Tag: behaviorism

November 18 post: Increase your writing output through meticulous timekeeping, precise reinforcements, and pure HATE

On By emperorpondersIn English, writing1 Comment

I mentioned in the previous post that writing is a very peculiar behavior, with a great chasm between its execution and hypothetical reward. That makes it hard to reinforce, to keep it consistent, comparable to similar activities with equally deferred rewards, like strength sports.

I thought I was being original when I wrote that but reading the papers I had ready for today’s post I noticed I was probably just paraphrasing one of them. It’s from a 1977 paper [1], which includes an introduction and discussion by a psychologist, but the core of the paper is the novelist Irving Wallace explaining his charts and timekeeping methods he used to become a professional writer.

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A fiction writer, a mysanthrope, and a behaviorist walk into a bar…

On By emperorpondersIn EnglishLeave a comment

One of the most known quotes from the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft is

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form.

from his Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927.) Many people recognize it, and it’s a thought attributed to him even though the next sentence states he thought it was (or wanted to present it as such) common knowledge: “These facts few psychologists will dispute.” He didn’t believe he was discovering anything new.

In any event, I believe I may have stumbled upon Lovecraft’s inspiration for his famous statement.

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