A woman experiences high levels of nervousness right before she is to speak in front of a large audience. She decides she can't go through with the speech. She later tells her husband she could not speak because she was anxious. If her husband were B. F. Skinner, how might he respond?
A) "Your feelings of anxiety indeed caused you to not speak because they acted like a punishment."
B) "The anxiety is unrelated to the change in your behavior."
C) "The change in your behavior and your feelings of anxiety probably have the same aversive contingencies as a common cause."
D) "Anxious feelings do not exist because we cannot observe them."

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

As a behaviorist, Skinner would not acknowledge that the woman's anxiety caused her to not speak as if it were a direct causal relationship. Rather, he would argue that the change in the behavior of not speaking and the feelings of anxiety have a common cause, which might be the aversive contingencies associated with speaking in front of a large audience. The woman might have learned to associate public speaking with negative consequences, such as embarrassment or failure, which activate her anxiety as a signal to avoid that situation. Therefore, Skinner would recommend that addressing the underlying cause of her anxiety, rather than treating it as a separate entity, might lead to a change in her behavior.

A Woman Experiences High Levels of Nervousness Right Before She