How Did Bf Skinner Influence Behaviorism

Ever heard a certain song that triggers your brain to recall something from the past. Then, you should know that you been conditioned to respond in a certain way when you hear that favorite song you known about for a long time. Throughout human history behaviorism has played a big role in the evolution of psychology. The three main characters that contributed on to the creation of behaviorism were Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner all helping behaviorism evolution into an important idea in psychology . Overall, behaviorism is very common around the world and being everywhere daily in ads or life situations.

Operant Conditioning Theory by B.F. Skinner is a psychological manipulation using rewards and punishments to enforce positive behavior. It uses an individual person’s response to events or stimulus. When a particular Stimulus-Response pattern is rewarded, the individual is conditioned to respond. The distinctive characteristic of operant conditioning is related to previous forms of behaviorism. The Operant Conditioning theory comprises of neutral operants, positive/negative reinforcers, and positive/negative punishers. Through these factors, we get the desired behavior of our subject because they do not want to be punished for under performing so they do what they’re told to or do more of what they were assigned to to receive positive stimulus

Behaviorism is defined as,” a school of psychology that takes the objective evidence of behavior (as measured responses to stimuli) as the only concern of its research and the only basis of its theory without reference to

Behaviourism is a psychological approach that emphasis on environmental factors influencing observable human behaviour. This approach consists of two main processes: Classical conditioning which means learning things by associating them with something e.g. if you ate Chinese food before and it made you feel queasy and unwell then the next time you see Chinese food you will associate it to that experience you had before. Operant conditioning which means learning things by positive and negative reinforcement and association e.g. when you do well in school and your parents buy you the game you’ve always wanted (positive reinforcement).

Behaviorism is the scientific approach to psychology that is distinguished by logical-theoretical emphasis as is seeks to develop reasons for behavior (Moore, 2013). The theory of Behaviorism was developed by John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner. Uniquely, this theory states that personality is plastic and can be shaped by the environment or situational influences. Another difference from previous thoughts is

In the middle of the 20th century, B.F. Skinner dominated the field of psychology with his theory of behaviorism and it has an extension; the Radical Behaviorism. His theory of behaviorism is the science of human behavior. B.F. Skinner wasn’t the founder of Behaviorism; it was originally founded by John B. Watson in 1913. Skinner just did the extension of Behaviorism; the Radical Behaviorism. Early 20th-century psychologist John Watson developed behaviorism as a psychological theory. John B. Watson wanted to eliminate the internal mental states of human such as the consciousness. He proposed to replace the "science of the mind" with the "science of human behavior."

Behaviorism on learning and memory occupies an important position in the history of psychology. John B. Watson is the father of behaviorism while B.F. Skinner is the most famous behaviorist of the twentieth century. Watson’s methodological behaviorism means that it is only the behaviors of an individual that can be objectively observed. Skinner’s radical behaviorism emphasized that behaviors of human and animals are blindly influenced by environment. In this case, Watson and Skinner share similar views of behaviorism. For instance, they believe that the proper objectives of behavioral research include prediction and control (Staddon and Bueno, 1991). However, there are remarkable discrepancies in their views of human equality and freedom. Watson promoted the progressive process of human equality by maintaining concept of “tabula rasa”, whereas Skinner insisted that freedom is an illusion, so that he provided the adverse effect to the dictatorial institution. The fact is that the potential ambiguity produces a strong influence on people’s thinking and has a practical significance on society.

Many ideas were shared between Watson, Tolman, and Skinner who all played a role in the forming of behaviorism. They did, however, differ on some of their beliefs as well as their methods of study. At this time, methods of studying psychology as well as psychology in general were in the developing stages. Watson was largely credited with the foundation of behaviorism, however, he was by no means the only one to make contributions. There has been some debate as to whether Watson’s contributions were enough to make him the “founder of behaviorism.” It is important to examine contributions from several of the early

* Behaviorism: The school of psychology that views observable, measureable behavior and emphasizes the key role of the environment as a determinant of a behavior.

The author describes the theory of FB Skinner of Reinforcement and Punishment”, and the popular “Pop” culture of “If you do this, you will get that” as tools that can be used to manage behavior. He explains that the theories of Skinner lead to manipulation of behavior. He claims that punishment is wrong and should not be used, however, reinforcement, reward or praise are controlling, “rewards control through seduction rather than force.” Managers and educationalists have taken advantage with these tools of manipulation over their subordinates and students to obtain, coerce the behavior they seem fit for the situation, making themselves the best judge.

Behaviorism psychology is, “The idea that psychology should restrict itself to studying objectively observable behavior.” ( Schacter, 2015, p 10.) All behavior is learned from a persons environment. For example a mother who has a child at a young age is more likely to have the same happen to there child then someone who a child in there late 20’s early 30’s. If a single parent brings a lot of different boyfriend/girlfriend’s around there kids then when the kid is older they will probably date a lot of people because they learned this from there

According to Gewirtz and Peláez-Nogueras (1992), “B. F. Skinner contributed a great deal to advancing an understanding of basic psychological processes and to the applications of science-based interventions to problems of individual and social importance.” He contributed to “human and nonhuman behavior, including human behavioral development, and to various segments of the life span, including human infancy” (p. 1411). One of Skinner's greatest scientific discoveries was “single reinforcement” which became sufficient for “operant conditioning, the role of extinction in the discovery of intermittent schedules, the development of the method of shaping by successive approximation, and Skinner's break with and rejection of stimulus-response

Skinners Operant Conditioning: A) If you reward a certain behavior, or punish the behavior, essentially reinforcing it, you eventually get the desired behavior.

Skinner took major efforts toward the approach of behaviorism to expand the field, following the initial works of Edward Thorndike. He was instrumental in redesigning and defining the law of effect. Skinner segmented behaviorism into two main sections such as respondent conditioning and operant conditioning. He associated that the later the consequences tailored to the behaviors are manipulated, the more frequent similar scenarios are played out in the future.

Classical and Operant conditioning, discovered by B.F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov, are two types of behavioral theories in psychology used to describe why a certain person may respond in various ways to different situations. Ms. Larson’s ideas are not working simply because she is employing positive reinforcement, when she should employ positive punishment. A positive reinforcement is when a person adds stimulation to the environment (ie. Ms. Larson Scolding the class) in order to increase behavior. Positive punishment however, is when a person adds stimulation to the environment in order to decrease behavior. Ms. Larson wanted to decrease the students’ behavior, therefore positive punishment would have been ideal. Given this, Ms. Larson could have added stimulation such as a prize given to the student with the best behavior at the end of each week.