Bf Skinner

B.F. Skinner:

His Life, Methods, and Effects on Psychology

B.F. Skinner is perhaps one of the most influential and important figures in the field of psychology. His theories and methods have been taught and applied to psychological practice even to the present day. My goal in this paper is to illustrate Skinner’s contribution to psychology by explaining the following:

1. Skinner’s biography and psychological beginnings.

2. Skinner’s belief that human beings are devoid of free will.

3. Skinner’s methods based on operant conditioning.

4. How the conditioning affect patients.

5. How the conditioning can be detrimental to patients.

This review of B.F. Skinner will focus on these four questions.

Skinner’s Biography and Psychological Beginnings

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born March 20, 1904 in the town of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. Skinner was raised as an active child and could be found creating inventions to help him with everyday life. As a young adult, Skinner received a Bachelors of Arts in English from New York’s Hamilton College. Also, Skinner was a writer for the school’s newspaper. Writing had always been a passion of Skinner’s and he frequently submitted short stories and poems in the hopes that they would be published. Skinner stayed in New York City working as a bookstore clerk where he stumbled upon the books by Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson. Skinner found them fascinating and it sparked his longing to learn more.

Skinner enrolled at Harvard University into the Psychology Department. Still a rebellious youth, Skinner found a mentor in Harvard’s head of the Physiology Department, William Crozier. Crozier advocated a program of analyzing subjects “as a whole” instead of focusing on their interior functions. Skinner took this philosophy of studying behaviorism and began to conduct experiments with it. Through experimentations with rats, Skinner developed the theory of operant behavior. Operant behavior is behavior focusing on one’s environment that controls its effects and consequences of actions.

After earning his masters and doctorate in psychology, Skinner left Harvard to teach at the University of Minnesota. At his new teaching home, Skinner met his future wife and mother of his children, Yvonne Blue. In 1945, Skinner left Minnesota to become the chair of the Psychology Department at Indiana University. Skinner was invited back to Harvard in 1948, and he stayed there for the rest of his career. In the latter years of his life, Skinner wrote the book Walden II which was a fictional story of a commune of people living in a utopian society governed by his principles. The book was not well receieved by critics. Skinner was diagnosed with leukemia in 1989 but still remained active as his health allowed him to be. He died from the disease on August 19, 1990.

Skinner’s Belief That Human Beings Are Devoid of Free Will

Skinner held the belief that free will is an illusion. Under his theory of operant conditioning, a person’s actions are governed by one’s environment instead of one’s actual conscious decisions. His theory of an illusionary free will created a significant amount of controversy proclaimed it, most notably in his book Beyond Freedom & Dignity:

When confined, people struggle (�in rage’) and break free. When in danger, they flee form or attack its source. Behavior of this kind presumably evolved because of its survival value; it is as much a part of what we call the human genetic endowment as breathing, sweating, or digesting food. And through conditioning similar behavior may be acquired with respect to novel objects which could have played no role in evolution. These are no doubt minor instances of the struggle to be free, but they are significant. We do not attribute them to any love of freedom; they are simply forms of behavior which have proved useful in reducing various threats to the individual and hence to the species in the course of evolution (p. 25).

Skinner explains that a person does not do what

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