ABSTRACT
Skinner (1966) distinguished between behavior which is directly shaped by contingencies of reinforcement and behavior which occurs as a function of a description of such contingencies, the latter case being rule-governed. Rules, or descriptions of contingencies, establish some stimulus change as reinforcement. A person’s history of reinforcement for following rules and, in particular, the history of reinforcement for following rules verbalized by the present rule-giver, provide the necessary motivation. The rule-following repertoire is a result of a long and complicated learning history, but its operational building blocks are nothing more than contingencies of reinforcement. Nonetheless, the distinction has had enormous utility within the experimental analysis of behavior as researchers begin to dissect complex human behavior.
