The Man and Science Behind Token Economies B.f. Skinner once proclaimed “Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.” Today, our generation now knows that statement to be true. Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on March 20, 1904 in a small town, Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. His father was a lawyer and his mother was an independent housewife. B.F. Skinner, as he is more commonly referred to, had a brother who died of a cerebral aneurysm at age sixteen. While at Hamilton University, Skinner received his bachelor’s degree in English. At Hamilton, he wrote for the school newspaper and confessed to being an atheist (Boeree 1). Skinner received his master’s in 1930 and his doctoral in 1931, both in psychology and at Harvard. He continued to …show more content…
Freedom and Dignity reached the top of the New York Times Bestseller List in 1972 (Rutherford 1). Skinner penned many other books that did not have as much acclaim (Boeree 5). Besides books, Skinner also had many notable inventions under his name. When he was a young boy, he invented a device to remind him to pick up his clothes off the floor. Later in his life, Skinner developed a technology for the military that allowed pigeon-guided missiles to be used. Burrhus also invented a device called the ‘air-crib.’ He used the crib on his second daughter as an experiment. The idea was good, but the ‘air-crib’ never caught on due to it looking like a toddler aquarium. B.F. Skinner also invented the teaching machine. The machine literally taught children like a teacher using Skinner’s principles. He was so confident in the idea that he once said “I have no doubt at all that programmed instruction based on operant principles will take over education.” B.F. Skinner was clearly ahead of his time. Look at modern online courses and one would see a striking resemblance (Rutherford 1). B.F. Skinner’s ideology would forever change how people would see the science of behaviorism and psychology. Skinner thought it was much more productive to study observable behavior rather than the mental cause and effects of experiments. In this way, he would
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.
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.
B.F. Skinner and his theories on learning and
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,
He thrived during high school, the principle took special interest in him can told Skinner, “you were born to be a leader of men. Never forget the value of a human life” (10). Even though Skinner had yet to show signs of leadership, many people in his life had already witnessed leadership qualities in him and were encouraging him, “there was something about his demeanor, self-containment, assurance, and assertiveness that suggested his potential for “leadership” in some… unpredictable way” (11). Skinner entered college in 1922 and adapted to it quickly (18). There his desire for autonomy grew, he felt a “sense of relief form even such a minimal constraints as he has experienced at home” (18).
“The ideal of behaviorism is to eliminate coercion: to apply controls by changing the environment in such a way as to reinforce the kind of behavior that benefits everyone,” stated B. F. Skinner (Brainy, 2014). This is a quote that is very popular and was a prime description of those Skinners experiments were meant to prove along with it being a saying that many people in the psychology world followed. Burrhus Fredrick Skinner was born on March 20, 1904 in the small town Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. Skinners father was a lawyer while his mother was a stay at home mom to take care of him and his younger brother. As a boy, he enjoyed creating a variety of gadgets and coming up with convincing ideas that was his step in stone later on when he go into psychological studies. After graduating from Hamilton College in 1926, Skinner was very undecided on what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Skinner tried to begin a career as a writer and author, but soon realized he was not making any progress; he decided to pursue psychology at Harvard University. After graduating from Harvard, he continued to work there for the rest of his career. After a year of fighting leukemia, Skinner died on August 18,1990. Skinner left a remarkable imprint on the psychology world; by the time he died Skinner was named to be the utmost influential psychologist in the 29th century, along with publishing a considerable amount of books and articles (Zorn, 2014).
Skinner’s theory observes individuals from the point of view of the behavior that they demonstrate. The key weakness of this theory is its attempt to explain the behaviors of an individual solely through visible phenomena. Critics sometimes accuse behaviorists of denying that ideas and thoughts exist (Jensen & Burgess, 1997). The major opposition that behaviorists face is that behavior of a person cannot be understood without including the mental activity of the individual. Critics have accused behaviorists of focusing only on behavior and ignoring the role of physiology, neuroscience, and genetics (Weiss & Rosales-Ruiz, 2014). Sometimes the reactions that people demonstrate have are not related their experience and therefore they have another
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.
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
Skinner attended Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and it was here that he cultivated his immense passion for writing. After graduating from Hamilton in 1926, he set out to take his writing to the professional level but was sadly met with little success. After a two year period of despondency, he finally made the decision to take
He also read about animals. He collected toads, lizards, and snakes. He trained pigeons to do tricks after he saw them performing one year at a fair. Training the pigeons probably was where he got his ideas of operant conditioning. He attended Susquehanna High School just like his mother and father. In his graduating class there were only eight people including him. He was a very intellectual person. He reported that he really enjoyed school. Over the four years in high school Skinner became good at math and reading Latin, but was no good at science. He was always performing physical and chemical experiments while he was at home. His father was a book collector. Skinner always had a good library of books around his house. Skinner recalled the little collection of applied psychology journals that his father had bought. Those books could have been the starting point in his psychology career. Skinner grew up in a very religious family.
There are various ways in which Skinner 's theory can apply to my life and the lives of those around me. When I think about personality, I view it as one of the things that creates an individuals most crucial uniqueness. With the way Skinner sees personality, all of the authenticity of the person goes down to nothing. What makes them, them is suddenly just a simple response, a genetic code or bad an environment, although Skinner believes that there is uniqueness in every person 's genetics make up, I feel that it does not do justice to a person 's character (Hoechstetter, 1971). The emotion and significant difference behind each person loses its valubility and all people become boring and the same. Although I do not personally agree with his entire belief of personality and motivation, I do agree that the environment of the individual and their upbringing are crucial parts of their person.
While other psychologists believed that human psychology is a complex system because there are so many external influences, Skinner had believed that human’s mind is the same as other animals, which explains why he had done experiments using pigeons. Inspired by Watson and Pavlov, Skinner decided to study psychology and focused on behaviorism. Skinner’s theory was based on self-observation, which made him stood onto his believes regardless of the oppositions. In fact, during WW II, “Skinner convinced the military to fund his research--the famous Project Pigeon--to train pigeons to guide bombs and torpedoes.” (Greengrass, pg, 80) He chose pigeons because he thinks they live
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.