RUNNING HEAD: B.F. SKINNER: BEHAVIORISM
B.F. Skinner: Behaviorism
Saad Thayani
OSU
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B.F. SKINNER: BEHAVIORISM
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Introduction
“Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born March 20, 1904, in the small Pennsylvania town of
Susquehanna”(Boeree, 2006). His father, William was a lawyer and his mother, Grace did not
have work so she stayed home and was a housewife. Skinner also had a brother named Ebbie; he
died from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 16. (Moloney, 2009) Skinner wanted to be a writer
originally. “Leaving home for New York City, he worked as a bookstore clerk where he
discovered behavioral science in Pavlov’s Conditioned Reflexes and Watson’s Behaviorism.
Inspired by these books, Fred Skinner decided to exchange literature for of psychology; he
enrolled in the Psychology Department of Harvard University in 1928.” (Boeree, 2006) While
Skinner was in college he studied behaviorism, which is the actions of human beings or animal,
not factoring in the feeling or thoughts. “Skinner completed his PhD studies in psychology at
Harvard.”(Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner, 2011, p. 17) According to (Boeree, 2006). In 1936, B.F.
Skinner moved to University of Minnesota to teach. There he also met Yvonne Blue, they got
married and had two daughters. His second daughter was “famous” for being the first to be
raised in the air crib, which Skinner had invented. The air crib was basically a crib with glass
walls to air condition the baby (Boeree, 2006). “August 18, 1990, B. F. Skinner died of leukemia
after becoming perhaps the most celebrated psychologist since Sigmund Freud.” (Boeree, 2006)
Skinner Box
Skinner noticed that animals do something and interact with other objects and animals;
they don’t just stand around like a statue. According to their environments animals do many
different things such as finding food, shelter, and members of the opposite sex. Skinner
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wondered if he could figure out how they learned to act in those types of scenarios. (Schacter,
Gilbert, Wegner, 2011, p. 17)
After pondering how to do this, he built a “conditioning chamber” but that phrase did not
catch on and the rest of the world called it the “Skinner box.” (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner, 2011,
p. 17) “In the Skinner box, a rat was operantly conditioned to press a lever by receiving food
pellet reinforcement after number of lever presses.” (Moloney, 2009) So basically what the
Skinner Box did was a rodent was put into this “Skinner Box” and inside the box it would have a
lever. If the rodent presses this lever it would deliver a food piece. The rodent would walk
around the box and would accidently press the lever again and again, until it wasn’t hungry
anymore. Whenever the rodent was hungry, it would start walking around until the lever was
activated again. This is when Skinner introduced the principle of reinforcement.
Reinforcement
“Reinforcement, which states that the consequences of a behavior determine whether it
will be more or less likely to occur again.” (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner, 2011, p. 17) Another
form of reinforcement is continuous reinforcement, which is each time the rodent does the same
thing; such as pushing the lever it receives another food piece.
Behavior
What is behavior? Behavior is the term used to describe the actions of human beings and
non-human animals. Skinner solely studied behaviorism, which lead to his study of operant
behavior. “Operant behavior: to refer to behavior that an organism produces that has some
impact on the environment. (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner, 2011, p. 278) There are three different
types of operant behaviors which are neutral operants, reinforce, and punisher.
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According to (McLeod, 2007) a neutral operant is a response from the environments that
neither increase nor decrease the probability of a behavior being repeated. “Reinforcers:
Responses from the environment that increase the probability of a behavior being repeated.
Reinforcers can be either positive or negative.” (McLeod, 2007) A positive reinforcement would
be if you clean your room, your parents award you to go out with your friends. This concept
influences the child’s behavior. “The removal of an unpleasant reinforcer can also strengthen
behavior. This is called Negative Reinforcement because it is the removal of an adverse
stimulus which is ‘rewarding’ to the animal.” (McLeod, 2007) The example here would be if you
don’t clean your room, you take your parents out. Punishment is the exact opposite of
reinforcement, because instead of increasing the behavior, it completely gets rid of it. (McLeod,
2007)
Our behaviors are small pieces fit together likes to create a big puzzle. Otherwise known
as shaping. Shaping: learning that results from the reinforcement of successive stems to a final
desired behavior. (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner, 2011, p. 284) An example of shaping would be
teaching a kid to dribble a ball, and then teach the kid to shoot a basketball. Then put it all
together in the game of basketball. The small pieces of dribbling and shooting are put together to
form one picture. The players in the National Basketball Association all learned the same way,
now they perform smoothly but it wasn’t like that before they learned to play.
Reflection
B.F. Skinner was an extraordinary person; his concepts of reinforcement and behaviorism
were interesting and drew me in to research him. I personally enjoyed researching him and his
theory’s. I had honestly thought psychology would not be the subject I would be interested in,
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until this person. I learned so much about behavior that I would of never have known before. I
also learned about operant behavior, which I see my own parents use on me. Punishment and
reinforcement to stop and influence my behavior as a child, which has made me how I am thanks
to how B.F. Skinner studied behaviorism, and only behaviorism.
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References
Boeree, C. G. (2006). B. F. Skinner. My Webspace files. Retrieved from
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/skinner.html
McLeod, S. A. (2007). B.F. Skinner | Operant Conditioning. Simply Psychology - Psychology
Articles for Students.
Moloney, S. (2009). B.F. Skinner. The Pennsylvania Center for the Book. Retrieved from
http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Skinner__BF.html
Schacter, D. L., Gilbert, D. T., Wegner, D. M., & Linsmeier, C. (2011). Psychology(2nd ed.).
New York: Worth publishers.