This exhortatory use may be accounted for in the usual way. It is nothing more than a concealed command and has no more connection with a value judgment than with a scientific statement of fact.
The same interpretation is possible when the reinforcing consequences are of an ethical nature. “You ought to love your neighbor” may be converted into the two statements: (1) “The approval of your fellow men is positively reinforcing to you” and (2) “loving your fellow men is approved by the group of which you are a member,” both of which may be demonstrated scientifically. The statement may also be used, of course, to coerce an individual into behaving in a fashion which resembles loving his neighbor, and indeed is probably most often used for this reason, but again this is not what is meant by a value judgment.
When a given change in cultural design is proposed primarily to induce people to make the change, we may account for it as in the exhortatory example above. The proposal may also be a prediction of consequences. Sometimes these are easily specified, as when it is said that the group “ought” to approve of honesty because its members will thus avoid being deceived or that it “ought” to disapprove of theft because its members will then avoid the loss of property. Sometimes the implied consequences are less obvious, as when a study of behavior leads someone to propose that we “ought” to deal with criminals in a certain way or that we “ought” to avoid aversive control in education. It is at this point that the classical values of freedom, security, happiness, knowledge, and so on are usually appealed to. We have seen that these often refer indirectly to certain immediate consequences of cultural practices. But the crucial issue concerning value hinges upon another meaning of the word “ought” in which a more remote consequence is implied. Is there a scientific parallel for this kind of value?
We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement. There is still a third kind of selection which applies to cultural practices. A group adopts a given practice—a custom, a manner, a controlling device—either by design or through some event which, so far as its effect upon the group is concerned, may be wholly accidental. As a characteristic of the social environment this practice modifies the behavior of members of the group. The resulting behavior may affect the success of the group in competition with other groups or with the nonsocial environment. Cultural practices which are advantageous will tend to be characteristic of the groups which survive and which therefore perpetuate those practices. Some cultural practices may therefore be said to have survival value, while others are lethal in the genetic sense.
A given culture is, in short, an experiment in behavior. It is a particular set of conditions under which a large number of people grow and live. These conditions generate the patterns or aspects of behavior—the cultural character—which we have already examined. The general interest level of members of the group, their motivations and emotional dispositions, their behavioral repertoires, and the extent to which they practice self-control and self-knowledge are all relevant to the strength of the group as a whole. In addition the culture has an indirect effect upon other factors. The general health of the group will depend upon birth rate, hygiene, methods of child care, general living conditions, and hours and kinds of work, upon whether many men and women of talent go into medicine and nursing, and upon what proportion of the wealth of the group goes into the construction of hospitals, public health services, and so on. All these conditions, in turn, depend upon the culture. Cultural practices are also largely responsible for the use which is made of the genetic material born into the group, since they determine whether the individual will be able to develop his talents fully, whether educational institutions will be open to him regardless of class or other distinction, whether educational policies are progressive or reactionary, whether he will be subject to political or economic favoritism in the selection of a profession, and so on. The culture also determines the extent to which the members of the group are preoccupied with food or sex or with escape from minor aversive stimulation in the search for “comfort” or from such major aversive stimulation as hard labor or combat, as well as the extent to which they are subject to exploitation by powerful agencies. In turn, therefore, it determines the extent to which they are able to engage in productive activities in science, art, crafts, sports, and so on. The experimental test of a given culture is provided by competition between groups under the conditions characteristic of a particular epoch.
Is survival, then, a criterion according to which a given cultural practice may be evaluated? Those who are accustomed to appealing to more traditional values are usually not willing to accept this alternative. Survival value is a difficult criterion because it has perhaps even less obvious dimensions than happiness, freedom, knowledge, and health. It is not an unchanging criterion, for what may in this sense be a “good” culture in one period is not necessarily “good” in another. Since survival always presupposes competition, if only with the inanimate environment, it does not appear to define a “good” culture in the absence of competition. There appears to be no way in which we can test the survival value of a culture in vacuo to determine its absolute goodness. Conversely, the temporary survival of a culture is no proof of its goodness. All present cultures have obviously survived, many of them without very great change for hundreds of years, but this may not mean that they are better cultures than others which have perished or suffered drastic modification under more competitive circumstances. The principle of survival does not permit us to argue that the status quo must be good because it is here now.
Another difficulty is that survival is often in direct conflict with traditional values. There are circumstances under which a group is more likely to survive if it is not happy, or under which it will survive only if large numbers of its members submit to slavery. Under certain circumstances the survival of a culture may depend upon the unrestricted exercise of sexual behavior, while under other circumstances severely repressive control may strengthen advantageous behavior of other sorts. In order to accept survival as a criterion in judging a culture, it thus appears to be necessary to abandon such principles as happiness, freedom, and virtue. Perhaps the commonest objection to survival is essentially an aversive reaction to the practices which have, thus far in the history of mankind, had survival value. Aggressive action has usually been most successful in promoting the survival of one group against another or of one individual against another.
These difficulties appear to explain why those who are accustomed to the traditional values hesitate to accept survival as an alternative. We have no reason to urge them to do so. We need not say that anyone chooses survival as a criterion according to which a cultural practice is to be evaluated. Human behavior does not depend upon the prior choice of any value. When a man jumps out of the way of an approaching car, we may say that he “chooses life rather than death.” But he does not jump because he has so chosen; he jumps because jumping is evoked by certain stimulating circumstances. This fact is explained in turn by many earlier contingencies of reinforcement in which quick movement has reduced the threat of impending aversive stimulation or has, in the sense of Chapter XI, avoided aversive consequences. Now, the fact that the individual responds or can be conditioned to respond in this way is not wholly unrelated to the issue of life or death. It is obvious, after the fact, that the behavior has worked to his advantage. But this particular advantage could not have operated before he jumped. Only past advantages could have had an effect upon his behavior. He was likely to jump or to learn to jump because his ancestors were selected from a large population just because they jumped or learned to jump quickly from the paths of moving objects. Those who did not jump or could not learn to jump are probably not represented by contemporary descendants. The “value” which the individual appears to have chosen with respect to his own future is therefore nothing more than that condition which operated selectively in creating and perpetuating the behavior which now seems to exemplify such a choice. An individual does not choose to live or die; he behaves in ways which work toward his survival or death. Behavior usually leads to survival because the behaving individual has been selected by survival in the process of evolution.
In the same sense, the behavior of making a constructive suggestion about a cultural practice does not involve the “choice of a value.” A long biological and cultural history has produced an individual who acts in a particular way with respect to cultural conditions. Our problem is not to determine the value or goals which operate in the behavior of the cultural designer; it is rather to examine the complex conditions under which design occurs. Some changes in culture may be made because of consequences which are roughly described as happiness, freedom, knowledge, and so on. Eventually, the survival of the group acquires a similar function. The fact that a given practice is related to survival becomes effective as a prior condition in cultural design. Survival arrives late among the so-called values because the effect of a culture upon human behavior, and in turn upon the perpetuation of the culture itself, can be demonstrated only when a science of human behavior has been well developed. The “practice of changing practice” is accelerated by science just because science provides an abundance of instances in which the consequences of practices are shown. The individual who is familiar with the results of science is most likely to set up comparable conditions in cultural design, and we may say, if the expression will not be misunderstood, that he is using survival as a criterion in evaluating a practice.
The evolution of cultures appears to follow the pattern of the evolution of species. The many different forms of culture which arise correspond to the “mutations” of genetic theory. Some forms prove to be effective under prevailing circumstances and others not, and the perpetuation of the culture is determined accordingly. When we engage in the deliberate design of a culture, we are, so to speak, generating “mutations” which may speed up the evolutionary process. The effect could be random, but there is also the possibility that such mutations may be especially adapted to survival.
But there is one difficulty and it is a very serious one. Survival will not have a useful effect upon the behavior of the cultural designer unless he can actually calculate survival value. A number of current issues suggest that this is not always possible. We may change the pattern of family life and of educational institutions so that children will grow up to be happier people, but are we sure that happy people are most likely to survive in the world today? The psychotherapist faces a comparable problem which is best exemplified by the writings of Freud himself. Freud was, on the one hand, interested in curing neuroses and, on the other, in demonstrating the importance of the achievements of neurotic men. Would a group of nonneurotic people lack scientific and artistic initiative, and if so, could they compete with a group of moderately neurotic people? Similarly, in governmental design, it may be possible to give everyone a considerable measure of security, but will the government which does so then be supported by an energetic, productive, and inventive people?
Practical situations are almost always more complex than those of the laboratory since they contain many more variables and often many unknowns. This is the special problem of technology as against pure science. In the field of human behavior, particularly in the design of culture, we must recognize a kind of complexity in the face of which the rigor of a laboratory science cannot be maintained. But this does not mean that science cannot contribute to the solution of crucial problems. It is in the spirit of science to insist upon careful observation, the collection of adequate information, and the formulation of conclusions which contain a minimum of wishful thinking. All of this is as applicable to complex situations as to simple. In addition, a rigorous science of human behavior offers the following kinds of practical help.
A demonstration of basic behavioral processes under simplified conditions enables us to see these processes at work in complex cases, even though they cannot be treated rigorously there. If these processes are recognized, the complex case may be more intelligently handled. This is the kind of contribution which a pure science is most likely to make to technology. For example, a behavioral process frequently occupies a considerable period of time and often cannot be observed at all through casual observation. When the process is revealed with proper recording techniques under controlled conditions, we may recognize it and utilize it in the complex case in the world at large. Punishment gives quick results, and casual observation recommends its use, but we may be dissuaded from taking this momentary advantage if we know that progress towards a better solution is being made in some alternative course of action. It is difficult to resist punishing a child for conduct which it will eventually outgrow without punishment until we have adequate evidence of the process of growth. Only when developmental schedules have been carefully established by scientific investigation are we likely to put up with the inconvenience of foregoing punishment. The process of extinction also requires a good deal of time and is not clear to casual inspection. We are not likely to use the process effectively until the scientific study of simpler instances has assured us that a given end-state will indeed be reached. It is the business of science to make clear the consequences of various operations performed upon a system. Only when we have seen these consequences clearly set forth are we likely to be influenced by their counterparts in complex practical situations.
A rigorous science of behavior makes a different sort of remote consequence effective when it leads us to recognize survival as a criterion in evaluating a controlling practice. We have seen that happiness, justice, knowledge, and so on are not far removed from certain immediate consequences which reinforce the individual in selecting one culture or one practice against another. But just as the immediate advantage gained through punishment is eventually matched by later disadvantages, these immediate consequences of a cultural practice may be followed by others of a different sort. A scientific analysis may lead us to resist the more immediate blandishments of freedom, justice, knowledge, or happiness in considering the long-run consequence of survival.
Perhaps the greatest contribution which a science of behavior may make to the evaluation of cultural practices is an insistence upon experimentation. We have no reason to suppose that any cultural practice is always right or wrong according to some principle or value regardless of the circumstances or that anyone can at any given time make an absolute evaluation of its survival value. So long as this is recognized, we are less likely to seize upon the hard and fast answer as an escape from indecision, and we are more likely to continue to modify cultural design in order to test the consequences.
Science helps us in deciding between alternative courses of action by making past consequences effective in determining future conduct. Although no one course of action may be exclusively dictated by scientific experience, the existence of any scientific parallel, no matter how sketchy, will make it somewhat more likely that the more profitable of two courses will be taken. To those who are accustomed to evaluating a culture in terms of absolute principles, this may seem inadequate. But it appears to be the best we can do. The formalized experience of science, added to the practical experience of the individual in a complex set of circumstances, offers the best basis for effective action. What is left is not the realm of the value judgment; it is the realm of guessing. When we do not know, we guess. Science does not eliminate guessing, but by narrowing the field of alternative courses of action it helps us to guess more effectively.