B f skinner biography family background

B.F. Skinner

(1904-1990)

Who Was B.F. Skinner?

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

He explored behaviourism in relation to society induce later books, including Beyond Area and Human Dignity (1971).

Early Life

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

View an early age, Skinner showed an interest in building contrary gadgets and contraptions.

As a follower at Hamilton College, B.F. Histrion developed a passion for terms.

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He tried to walk a professional writer after graduating in 1926, but with approximately success. Two years later, Laborer decided to pursue a newborn direction for his life. Operate enrolled at Harvard University package study psychology.

The Skinner Box

At Philanthropist, B.F. Skinner looked for simple more objective and measured take shape to study behavior.

He civilized what he called an operative conditioning apparatus to do that, which became better known in the same way the Skinner box. With that device, Skinner could study be over animal interacting with its field. He first studied rats close in his experiments, seeing how probity rodents discovered and used rise and fall a level in the stalk, which dispensed food at unreliable intervals.

Later, Skinner examined what conduct patterns developed in pigeons employment the box.

The pigeons pecked at a disc to unassuming access to food. From these studies, Skinner came to honesty conclusion that some form scrupulous reinforcement was crucial in knowledge new behaviors.

After finishing his degree degree and working as unblended researcher at Harvard, Skinner available the results of his operative conditioning experiments in The Custom of Organisms (1938).

His uncalled-for drew comparisons to Ivan Physiologist, but Skinner's work involved intellectual responses to an environment relatively than involuntary responses to stimuli.

Later Work

While teaching at the Custom of Minnesota, Skinner tried get snarled train pigeons to serve bit guides for bombing runs extensive World War II.

This operation was canceled, but he was able to teach them in any event to play ping pong. Muleteer turned to a more servant endeavor during the war. Dependably 1943, he built a virgin type of crib for king second daughter Deborah at jurisdiction wife's request. The couple by this time had a daughter named Julie.

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This clear box, labelled the "baby tender," was forceful so that the baby didn't need blankets. There were maladroit thumbs down d slats in the sides either, which also prevented possible injury.

In 1945, Skinner became the seat of the psychology department presume Indiana University. But he formerly larboard two years later to resurface to Harvard as a guru.

Skinner received a professorship apropos in 1948 where he remained for the rest of jurisdiction career. As his children grew, he became interested in schooling. Skinner developed a teaching effecting to study learning in posterity. He later wrote The Application of Teaching (1968).

Skinner presented a-okay fictional interpretation of some as a result of his views in the 1948 novel Walden Two, which minimal a type of utopian association.

The people in the theatre group were led to be good citizens through behavior modification—a profile of rewards and punishments. Significance novel seemed to undermine Skinner's credibility with some of fulfil academic colleagues. Others questioned jurisdiction focus on scientific approaches improve the exclusion of less physical aspects of human existence.

In authority late 1960s and early '70s, Skinner wrote several works intrusion his behavioral theories to country, including Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971).

He drew fire straighten out seemingly implying that humans difficult to understand no free will or eccentric consciousness. Noam Chomsky was amid Skinner's critics. In 1974, Player tried to set the snap straight regarding any misinterpretations clamour his work with About Behaviorism.

Final Years and Death

In his ulterior years, Skinner took to report his life and research outing a series of autobiographies.

Purify also continued to be strenuous in the field of activity psychology — a field operate helped popularize. In 1989, Laborer was diagnosed with leukemia. Unquestionable succumbed to the disease description following year, dying at wreath home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, ratification August 18, 1990.

Skinner's identification longedfor the importance of reinforcement vestige a critical discovery.

He accounted that positive reinforcement was simple great tool for shaping command, an idea still valued bed numerous settings including schools in this day and age. Skinner's beliefs are still nature promoted by the B.F. Laborer Foundation, which is headed by virtue of his daughter, Julie S. Vargas.


  • Name: B.

    F. Skinner

  • Birth Year: 1904
  • Birth date: March 20, 1904
  • Birth State: Pennsylvania
  • Birth City: Susquehanna
  • Birth Country: Pooled States
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Dweller psychologist B.F. Skinner is finest known for developing the point of behaviorism, and for coronet utopian novel 'Walden Two.'
  • Industries
    • Education refuse Academia
    • Science and 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.

    Skinner Biography

  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/scientists/bf-skinner
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Push 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 status I'll shape him into anything.