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Introduction

1904–1990

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST, WRITER

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Ph.D., 1931

Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner (1904–1990) is considered by most to be one of the pivotal psychologists of the twentieth century. Both his followers and detractors alike agree that his tireless work in behaviorism has significantly changed the landscape of psychology in general and the perception of how behavior is understood by both scientists and common people. His theories, though modified in various ways over the years, still continue to be widely applied in all walks of contemporary life.

Skinner was an American psychologist best known for the theory he developed over many years, which he called operant conditioning. Operant conditioning was a refinement of Ivan Pavlov's earlier concept of classical conditioning. Operant conditioning states that learning occurs as a result of the rewards and punishments the subject receives in response to a particular behavior. If the result of the behavior is a reward, the same behavior is likely to be repeated. If the result is a punishment, the behavior is less likely to be repeated.

Skinner had an initial interest in becoming a writer and received a bachelor's degree in English from Hamilton College in New York. After some time out of school writing newspaper articles, Skinner enrolled in the experimental psychology program at Harvard University and earned his masters and doctoral degrees in 1930 and 1931, respectively.

It was while Skinner was at Harvard that he was heavily influenced by the work of John B.

Watson, who is commonly referred to as the "father of behaviorism" and the one responsible for initially popularizing many behavioral principles in the culture. Stemming from this and other influences, Skinner dedicated his life's work to studying the relationship between reinforcement and observable behavior. Throughout his career, he insisted that psychology was a scientific, empirically driven discipline.

In 1936, Skinner joined the faculty of University of Minnesota and later (1945) took up a position as chairman of the psychology department at Indiana University. In 1948, however, Harvard offered him a faculty position, which he accepted, and he remained there for the rest of his life.

Skinner is perhaps best known for several of his books. The first, entitled Walden Two (1948), describes a utopian community where the members of the community lived by the principles of operant conditioning and reinforcement. It received great praise from those receptive to his radical ideas and harsh criticism from those opposed to the mechanistic application of his theory to life. A prolific but slow writer, Skinner penned a combined total of nearly 200 articles and books over his long and influential career. His other important works include Behavior of Organisms (1938), and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971). In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner advocated mass conditioning as a means of social control, which created a great stir of controversy when it was published.

Skinner is also known for his invention of "the Skinner box," which is used in behavioral training and experimentation of animals to test and record the results of operant conditioning. For years it was rumored that Skinner kept his own daughter in one of the experimental boxes for an extended period of time, but historical records show this to be false.

Although Skinner's research was predominantly conducted with laboratory rats, he believed that his results could also be extrapolated to the behavior of human beings. As a behaviorist, he viewed human behavior as largely a response to environmental stimuli.

At the time of his death in 1990 from leukemia, Skinner had become one of the most notable figures in the field of psychology. The principles of operant conditioning and reinforcement that he outlined were built upon by clinical psychologists and applied to the treatment of disorders such as phobias, panic disorders, and child conduct problems.