Stimulus Response Quotes

Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science which needs introspection as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics.... The position is taken here that the behavior of man and the behavior of animals must be considered in the same plane.

Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without.

There is no memory or retentive faculty based on lasting impression. What we designate as memory is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli.

There are absolutely ways to manipulate behavior, because our behavior is endlessly being manipulated by the world around us.

The teapot takes in water and gives out tea. So the human individual takes in anything you give him and promptly transforms it; he is ready to give you out again his own reactions - first, in thought and emotion, then in voice or action.

I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.

Strummer's Law: No input, no output.

The torrent of centuries rolling over the human race, has continually brought new perfections, the cause of which, ever active though unseen, is found in the demands made by our senses, which always in their turns demand to be occupied.

To excite in us tastes, odors, and sounds I believe that nothing is required in external bodies except shapes, numbers, and slow or rapid movements. ... if ears, tongues, and noses were removed, shapes and numbers and motions would remain, but not odors or tastes or sounds.

At college I'd seen my dead frog's limbs twitch under some applied stimulus or other - seen, but hadn't believed. Didn't dream of thinking beyond or around what I saw.

Of course, Behaviorism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

Sexual arousal results from the repetition and impact of image.

Stimuli, however, do not act upon an indifferent organism.

When we’ve ceased hearing or changing, we need a new environment.

Smell was our first sense. It is even possible that being able to smell was the stimulus that took a primitive fish and turned a small lump of olfactory tissue on its nerve cord into a brain. We think because we smelled.

People don’t pay much attention to anything unless you give them reason to

There is no reasoning, no process of inference or comparison; there is no thinking about things, no putting two and two together; there are no ideas - the animal does not think of the box or of the food or of the act he is to perform.

Sensorial perception, for example, certainly occurs with greater or less accuracy according to the degree of interest; it is constantly given other directions by the change of external stimuli and by ideas.

It is certain that the inanimate objects by which you are surrounded have a direct action on the brain.

If you take a bale of hay and tie it to the tail of a mule and then strike a match and set the bale of hay on fire, and if you then compare the energy expended shortly thereafter by the mule with the energy expended by yourself in the striking of the match, you will understand the concept of amplification.

You can really get poked in the back and not feel it very much, but just a feather around your lips and you really do feel it.

We're all animals, that we all respond to the same stimuli. If you want to motivate somebody not to have premarital sex, or motivate black bears not to go diving into dumpsters, first you have to think about why they do it. Telling them to stop isn't going to help. There has to be some incentive for them to alter their behavior.

Great advertising triggers an emotion in you. It has purpose. It touches a nerve, and that provokes a reaction.

This is due partly to the fact that Americans are much better fed than Europeans, and partly to the undeveloped resources of a new country, but more largely to our climate, which acts as a constant stimulus.

In general, every stimulus directs activity. It does not simply excite it or stir it up, but directs it toward an object.