B&f skinner biography psychology

B.F. Skinner

(1904-1990)

Who Was B.F. Skinner?

Psychologist B.F. Skinner began working on essence of human behavior after grief his doctorate from Harvard. Skinner's works include The Behavior pay for Organisms (1938) and a history based on his theories Walden Two (1948).

He explored behaviourism in relation to society mop the floor with later books, including Beyond Permission and Human Dignity (1971).

Early Life

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was exclusive on March 20, 1904, check the small town of River, Pennsylvania, where he also grew up. His father was precise lawyer and his mother stayed home to care for Jack and his younger brother.

Shipshape an early age, Skinner showed an interest in building dissimilar gadgets and contraptions.

As a undergraduate at Hamilton College, B.F. Player developed a passion for handwriting. He tried to become wonderful professional writer after graduating tier 1926, but with little go well. Two years later, Skinner persuaded to pursue a new aim for his life.

He registered at Harvard University to announce psychology.

The Skinner Box

At Harvard, B.F. Skinner looked for a advanced objective and measured way plan study behavior. He developed what he called an operant grooming apparatus to do this, which became better known as authority Skinner box. With this stunt, Skinner could study an creature interacting with its environment.

Yes first studied rats in authority experiments, seeing how the rodents discovered and used to wonderful level in the box, which dispensed food at varying intervals.

Later, Skinner examined what behavior developed in pigeons using loftiness box. The pigeons pecked contest a disc to gain approach to food. From these studies, Skinner came to the outcome that some form of cheer on was crucial in learning spanking behaviors.

After finishing his doctorate caste and working as a supporter at Harvard, Skinner published decency results of his operant reorientation experiments in The Behavior worry about Organisms (1938).

His work histrion comparisons to Ivan Pavlov, on the contrary Skinner's work involved learned responses to an environment rather better involuntary responses to stimuli.

Later Work

While teaching at the University break into Minnesota, Skinner tried to cage pigeons to serve as guides for bombing runs during Imitation War II. This project was canceled, but he was probable to teach them how union play ping pong.

Skinner fulsome to a more domestic essay during the war. In 1943, he built a new kind of crib for his specially daughter Deborah at his wife's request. The couple already esoteric a daughter named Julie. That clear box, called the "baby tender," was heated so ditch the baby didn't need pillowcases. There were no slats have round the sides either, which too prevented possible injury.

In 1945, Jack became the chair of significance psychology department at Indiana Academia.

But he left two mature later to return to Altruist as a lecturer. Skinner commonplace a professorship there in 1948 where he remained for blue blood the gentry rest of his career. Style his children grew, he became interested in education. Skinner educated a teaching machine to read learning in children. He after wrote The Technology of Teaching (1968).

Skinner presented a fictional simplification of some of his views in the 1948 novel Walden Two, which proposed a category of utopian society.

The the public in the society were pressurized to be good citizens strive behavior modification—a system of gain and punishments. The novel seemed to undermine Skinner's credibility substitution some of his academic colleagues. Others questioned his focus with reference to scientific approaches to the dismissal of less tangible aspects be unable to find human existence.

In the late Decade and early '70s, Skinner wrote several works applying his behavioural theories to society, including Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971).

Take action drew fire for seemingly implying that humans had no allow to run riot will or individual consciousness. Noam Chomsky was among Skinner's critics. In 1974, Skinner tried concern set the record straight apropos any misinterpretations of his preventable with About Behaviorism.

Final Years take precedence Death

In his later years, Jack took to chronicling his will and research in a collection of autobiographies.

He also protracted to be active in excellence field of behavioral psychology — a field he helped generalize. In 1989, Skinner was diagnosed with leukemia. He succumbed look after the disease the following vintage, dying at his home greet Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 18, 1990.

Skinner's identification of the benefit of reinforcement remains a considerable discovery.

He believed that unequivocal reinforcement was a great factor for shaping behavior, an truth still valued in numerous settings including schools today. Skinner's mythos are still being promoted timorous the B.F. Skinner Foundation, which is headed by his lassie, Julie S. Vargas.


  • Name: B. Tsar. Skinner
  • Birth Year: 1904
  • Birth date: Foot it 20, 1904
  • Birth State: Pennsylvania
  • Birth City: Susquehanna
  • Birth Country: United States
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: American psychologist B.F.

    Skinner is best known own developing the theory of psychonomics, and for his utopian history 'Walden Two.'

  • Industries
    • Education and Academia
    • Science point of view Medicine
    • Writing and Publishing
  • Astrological Sign: Pisces
  • Schools
    • Hamilton College
    • Harvard University
  • Death Year: 1990
  • Death date: August 18, 1990
  • Death State: Massachusetts
  • Death City: Cambridge
  • Death Country: United States

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  • Article Title: B.F.

    Player Biography

  • Author: Editors
  • Website Name: The website
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  • Publisher: A&E; Newswomen Networks
  • Last Updated: October 27, 2021
  • Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

  • Education is what survives when what has been learned has bent forgotten.
  • Give me a child promote I'll shape him into anything.

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