Blog Topics
Looking for something specific? The following topics address a wide range of business needs and challenges.
Behavioral History
The current behavior of living creatures is determined by four things: the creature’s phylogeny (evolutionary history), its current physiological state, the current contingencies impinging on it, and…
William B. Abernathy
Our behavior analysis community has been built by many people who have found B. F. Skinner’s ideas about human behavior compelling. Bill Abernathy, who died on March 4, 2015 after a long illness…
Survivor: Feeding the Fire
In the long-running TV reality series Survivor, starting and maintaining a fire has always been a fundamental and immediate need. Without the proper tools, merely generating a spark can be…
Talking about Intentions
My most recent Behavior Watch commentary described a scenario in which my eldest granddaughter was trying to persuade her pet Pug to cease disrupting our card game by plopping down on the floor in…
Skinner and American Sniper
My husband and I went to see the controversial new Clint Eastwood-directed film, “American Sniper.” It is a vivid story of an American man, romanticized or not depending on your perspective, who did…
Two Granddaughters, a Pug, a Stuffed Toy Chicken, and Behavior Management
The other night I had the great pleasure of babysitting two of my granddaughters, ages 9 and 11. As we tried to play a card game on the floor, their pet Pug rudely kept using our playing field as his…
Behavior Analysis or Behavioral Enviroscience?
Who am I? “I am a behavior analyst,” I answer in whatever circumstance the question arises. I then have to explain why my first identity is not that of psychologist (yes, I am a professor of…
Putting an End to Groundhog Day
Like Bill Murray in the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, every day for some people feels like a repeat of the last. Seemingly no matter what they do, nothing changes. Each day greets them with the same…
Behavioral Cusp: Getting the Biggest Bang for the Buck
We are pleased to have as our guest commentator this week behavioral education expert Ronnie Dietrich, a Senior Fellow of the Wing Institute in Oakland, California. Ronnie has been involved in the…
Beyond a String around the Finger: Creative Self-Management
A reminder-string around the finger surely wasn’t the first self-management technique, but it may be the best-known (regardless of whether or not anyone really does that anymore). Self-management is…
Measurement: Friend or Foe?
It seems that the world is becoming obsessed with measurement. We are measuring steps, heart rate, calories, sleep—you name it and there is a device to measure it. People are going to waste a…
Strrrrrrrrrrrretch Goals
For those unfamiliar with them, stretch goals are the practice in business, sports, and personal life of progressively increasing the targets expected of a person or team. If I am a salesperson and…
Pet Projects
A lot of really interesting science has been undertaken using animals that either are naturally part of our home life or, in a few cases, have been specially adopted and adapted to the scientist’s…
The Key to Making Resolutions Stick Is Strength in Numbers
Ah, the New Year has arrived—our chance to hit the reset button. This year is sure to be better…we resolve to get fit, be a better parent, heck, even be a better boss. For many managers a…
Holiday Thoughts from Mr. Sam Walton
The following is a copy of an actual letter sent by Sam Walton of Wal-Mart to his managers. It was sent to me by an impassioned client who wanted to thank us for bringing the science of behavior into…
Behavioral Hiccups and Other Manifestations of Change
Behavior analysis seems to me uniquely positioned for studying change. Indeed, our most basic research method is all about change. We first establish a baseline in which the behavior under study is…
Behavior, Automatic Reinforcement, and Rudolph’s Red Nose
The legend of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was revealed in 1939 by Robert L. May. It went truly viral when cowboy/singer Gene Autrey first recorded that song we all know, in 1949. Never answered,…
Guest Commentary: Why Thoughts Aren't Causes
The Aubrey Daniels Institute is pleased to share the following commentary by Dr. Lee Hulbert Williams, Deputy Head of Department and Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of…
