Breaking Ground Of The Mental World

Lauren Slater is the author of the 2004 book called “Opening Skinner’s Box”. In this book, Slater writes about ten important psychological studies of the 20th century and she describes the personalities of the famous researchers who conducted the experiments. The book is written in story form with the author recreating the experiments in her own way. Slater uses the experiments to get the reader thinking about important concepts such as free will, authoritarianism, conformity, and morality. She writes about controversies that surround the researchers and she also tries to track down the actual researcher or other people who can help provide more information. In the first chapter of the book, Slater writes about the work of B.F. Skinner, who is known for his contribution to behavioral psychology, specifically the concept of operant conditioning. In this paper, I will summarize some of the major points from this chapter, titled “Opening Skinner’s Box” and I will also offer a critical analysis of the chapter.

B.F Skinner was an American Psychologist who invented the operant conditioning chamber. The chamber he set up had rats in it and a lever, once the rats pulled the lever they were given a piece of food. After this happened the rate of bar pressing would increase dramatically and remain high until the rat was no longer hungry. He was a firm believer of the idea that human free will was actually an illusion and any human

Chapter 1 of Opening Skinners Box portrays the life and experiments of one B.F. Skinner. The way this one man researched and spent so many years of his life dedicated to his findings is not only crazy and committed, but encouraging, motivational, and stimulating. Skinner was a neo-behaviorist well-known and notorious for his findings about the behavior animals have when using positive reinforcement and what you can teach them to do with these findings.

American psychologist and writer Lauren Slater, is the author of many books including the criticized and awarded book of Opening Skinner’s Box. This book is based on the recompilation of many psychological experiments presented as narrated as stories. Some readers have strong critics about Slater’s work because of the way she narrated every experiment. Slater added personal opinions and experiences during her researches which were printed in her book. The construction of the experiments conducted in the book is best examined by the first chapter “Opening Skinner’s Box” in this chapter, Slater is portrayed as a good narrator who tried to keep a transparency while looking for the truth about the “baby in

B.F. Skinner, born on March 20th 1904, was an American behavioural psychologist who carried who carried out many experiments based on how behaviour is shaped and that all humans will regurgitate the things they enjoy doing and avoid those they dislike. He understood that creative people will be rewarded positively in order for that person to take an interest in that particular activity and develop further. He based his theories on self-observation,

In the first chapter of her novel, Opening Skinner’s Box, Lauren Slater introduces B.F. Skinner, a neo-behaviorist who believed heavily in the power of reinforcement. He is most famous for his “Skinner boxes”, in which he would reward a rat with food whenever they accidentally pressed down on a lever. After a while, the rats would intentionally step of the levers, yet Skinner would alter the rate in which they received a reward for it, sometimes removing the incentives altogether. Skinner’s most significant discovery came from “variable schedules of reinforcement”, in which he intermittently rewarded the rats, where they would press the level but often walk away with nothing. By doing this, Skinner

B.F. Skinner is an American Psychologist from Pennsylvania who developed the idea of Behaviorism after studying at Harvard University (Biography.com Editors, n.d.). He is also known for his works such as, The Behavior of Organisms (1938), the novel Walden Two (1948), and later Beyond Freedom and Human Dignity (1971) which examines behaviorism in society (Biography.com Editors, n.d.).

B. F. Skinner’s Walden Two is a fictional account of a utopia set after World War II built on psychological techniques and behavioral engineering. Its creator, T. E. Frazier, is indicative of Skinner himself, who was a well-known behaviorist and psychologist in the mid-20th Century. “Give me the specifications, and I’ll give you the man!” he boasts in his novel. Although the words are really Frazier’s, they best summarize Skinner’s behaviorist model. Given enough knowledge about man’s behavior, one can manipulate him however he chooses through careful experimentation.

One of the most influential psychologists of all times is Burrhus Frederic Skinner, also known as B. F. Skinner, who was born on March 20, 1904 in a small town called Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. B. F. Skinner was raised in a warm and wealthy home. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a stay at home mom. In Skinner’s early childhood, it was noted that he and his younger brother, Edward James, liked to build things such as arrows and shack in the woods, to name a few ( ). These construction skills would enable an older Skinner to build the equipment invented for his psychology research. As he grew up, he went through all twelve grades at the same school, graduating with less than eight students. Within these years, he developed an interest in art and literature through drawing and later reading Shakespeare (Dews, 1970).

One of the most prominent and influential psychologists of the twentieth century, B.F. Skinner was known as a behavioral psychologist, philosopher of science, and an educational innovator. Throughout his life he did experimental work with animals to discover how patterns of behavior are learned. His initial work was primarily conducted with animals, and later in life he started to work with humans and apply his learning from his pigeon studies to human behavior. He focused on the individual and wrote about how to restructure social systems to improve the quality of life.

Just as Freud is known as the father of Psychoanalysis, B.F. Skinner is often referred to ask the “the father of operant conditioning.” B.F. Skinner is also known for major contributions to the field of psychology (About B.F. Skinner, Sept, 2012). Skinner was a prolific author, publishing nearly 200 articles and more than 20 books. Skinner was most known for his work in behavior psychology. Behavioral psychology is the psychological practice that focuses on learning new behaviors and how to modify our existing behavior and how that takes place (About B.F. Skinner, Sept, 2012). One of his major contributions was his theory of operant conditioning. Operant conditioning means roughly, the changing of behavior by the use of reinforcement, either positive or negative, and which these reinforcements are given after the desired response (About B.F. Skinner, Sept, 2012). Skinner identified three types of responses or operant that can follow behavior.

B.F. Skinner: He was one of the prominent propionates of a theory called behaviourism. He also constructed what became known as the ‘Skinner Box’.

Skinner conducted a series of research experiments with rats and pigeons under controlled laboratory conditions using a specially designed cage. By doing so he sought to demonstrate that behaviour can be created and reinforced by external factors. The puzzle box he created for his experiments has become so widely used that it is now known as the “Skinner box”. Animals would be placed in a cage which had a bar lever mechanism used to dispense food; Skinner would measure the frequency of the bar pressing and introduce different variables into the experiments. This led to his discovery of 'partial reinforcement' and its correlation to the slower extinction of shaped behaviour. When food pellets would only be dispensed once in a while (as opposed to every pressing) Skinner noticed that it took longer for the learnt behaviour to become extinct. The powerful phenomenon of partial reinforcement can be noticed in gambling establishments; a player on a slot machine is more likely to keep up their behaviour of playing if the rewards are unpredictable and occasional. The player becomes more persistent in their gambling in the hope that the next coin will be the winner (Hunt, 1993).

Burrhus Frederick (B.F.) Skinner was a Psychologist who had a major influence on the field of education with his work in Operant Conditioning. I chose to do my research and project on this particular Psychologist because he is a name that I remember coming up throughout the years of school. I remember hearing about the Skinner box and experiments that he had done. When I started to research, he was one of the Theorist that continued to appear and it was interesting to read about him and his work.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on March 20, 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and a social philosopher. Skinner is known for his discovery of the theory of operant conditioning (Wikipedia). Skinner was a graduate from Harvard University. Although he understood the importance of classical conditioning, he noted that, “principles of classical conditioning account for only a small portion of learned behaviors” (Woolfolk 250). Skinner expressed that through operant conditioning, behavior is strengthened or weakened by antecedents or consequences. Both theorists’ work have a major influence on learning/behavioral concepts.