Why is b.f. skinner important to psychology

Glasser, William. Harlow, Harry. Jung, Carl. Kinsey, Alfred. Laing, R. Leary, Timothy. Lewin, Kurt. Perls, Fritz. Maslow, Abraham. May, Rollo. Piaget, Jean. Pavlov, Ivan. Rogers, Carl. Satir, Virginia. Skinner, B. Wolpe, Joseph.

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Skinner was a very productive person until his death in at the age of Behaviorism is a school of thought in psychology that is interested in observable behavior. There are various types of behavior, such as innate behavior.

Innate behaviors are certain behaviors that we are born with, such as eating when we are hungry and sleeping when we are tired. Skinners home was a warm and stable place. He lived in the house he was born in until he went off to college. Skinner also had a younger brother named Edmond James Skinner, born November 6, Skinner was very fond of his brother and loved him very much. At the young age of sixteen, Edmond died of a cerebral aneurysm. Skinner was a very inventive young man.

He always was making or building things, such as wagons, model airplanes, etc. He also attempted to invent a perpetual motion machine, but it failed.

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 boy. He reported that he really enjoyed school. Over the four years in high school Skinner became quite good at mathematics and reading Latin, but was weak at science. He made up for it though, because he was always performing physical and chemical experiments while he was at home.

His father was an avid 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. His grandmother often reminded him of the concept of hell. His mother once washed his mouth out with soap literally for saying a bad word. His father never punished him, but he told him of the punishments that awaited him if he ever turned out to be a criminal. He returned to Harvard in as a professor, and was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology from until he retired in Skinner was influenced by John B.

In a utopian novel called Walden Two and a bestseller called Beyond Freedom and Dignity, he argued that human behavior was always controlled by its environment. According to Skinner, the future of humanity depended on abandoning the concepts of individual freedom and dignity and engineering the human environment so that behavior was controlled systematically and to desirable ends rather than haphazardly.

In the laboratory, Skinner refined the concept of operant conditioning and the Law of Effect. The rumors were that Skinner's daughter had served as a subject and that she had committed suicide as a result.

Slater's book pointed out that this was nothing more than a rumor, but a later review of the book mistakenly stated that her book supported the claims. This led to an angry and passionate rebuttal of the rumors by Skinner's very much alive and well daughter Deborah.

In , he joined the psychology department at Harvard University where he kept an office even after his retirement in In Skinner's operant conditioning process, an operant referred to any behavior that acts on the environment and leads to consequences.

He contrasted operant behaviors the actions under our control with respondent behaviors, which he described as anything that occurs reflexively or automatically such as jerking your finger back when you accidentally touch a hot pan. Skinner identified reinforcement as any event that strengthens the behavior it follows. The two types of reinforcement he identified were positive reinforcement favorable outcomes such as reward or praise and negative reinforcement the removal of unfavorable outcomes.

Punishment can also play a role in the operant conditioning process. According to Skinner, punishment is the application of an adverse outcome that decreases or weakens the behavior it follows. A punishment involves presenting a negative reinforcer prison, spanking, scolding —which some refer to as positive punishment —or removing a positive reinforcer taking away a favorite toy , which is also known as a negative punishment.

In his research on operant conditioning, Skinner also discovered and described schedules of reinforcement:. Skinner also developed an interest in education and teaching after attending his daughter's math class in Skinner noted that none of the students received any sort of immediate feedback on their performance.

Some students struggled and were unable to complete the problems while others finished quickly but really didn't learn anything new. Instead, Skinner believed that the best approach would be to create some sort of device that would shape behavior, offering incremental feedback until the desired response was achieved. He started by developing a math teaching machine that offered immediate feedback after each problem. However, this initial device did not actually teach new skills.

Eventually, he was able to develop a machine that delivered incremental feedback and presented material in a series of small steps until students acquired new skills, a process known as programmed instruction. Skinner later published a collection of his writings on teaching and education titled The Technology of Teaching. Skinner's research and writing quickly made him one of the leaders of the behaviorist movement in psychology and his work contributed immensely to the development of experimental psychology.

Drawing on his former literary career, Skinner also used fiction to present many of his theoretical ideas. In his book Walden Two , Skinner described a fictional utopian society in which people were trained to become ideal citizens through the use of operant conditioning. His book Beyond Freedom and Dignity also made him a lightning rod for controversy since his work seemed to imply that humans did not truly possess free will. His book About Behaviorism was written in part to dispel many of the rumors about his theories and research.

In his later years, Skinner continued to write about his life and his theories. He was diagnosed with leukemia in Just eight days before he died, Skinner was given a lifetime achievement award by the American Psychological Association and he delivered a minute talk to a crowded auditorium when he accepted the award. He died on August 18, Skinner was a prolific author, publishing nearly articles and more than 20 books.

In a survey of psychologists, he was identified as the most influential 20th-century psychologist. While behaviorism is no longer a dominant school of thought, his work in operant conditioning remains vital today.