B. F. Skinner
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|---|---|
Skinner at the Harvard Psychology Department, c. 1950
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| Born |
Burrhus Frederic Skinner
March 20, 1904 |
| Died | August 18, 1990 (aged 86)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
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| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Hamilton College Harvard University |
| Known for | Operant conditioning Radical behaviorism Behavior analysis Verbal behavior |
| Spouse(s) | Yvonne (Eve) Blue (1936–1990) |
| Awards | National Medal of Science (1968) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychology, linguistics, philosophy |
| Institutions | University of Minnesota Indiana University Harvard University |
| Influences | Charles Darwin Ivan Pavlov Ernst Mach Jacques Loeb Edward Thorndike William James Jean-Jacques Rousseau Henry David Thoreau |
| Influenced | Maxie Clarence Maultsby Jr. |
| Signature | |
 | |
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990), commonly known as B. F. Skinner, was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.
Skinner considered free will an illusion and human action dependent on consequences of previous actions. If the consequences are bad, there is a high chance the action will not be repeated; if the consequences are good, the probability of the action being repeated becomes stronger. Skinner called this the principle of reinforcement.
To strengthen behavior, Skinner used operant conditioning, and he considered the rate of response to be the most effective measure of response strength. To study operant conditioning, he invented the operant conditioning chamber, also known as the Skinner Box, and to measure rate he invented the cumulative recorder. Using these tools, he and C. B. Ferster produced his most influential experimental work, which appeared in their book Schedules of Reinforcement (1957).
Skinner developed behavior analysis, the philosophy of that science he called radical behaviorism, and founded a school of experimental research psychology—the experimental analysis of behavior. He imagined the application of his ideas to the design of a human community in his utopian novel, Walden Two, and his analysis of human behavior culminated in his work, Verbal Behavior. Skinner was a prolific author who published 21 books and 180 articles. Contemporary academia considers Skinner a pioneer of modern behaviorism, along with John B. Watson and Ivan Pavlov. A June 2002 survey listed Skinner as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.
Biography
The gravestone of B.F. Skinner and his wife Eve at Mount Auburn Cemetery
Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, to Grace and William Skinner. His father was a lawyer. He became an atheist after a Christian teacher tried to assuage his fear of the hell that his grandmother described. His brother Edward, two and a half years younger, died at age sixteen of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Skinner's closest friend as a young boy was Raphael Miller, whom
he called Doc because his father was a doctor. Doc and Skinner became
friends due to their parents’ religiousness and both had an interest in
contraptions and gadgets. They had set up a telegraph line between
their houses to send messages to each other, although they had to call
each other on the telephone due to the confusing messages sent back and
forth. During one summer, Doc and Skinner started an elderberry
business to gather berries and sell them door to door. They had found
out that when they picked the ripe berries, the unripe ones came off the
branches too, so they built a device that was able to separate them.
The device was a bent piece of metal to form a trough. They would pour
water down the trough into a bucket, and the ripe berries would sink
into the bucket and the unripe ones would be pushed over the edge to be
thrown away.
He attended Hamilton College
in New York with the intention of becoming a writer. He found himself
at a social disadvantage at Hamilton College because of his intellectual
attitude. While attending, he joined Lambda Chi Alpha
fraternity. Hamilton was known for being a strong fraternity college.
Skinner had thought that his fraternity brothers were respectful and did
not haze or mistreat the newcomers, instead, they helped out the other
boys with courses or other activities. Freshmen were called “‘slimers’”
who had to wear small green knit hats and greet everyone that they
passed for punishment. The year before Skinner entered Hamilton, there
was a hazing accident that caused the death of a student. The freshman
was asleep in his bed when he was pushed onto the floor, where he
smashed his head, resulting in his death. Skinner had a similar incident
where two freshmen captured him and tied him to a pole, where he should
have stayed all night, but he had a razor blade in his shoe for
emergency and managed to cut himself free.
He wrote for the school paper, but, as an atheist, he was critical of
the traditional mores of his college. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts
in English literature in 1926, he attended Harvard University, where he
would later research, teach, and eventually become a prestigious board
member. While he was at Harvard, a fellow student, Fred Keller,
convinced Skinner that he could make an experimental science from the study of behavior. This led Skinner to invent his prototype for the Skinner Box and to join Keller in the creation of other tools for small experiments.
After graduation, he unsuccessfully tried to write a great novel while
he lived with his parents, a period that he later called the Dark Years. He became disillusioned with his literary skills despite encouragement from the renowned poet Robert Frost, concluding that he had little world experience and no strong personal perspective from which to write. His encounter with John B. Watson's Behaviorism led him into graduate study in psychology and to the development of his own version of behaviorism.
Skinner received a PhD from Harvard in 1931, and remained there as a researcher until 1936. He then taught at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and later at Indiana University,
where he was chair of the psychology department from 1946–1947, before
returning to Harvard as a tenured professor in 1948. He remained at
Harvard for the rest of his life. In 1973, Skinner was one of the
signers of the Humanist Manifesto II.
In 1936, Skinner married Yvonne (Eve) Blue. The couple had two daughters, Julie (m. Vargas) and Deborah (m. Buzan). Yvonne Skinner died in 1997, and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Skinner's public exposure had increased in the 1970s, he remained
active even after his retirement in 1974, until his death. In 1989,
Skinner was diagnosed with leukemia and died on August 18, 1990, in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ten days before his death, he was given the
lifetime achievement award by the American Psychological Association and
gave a talk in an auditorium concerning his work.
A controversial figure, Skinner has been depicted in many
different ways. He has been widely revered for bringing a much-needed
scientific approach to the study of human behavior; he has also been
vilified for attempting to apply findings based largely on animal
experiments to human behavior in real-life settings.
Contributions to psychological theory
Behaviorism
Skinner called his approach to the study of behavior radical behaviorism. This philosophy of behavioral science assumes that behavior is a consequence of environmental histories of reinforcement. In his words:
The position can be stated as follows: what is felt or introspectively observed is not some nonphysical world of consciousness, mind, or mental life but the observer's own body. This does not mean, as I shall show later, that introspection is a kind of psychological research, nor does it mean (and this is the heart of the argument) that what are felt or introspectively observed are the causes of the behavior. An organism behaves as it does because of its current structure, but most of this is out of reach of introspection. At the moment we must content ourselves, as the methodological behaviorist insists, with a person's genetic and environment histories. What are introspectively observed are certain collateral products of those histories.
...
In this way we repair the major damage wrought by mentalism. When what a person does [is] attributed to what is going on inside him, investigation is brought to an end. Why explain the explanation? For twenty five hundred years people have been preoccupied with feelings and mental life, but only recently has any interest been shown in a more precise analysis of the role of the environment. Ignorance of that role led in the first place to mental fictions, and it has been perpetuated by the explanatory practices to which they gave rise.
Theoretical structure
Skinner's behavioral theory was largely set forth in his first book, Behavior of Organisms.
Here he gave a systematic description of the manner in which
environmental variables control behavior. He distinguished two sorts of
behavior—respondent and operant—which are controlled in different ways.
Respondent behaviors are elicited by stimuli, and may be
modified through respondent conditioning, which is often called
"Pavlovian conditioning" or "classical conditioning", in which a neutral stimulus is paired with an eliciting stimulus. Operant
behaviors, in contrast, are "emitted", meaning that initially they are
not induced by any particular stimulus. They are strengthened through
operant conditioning, sometimes called "instrumental conditioning", in
which the occurrence of a response yields a reinforcer. Respondent
behaviors might be measured by their latency or strength, operant
behaviors by their rate. Both of these sorts of behavior had already
been studied experimentally, for example, respondents by Pavlov, and operants by Thorndike. Skinner's account differed in some ways from earlier ones, and was one of the first accounts to bring them under one roof.
The idea that behavior is strengthened or weakened by its
consequences raises several questions. Among the most important are
these: (1) Operant responses are strengthened by reinforcement, but
where do they come from in the first place? (2) Once it is in the
organism's repertoire, how is a response directed or controlled? (3)
How can very complex and seemingly novel behaviors be explained?
Origin of operant behavior
Skinner's
answer to the first question was very much like Darwin's answer to the
question of the origin of a "new" bodily structure, namely, variation
and selection. Similarly, the behavior of an individual varies from
moment to moment; a variation that is followed by reinforcement is
strengthened and becomes prominent in that individual's behavioral
repertoire. "Shaping" was Skinner's term for the gradual modification of
behavior by the reinforcement of desired variations. As discussed later
in this article, Skinner believed that "superstitious" behavior can
arise when a response happens to be followed by reinforcement to which it is actually unrelated.
Control of operant behavior
The
second question, "how is operant behavior controlled?" arises because,
to begin with, the behavior is "emitted" without reference to any
particular stimulus. Skinner answered this question by saying that a
stimulus comes to control an operant if it is present when the response
is reinforced and absent when it is not. For example, if lever-pressing
only brings food when a light is on, a rat, or a child, will learn to
press the lever only when the light is on. Skinner summarized this
relationship by saying that a discriminative stimulus (e.g. light) sets
the occasion for the reinforcement (food) of the operant (lever-press).
This three-term contingency
(stimulus-response-reinforcer) is one of Skinner's most important
concepts, and sets his theory apart from theories that use only
pair-wise associations.
Explaining complex behavior
Most
behavior of humans cannot easily be described in terms of individual
responses reinforced one by one, and Skinner devoted a great deal of
effort to the problem of behavioral complexity. Some complex behavior
can be seen as a sequence of relatively simple responses, and here
Skinner invoked the idea of "chaining". Chaining is based on the fact,
experimentally demonstrated, that a discriminative stimulus not only
sets the occasion for subsequent behavior, but it can also reinforce a
behavior that precedes it. That is, a discriminative stimulus is also a
"conditioned reinforcer". For example, the light that sets the occasion
for lever pressing may also be used to reinforce "turning around" in the
presence of a noise. This results in the sequence "noise - turn-around -
light - press lever - food". Much longer chains can be built by adding
more stimuli and responses.
However, Skinner recognized that a great deal of behavior,
especially human behavior, cannot be accounted for by gradual shaping or
the construction of response sequences.
Complex behavior often appears suddenly in its final form, as when a
person first finds his way to the elevator by following instructions
given at the front desk. To account for such behavior, Skinner
introduced the concept of rule-governed behavior. First, relatively
simple behaviors come under the control of verbal stimuli: the child
learns to "jump", "open the book", and so on. After a large number of
responses come under such verbal control, a sequence of verbal stimuli
can evoke an almost unlimited variety of complex responses.
Reinforcement
Reinforcement, a key concept of behaviorism, is the primary process that shapes and controls behavior, and occurs in two ways, "positive" and "negative". In The Behavior of Organisms (1938), Skinner defined "negative reinforcement" to be synonymous with punishment, that is, the presentation of an aversive stimulus. Subsequently, in Science and Human Behavior
(1953), Skinner redefined negative reinforcement. In what has now
become the standard set of definitions, positive reinforcement is the
strengthening of behavior by the occurrence of some event (e.g., praise
after some behavior is performed), whereas negative reinforcement is the
strengthening of behavior by the removal or avoidance of some aversive
event (e.g., opening and raising an umbrella over your head on a rainy
day is reinforced by the cessation of rain falling on you).
Both types of reinforcement strengthen behavior, or increase the
probability of a behavior reoccurring; the difference is in whether the
reinforcing event is something applied (positive reinforcement) or something removed or avoided (negative reinforcement).
Punishment is the application of an aversive stimulus/event (positive
punishment or punishment by contingent stimulation) or the removal of a
desirable stimulus (negative punishment
or punishment by contingent withdrawal). Though punishment is often
used to suppress behavior, Skinner argued that this suppression is
temporary and has a number of other, often unwanted, consequences. Extinction is the absence of a rewarding stimulus, which weakens behavior.
Writing in 1981, Skinner pointed out that Darwinian natural
selection is, like reinforced behavior, "selection by consequences".
Though, as he said, natural selection has now "made its case", he
regretted that essentially the same process, "reinforcement", was less
widely accepted as underlying human behavior.
Schedules of reinforcement
Skinner recognized that behavior is typically reinforced more than
once, and, together with C. B. Ferster, he did an extensive analysis of
the various ways in which reinforcements could be arranged over time,
which he called "schedules of reinforcement".
The most notable schedules of reinforcement studied by Skinner
were continuous, interval (fixed or variable), and ratio (fixed or
variable). All are methods used in operant conditioning.
- Continuous reinforcement (CRF) — each time a specific action is performed the subject receives a reinforcement. This method is effective when teaching a new behavior because it quickly establishes an association between the target behavior and the reinforcer.
- Interval Schedules — based on the time intervals between reinforcements
- Fixed Interval Schedule (FI): A procedure in which reinforcements are presented at fixed time periods, provided that the appropriate response is made. This schedule yields a response rate that is low just after reinforcement and becomes rapid just before the next reinforcement is scheduled.
- Variable Interval Schedule (VI): A procedure in which behavior is reinforced after random time durations following the last reinforcement. This schedule yields steady responding at a rate that varies with the average frequency of reinforcement.
- Ratio Schedules — based on the ratio of responses to reinforcements
- Fixed Ratio Schedule (FR): A procedure in which reinforcement is delivered after a specific number of responses have been made.
- Variable Ratio Schedule (VR): A procedure in which reinforcement comes after a number of responses that is randomized from one reinforcement to the next (ex. slot machines). The lower the number of responses required, the higher the response rate tends to be. Ratio schedules tend to produce very rapid responding, often with breaks of no responding just after reinforcement if a large number of responses is required for reinforcement.
Scientific inventions
Operant conditioning chamber
An operant conditioning chamber (also known as a Skinner Box)
is a laboratory apparatus used in the experimental analysis of animal
behavior. It was invented by Skinner while he was a graduate student at
Harvard University.
As used by Skinner, the box had a lever (for rats), or a disk in one
wall (for pigeons). A press on this "manipulandum" could deliver food to
the animal through an opening in the wall, and responses reinforced in
this way increased in frequency. By controlling this reinforcement
together with discriminative stimuli such as lights and tones, or
punishments such as electric shocks, experimenters have used the operant
box to study a wide variety of topics, including schedules of
reinforcement, discriminative control, delayed response ("memory"),
punishment, and so on. By channeling research in these directions, the
operant conditioning chamber has had a huge influence on course of
research in animal learning and its applications. It enabled great
progress on problems that could be studied by measuring the rate,
probability, or force of a simple, repeatable response. However, it
discouraged the study of behavioral processes not easily conceptualized
in such terms—spatial learning, in particular, which is now studied in
quite different ways, for example, by the use of the water maze.
Cumulative recorder
The cumulative recorder makes a pen-and-ink record of simple repeated responses. Skinner designed it for use with the Operant chamber
as a convenient way to record and view the rate of responses such as a
lever press or a key peck. In this device, a sheet of paper gradually
unrolls over a cylinder. Each response steps a small pen across the
paper, starting at one edge; when the pen reaches the other edge, it
quickly resets to the initial side. The slope of the resulting ink line
graphically displays the rate of the response; for example, rapid
responses yield a steeply sloping line on the paper, slow responding
yields a line of low slope. The cumulative recorder was a key tool used
by Skinner in his analysis of behavior, and it was very widely adopted
by other experimenters, gradually falling out of use with the advent of
the laboratory computer. Skinner's major experimental exploration of response rates, presented in his book with C. B. Ferster, Schedules of Reinforcement, is full of cumulative records produced by this device.
Air crib
The air crib is an easily cleaned, temperature- and humidity-controlled enclosure intended to replace the standard infant crib.
Skinner invented the device to help his wife cope with the day-to-day
tasks of child rearing. It was designed to make early childcare simpler
(by reducing laundry, diaper rash, cradle cap, etc.), while allowing the
baby to be more mobile and comfortable, and less prone to cry.
Reportedly it had some success in these goals.
The air crib was a controversial invention. It was popularly
mischaracterized as a cruel pen, and it was often compared to Skinner's operant conditioning chamber,
commonly called the "Skinner Box". This association with laboratory
animal experimentation discouraged its commercial success, though
several companies attempted production.
A 2004 book by Lauren Slater, entitled Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychology Experiments of the Twentieth Century
caused a stir by mentioning the rumors that Skinner had used his baby
daughter, Deborah, in some of his experiments, and that she had
subsequently committed suicide. Although Slater's book stated that the
rumors were false, a reviewer in The Observer
in March 2004 misquoted Slater's book as supporting the rumors. This
review was read by Deborah Skinner (now Deborah Buzan, an artist and
writer living in London) who wrote a vehement riposte in The Guardian.
Teaching machine
The teaching machine, a mechanical invention to automate the task of programmed learning
The teaching machine was a mechanical device whose purpose was to administer a curriculum of programmed learning.
The machine embodies key elements of Skinner's theory of learning and
had important implications for education in general and classroom
instruction in particular.
In one incarnation, the machine was a box that housed a list of
questions that could be viewed one at a time through a small window.
(See picture). There was also a mechanism through which the learner
could respond to each question. Upon delivering a correct answer, the
learner would be rewarded.
Skinner advocated the use of teaching machines for a broad range of
students (e.g., preschool aged to adult) and instructional purposes
(e.g., reading and music). For example, one machine that he envisioned
could teach rhythm. He wrote:
A relatively simple device supplies the necessary contingencies. The student taps a rhythmic pattern in unison with the device. "Unison" is specified very loosely at first (the student can be a little early or late at each tap) but the specifications are slowly sharpened. The process is repeated for various speeds and patterns. In another arrangement, the student echoes rhythmic patterns sounded by the machine, though not in unison, and again the specifications for an accurate reproduction are progressively sharpened. Rhythmic patterns can also be brought under the control of a printed score.
The
instructional potential of the teaching machine stemmed from several
factors: it provided automatic, immediate and regular reinforcement
without the use of aversive control; the material presented was
coherent, yet varied and novel; the pace of learning could be adjusted
to suit the individual. As a result, students were interested,
attentive, and learned efficiently by producing the desired behavior,
"learning by doing".
Teaching machines, though perhaps rudimentary, were not rigid
instruments of instruction. They could be adjusted and improved based
upon the students' performance. For example, if a student made many
incorrect responses, the machine could be reprogrammed to provide less
advanced prompts or questions—the idea being that students acquire
behaviors most efficiently if they make few errors. Multiple-choice
formats were not well-suited for teaching machines because they tended
to increase student mistakes, and the contingencies of reinforcement
were relatively uncontrolled.
Not only useful in teaching explicit skills, machines could also
promote the development of a repertoire of behaviors that Skinner called
self-management. Effective self-management means attending to stimuli
appropriate to a task, avoiding distractions, reducing the opportunity
of reward for competing behaviors, and so on. For example, machines
encourage students to pay attention before receiving a reward. Skinner
contrasted this with the common classroom practice of initially
capturing students’ attention (e.g., with a lively video) and delivering
a reward (e.g., entertainment) before the students have actually
performed any relevant behavior. This practice fails to reinforce
correct behavior and actually counters the development of
self-management.
Skinner pioneered the use of teaching machines in the classroom,
especially at the primary level. Today computers run software that
performs similar teaching tasks, and there has been a resurgence of
interest in the topic related to the development of adaptive learning
systems.
Pigeon-guided missile
During World War II, the US Navy required a weapon effective against surface ships, such as the German Bismarck class battleships. Although missile and TV
technology existed, the size of the primitive guidance systems
available rendered automatic guidance impractical. To solve this
problem, Skinner initiated Project Pigeon,
which was intended to provide a simple and effective guidance system.
This system divided the nose cone of a missile into three compartments,
with a pigeon placed in each. Lenses projected an image of distant
objects onto a screen in front of each bird. Thus, when the missile was
launched from an aircraft within sight of an enemy ship, an image of the
ship would appear on the screen. The screen was hinged, such that pecks
at the image of the ship would guide the missile toward the ship.
Despite an effective demonstration, the project was abandoned,
and eventually more conventional solutions, such as those based on
radar, became available. Skinner complained that "our problem was no one
would take us seriously." It seemed that few people would trust pigeons to guide a missile, no matter how reliable the system appeared to be.
Verbal summator
Early in his career Skinner became interested in "latent speech" and experimented with a device he called the "verbal summator". This device can be thought of as an auditory version of the Rorschach inkblots.
When using the device, human participants listened to incomprehensible
auditory "garbage" but often read meaning into what they heard. Thus, as
with the Rorschach blots, the device was intended to yield overt
behavior that projected subconscious thoughts. Skinner's interest in
projective testing was brief, but he later used observations with the
summator in creating his theory of verbal behavior. The device also led
other researchers to invent new tests such as the tautophone test, the
auditory apperception test, and the Azzageddi test.
Verbal Behavior
Challenged by Alfred North Whitehead during a casual discussion while at Harvard to provide an account of a randomly provided piece of verbal behavior, Skinner set about attempting to extend his then-new functional, inductive approach to the complexity of human verbal behavior. Developed over two decades, his work appeared in the book Verbal Behavior. Although Noam Chomsky was highly critical of Verbal Behavior,
he conceded that Skinner's "S-R psychology" was worth a review.
(Behavior analysts reject the "S-R" characterization: operant
conditioning involves the emission of a response which then becomes more
or less likely depending upon its consequence–see above.).
Verbal Behavior had an uncharacteristically cool
reception, partly as a result of Chomsky's review, partly because of
Skinner's failure to address or rebut any of Chomsky's criticisms. Skinner's peers may have been slow to adopt the ideas presented in Verbal Behavior because of the absence of experimental evidence—unlike the empirical density that marked Skinner's experimental work. However, in applied settings there has been a resurgence of interest in Skinner's functional analysis of verbal behavior.
Influence on education
Skinner's views influenced education
as well as psychology. Skinner argued that education has two major
purposes: (1) to teach repertoires of both verbal and nonverbal
behavior; and (2) to interest students in learning. He recommended
bringing students’ behavior under appropriate control by providing
reinforcement only in the presence of stimuli relevant to the learning
task. Because he believed that human behavior can be affected by small
consequences, something as simple as "the opportunity to move forward
after completing one stage of an activity" can be an effective
reinforcer . Skinner was convinced that, to learn, a student must engage
in behavior, and not just passively receive information. (Skinner,
1961, p. 389).
Skinner believed that effective teaching must be based on
positive reinforcement which is, he argued, more effective at changing
and establishing behavior than punishment. He suggested that the main
thing people learn from being punished is how to avoid punishment. For
example, if a child is forced to practice playing an instrument, the
child comes to associate practicing with punishment and thus learns to
hate and avoid practicing the instrument. This view had obvious
implications for the then widespread practice of rote learning and punitive discipline in education. The use of educational activities as punishment may induce rebellious behavior such as vandalism or absence.
Because teachers are primarily responsible for modifying student
behavior, Skinner argued that teachers must learn effective ways of
teaching. In The Technology of Teaching, Skinner has a chapter on
why teachers fail (pages 93–113): He says that teachers have not been
given an in-depth understanding of teaching and learning. Without knowing the science underpinning teaching, teachers fall back on procedures that work poorly or not at all, such as:
- using aversive techniques (which produce escape and avoidance and undesirable emotional effects);
- relying on telling and explaining ("Unfortunately, a student does not learn simply when he is shown or told." p. 103);
- failing to adapt learning tasks to the student's current level;
- failing to provide positive reinforcement frequently enough.
Skinner suggests that any age-appropriate skill can be taught. The steps are
- Clearly specify the action or performance the student is to learn.
- Break down the task into small achievable steps, going from simple to complex.
- Let the student perform each step, reinforcing correct actions.
- Adjust so that the student is always successful until finally the goal is reached.
- Shift to intermittent reinforcement to maintain the student's performance.
Skinner's views on education are extensively presented in his book The Technology of Teaching. They are also reflected in Fred S. Keller's Personalized System of Instruction and Ogden R. Lindsley's Precision Teaching.
Walden Two and Beyond Freedom and Dignity
Skinner is popularly known mainly for his books Walden Two and Beyond Freedom and Dignity, (for which he made the cover of TIME Magazine). The former describes a fictional "experimental community"
in 1940s United States. The productivity and happiness of citizens in
this community is far greater than in the outside world because the
residents practice scientific social planning and use operant
conditioning in raising their children.
Walden Two, like Thoreau's Walden,
champions a lifestyle that does not support war, or foster competition
and social strife. It encourages a lifestyle of minimal consumption,
rich social relationships, personal happiness, satisfying work, and
leisure. In 1967, Kat Kinkade and others founded the Twin Oaks Community,
using Walden Two as a blueprint. The community still exists and
continues to use the Planner-Manager system and other aspects of the
community described in Skinner's book, though behavior modification is
not a community practice.
In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner suggests that a technology of behavior could help to make a better society. We would, however, have to accept that an autonomous agent
is not the driving force of our actions. Skinner offers alternatives to
punishment, and challenges his readers to use science and modern
technology to construct a better society.
Political views
Skinner's
political writings emphasized his hopes that an effective and human
science of behavioral control – a technology of human behavior – could
help with problems as yet unsolved and often aggravated by advances in
technology such as the atomic bomb. Indeed, one of Skinner's goals was to prevent humanity from destroying itself. He saw political activity as the use of aversive or non-aversive means to control a population. Skinner favored the use of positive reinforcement as a means of control, citing Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel Emile: or, On Education as an example of literature that "did not fear the power of positive reinforcement".
Skinner's book, Walden Two, presents a vision of a
decentralized, localized society, which applies a practical, scientific
approach and behavioral expertise to deal peacefully with social
problems. (For example, his views led him to oppose corporal punishment
in schools, and he wrote a letter to the California Senate that helped
lead it to a ban on spanking.) Skinner's utopia is both a thought experiment and a rhetorical piece. In Walden Two,
Skinner answers the problem that exists in many utopian novels – "What
is the Good Life?" The book's answer is a life of friendship, health,
art, a healthy balance between work and leisure, a minimum of
unpleasantness, and a feeling that one has made worthwhile contributions
to a society in which resources are ensured, in part, by minimizing
consumption.
If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.
— B. F. Skinner, Walden Two, p. xi.
When Milton's Satan falls from heaven, he ends in hell. And what does he say to reassure himself? 'Here, at least, we shall be free.' And that, I think, is the fate of the old-fashioned liberal. He's going to be free, but he's going to find himself in hell.
— B. F. Skinner, from William F. Buckley Jr, On the Firing Line, p. 87.
Superstition in the pigeon
One of Skinner's experiments examined the formation of superstition in one of his favorite experimental animals, the pigeon.
Skinner placed a series of hungry pigeons in a cage attached to an
automatic mechanism that delivered food to the pigeon "at regular
intervals with no reference whatsoever to the bird's behavior". He
discovered that the pigeons associated the delivery of the food with
whatever chance actions they had been performing as it was delivered,
and that they subsequently continued to perform these same actions.
One bird was conditioned to turn counter-clockwise about the cage, making two or three turns between reinforcements. Another repeatedly thrust its head into one of the upper corners of the cage. A third developed a 'tossing' response, as if placing its head beneath an invisible bar and lifting it repeatedly. Two birds developed a pendulum motion of the head and body, in which the head was extended forward and swung from right to left with a sharp movement followed by a somewhat slower return.
Skinner suggested that the pigeons behaved as if they were
influencing the automatic mechanism with their "rituals", and that this
experiment shed light on human behavior:
The experiment might be said to demonstrate a sort of superstition. The bird behaves as if there were a causal relation between its behavior and the presentation of food, although such a relation is lacking. There are many analogies in human behavior. Rituals for changing one's fortune at cards are good examples. A few accidental connections between a ritual and favorable consequences suffice to set up and maintain the behavior in spite of many unreinforced instances. The bowler who has released a ball down the alley but continues to behave as if she were controlling it by twisting and turning her arm and shoulder is another case in point. These behaviors have, of course, no real effect upon one's luck or upon a ball half way down an alley, just as in the present case the food would appear as often if the pigeon did nothing—or, more strictly speaking, did something else.
Modern behavioral psychologists have disputed Skinner's
"superstition" explanation for the behaviors he recorded. Subsequent
research (e.g. Staddon and Simmelhag, 1971), while finding similar
behavior, failed to find support for Skinner's "adventitious
reinforcement" explanation for it. By looking at the timing of different
behaviors within the interval, Staddon and Simmelhag were able to
distinguish two classes of behavior: the terminal response, which occurred in anticipation of food, and interim responses,
that occurred earlier in the interfood interval and were rarely
contiguous with food. Terminal responses seem to reflect classical (as
opposed to operant) conditioning, rather than adventitious
reinforcement, guided by a process like that observed in 1968 by Brown
and Jenkins in their "autoshaping" procedures. The causation of interim
activities (such as the schedule-induced polydipsia
seen in a similar situation with rats) also cannot be traced to
adventitious reinforcement and its details are still obscure (Staddon,
1977).
Criticism
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky, a prominent critic of Skinner, published a review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior two years after it was published.
Chomsky argued that Skinner's attempt to use behaviorism to explain
human language amounted to little more than word games. Conditioned
responses could not account for a child's ability to create or
understand an infinite variety of novel sentences. Chomsky's review has
been credited with launching the cognitive revolution
in psychology and other disciplines. Skinner, who rarely responded
directly to critics, never formally replied to Chomsky's critique. Many
years later, Kenneth MacCorquodale's reply was endorsed by Skinner.
Chomsky also reviewed Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, using the same basic motives as his Verbal Behavior
review. Among Chomsky's criticisms were that Skinner's laboratory work
could not be extended to humans, that when it was extended to humans it
represented 'scientistic' behavior attempting to emulate science but which was not scientific, that Skinner was not a scientist because he rejected the hypothetico-deductive model of theory testing, and that Skinner had no science of behavior.
Psychodynamic psychology
Skinner has been repeatedly criticized for his supposed animosity towards Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis, and psychodynamic psychology.
Some have argued, however, that Skinner shared several of Freud's
assumptions, and that he was influenced by Freudian points of view in
more than one field, among them the analysis of defense mechanisms, such as repression. To study such phenomena, Skinner even designed his own projective test, the "verbal summator" described above.
J. E. R. Staddon
As understood by Skinner, ascribing dignity
to individuals involves giving them credit for their actions. To say
"Skinner is brilliant" means that Skinner is an originating force. If
Skinner's determinist
theory is right, he is merely the focus of his environment. He is not
an originating force and he had no choice in saying the things he said
or doing the things he did. Skinner's environment and genetics both
allowed and compelled him to write his book. Similarly, the environment
and genetic potentials of the advocates of freedom and dignity cause
them to resist the reality that their own activities are
deterministically grounded. J. E. R. Staddon (The New Behaviorism, 2nd Edition, 2014) has argued the compatibilist position; Skinner's determinism is not in any way contradictory to traditional notions of reward and punishment, as he believed.
List of awards and positions
- 1926 AB, Hamilton College
- 1930 MA, Harvard University
- 1930−1931 Thayer Fellowship
- 1931 PhD, Harvard University
- 1931−1932 Walker Fellowship
- 1931−1933 National Research Council Fellowship
- 1933−1936 Junior Fellowship, Harvard Society of Fellows
- 1936-1937 Instructor, University of Minnesota
- 1937−1939 Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota
- 1939−1945 Associate Professor, University of Minnesota
- 1942 Guggenheim Fellowship (postponed until 1944–1945)
- 1942 Howard Crosby Warren Medal, Society of Experimental Psychologists
- 1945−1948 Professor and Chair, Indiana University
- 1947−1948 William James Lecturer, Harvard University
- 1948−1958 Professor, Harvard University
- 1949−1950 President of the Midwestern Psychological Association
- 1954−1955 President of the Eastern Psychological Association
- 1958 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, American Psychological Association
- 1958−1974 Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
- 1964−1974 Career Award, National Institute of Mental Health
- 1966 Edward Lee Thorndike Award, American Psychological Association
- 1966−1967 President of the Pavlovian Society of North America
- 1968 National Medal of Science, National Science Foundation
- 1969 Overseas Fellow in Churchill College, Cambridge
- 1971 Gold Medal Award, American Psychological Foundation
- 1971 Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation for Mental Retardation International award
- 1972 Humanist of the Year, American Humanist Association
- 1972 Creative Leadership in Education Award, New York University
- 1972 Career Contribution Award, Massachusetts Psychological Association
- 1974−1990 Professor of Psychology and Social Relations Emeritus, Harvard University
- 1978 Distinguished Contributions to Educational Research Award and Development, American Educational Research Association
- 1978 National Association for Retarded Citizens Award
- 1985 Award for Excellence in Psychiatry, Albert Einstein School of Medicine
- 1985 President's Award, New York Academy of Science
- 1990 William James Fellow Award, American Psychological Society
- 1990 Lifetime Achievement Award, American Psychology Association
- 1991 Outstanding Member and Distinguished Professional Achievement Award, Society for Performance Improvement
- 1997 Scholar Hall of Fame Award, Academy of Resource and Development
- 2011 Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Pantheon of Skeptics—Inducted
Honorary degrees
Skinner received honorary degrees from:
- Alfred University
- Ball State University
- Dickinson College
- Hamilton College
- Harvard University
- Hobart and William Smith Colleges
- Johns Hopkins University
- Keio University
- Long Island University C. W. Post Campus
- McGill University
- North Carolina State University
- Ohio Wesleyan University
- Ripon College
- Rockford College
- Tufts University
- University of Chicago
- University of Exeter
- University of Missouri
- University of North Texas
- Western Michigan University
- University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
In popular culture
Writer of The Simpsons Jon Vitti named the Principal Skinner character after behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner.
Bibliography
- The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis, 1938. ISBN 1-58390-007-1, ISBN 0-87411-487-X.
- Walden Two, 1948. ISBN 0-87220-779-X (revised 1976 edition).
- Science and Human Behavior, 1953. ISBN 0-02-929040-6. A free copy of this book (in a 1.6 MB .pdf file) may be downloaded at the B. F. Skinner Foundation web site BFSkinner.org.
- Schedules of Reinforcement, with C. B. Ferster, 1957. ISBN 0-13-792309-0.
- Verbal Behavior, 1957. ISBN 1-58390-021-7.
- The Analysis of Behavior: A Program for Self Instruction, with James G. Holland, 1961. ISBN 0-07-029565-4.
- The Technology of Teaching, 1968. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts Library of Congress Card Number 68-12340 E 81290 ISBN 0-13-902163-9.
- Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis, 1969. ISBN 0-390-81280-3.
- Beyond Freedom and Dignity, 1971. ISBN 0-394-42555-3.
- About Behaviorism, 1974. ISBN 0-394-49201-3, ISBN 0-394-71618-3.
- Particulars of My Life: Part One of an Autobiography, 1976. ISBN 0-394-40071-2.
- Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, 1978. ISBN 0-13-770057-1.
- The Shaping of a Behaviorist: Part Two of an Autobiography, 1979. ISBN 0-394-50581-6.
- Notebooks, edited by Robert Epstein, 1980. ISBN 0-13-624106-9.
- Skinner for the Classroom, edited by R. Epstein, 1982. ISBN 0-87822-261-8.
- Enjoy Old Age: A Program of Self-Management, with M. E. Vaughan, 1983. ISBN 0-393-01805-9.
- A Matter of Consequences: Part Three of an Autobiography, 1983. ISBN 0-394-53226-0, ISBN 0-8147-7845-3.
- Upon Further Reflection, 1987. ISBN 0-13-938986-5.
- Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior, 1989. ISBN 0-675-20674-X.
- Cumulative Record: A Selection of Papers, 1959, 1961, 1972 and 1999 as Cumulative Record: Definitive Edition. This book includes a reprint of Skinner's October 1945 Ladies' Home Journal article, "Baby in a Box", Skinner's original, personal account of the much-misrepresented "Baby in a box" device. ISBN 0-87411-969-3 (paperback)
