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Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.
B. F. Skinner
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Positive reinforcement can lead to significant changes in behavior and motivation.

B. F. Skinner's quote highlights the effectiveness of positive reinforcement in influencing behavior. When individuals receive encouragement or rewards for their actions, they are more likely to repeat those actions, thus promoting a cycle of positive behavior and motivation in various contexts, whether in education, the workplace, or personal development.

Themes

Positive ReinforcementMotivationBehaviorEncouragementRewards

In practice

Example use cases

A teacher can use this quote to emphasize the importance of rewarding students for good behavior.

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Each of us has interests which conflict the interests of everybody else... 'everybody else' we call 'society'. It's a powerful opponent and it always wins. Oh, here and there an individual prevails for a while and gets what he wants. Sometimes he storms the culture of a society and changes it to his own advantage. But society wins in the long run, for it has the advantage of numbers and of age.
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No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.
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I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men.
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The ideal of behaviorism is to eliminate coercion: to apply controls by changing the environment in such a way as to reinforce the kind of behavior that benefits everyone.
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Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
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