Table of Contents
Abstract
This research paper will entail details about American psychologists and theorist Burrhus Frederic Skinner better known as B.F. Skinner. I will discuss his childhood and upbringing, his family, and his education. I’ll go in depth discussing his theory and how his findings help us today. I’ll end this paper with my own opinion of his theory and if I believe it helps in an early education classroom today.
B. F. Skinner
Possibly one of the most influential psychologists of all time; B. F. Skinner was an American psychologist well known for his theories on behaviorism, and best known for his creation of the ‘Skinner Box’. Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on March 20,1904, in the town of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. His father a well-known lawyer and his mother was a stay at home housewife and whom spent most of her time caring for him and his younger brother, who later passed at the age of sixteen from a cerebral aneurism (Swenson, 1999). He described his childhood as “warm and stable”. As a child Skinner liked to work with his hands, building things and inventing little gadgets, this would later help him with his research and his career.
Education
After high school Skinner attended Hamilton College in New York City and majored in English Literature (Pbs, 1998). Skinner graduated in 1926, and after a period of writers block he soon realized that he did not want to become a professional writer, he claimed he had “nothing important to say”. While working as a clerk bookstore he came across the works of Pavlov and Watson, this was a turning point in his life as he became interested in psychology and enrolled himself into Harvard in the psychology graduate program. He graduated from Harvard with his PhD in 1931 and continued to work at Harvard for the next five years continuing his research on operant behavior and operant conditionings (Cherry, 2019).
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Skinner Box
While studying at Harvard, Skinner invented operant conditioning device, which later became known as the Skinner Box (Bio, 2016). He would place a hungry rat into a cage with a button, the rat would soon press the button and food would be dispensed. Thus, the rat learned that whenever it would press the button it would receive food. This is positive reinforcement. To enforce negative reinforcement, Skinner would place the rat in the cage with an electrical charge lining the bottom, the rat would run around trying to avoid the shock, eventually bumping into a lever which would turn the shock off. The rat soon learned that if placed into the cage with the electrical charge that all it would need to do is press the lever and it would turn off (McLeod, 2007). Skinner used the box to study different animals’ reactions to their environment. He soon came to a conclusion that some type of reinforcement was needed for the animals to learn new behaviors (Bio, 2016). He also found that behavior did not depend on the introductory stimulus and Watson and Pavlov suggested, instead Skinner concluded that the behaviors relied on what happens after the response (Cherry, 2019).
Skinner later took a teaching position at the University of Minnesota, after his marriage to Yvonne Blue in 1936. Shortly after their marriage they had two daughters Julie and Deborah (Cherry, 2014). While at the University he became interested in helping the war effort. He received funding to attempt to train pigeons to serve as bomb guides as there was no missile guidance technology that existed at that time. That project shortly ended as the development of radar was on its way, he still wanted to work with the pigeons, and he was able to teach the pigeons how to play ping pong instead (Cherry, 2019). In 1948, Skinner received a professorship at Harvard, where he stayed until the end of his career. While his two children grew older, he wanted to develop a way to study learning in children, and later wrote The Technology of Teaching in 1968 (Bio, 2016).
Prolific Author
In B. F. Skinners later years he spent writing a series of autobiographies, while also continuing to play an active role in the behavior psychology field. In his time, he became a creative author even though in his early years he didn’t believe he had anything important to say. Skinner published almost 200 articles and more than twenty books, one of which became very controversial, Beyond Freedom and Dignity implied that humans did not have freewill. He later wrote a book to debunk many rumors about his theories and research. In 1972 he was awarded ‘Human of the Year Award for his work in psychology (Cherry, 2019).
Skinner was later diagnosed with leukemia in 1989. Just eight days before his death he was awarded a lifetime achievement award from the American Psychological Association. A week after accepting his award and giving a speech in front of a full auditorium he passed in his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1990. Skinner’s beliefs are still being promoted by the B.F. Skinner Foundation, run by his daughter (Bio, 2016).
Pros and Cons
Operant conditioning is one of the best way to learn something, as children that’s usually how we learn what is dangerous or not, if we place our hand on a hot stove our mind will remember that pain and you won’t do it on purpose again. We also use operant conditioning to train animals, if you punish a dog by hitting it every time it chewed something than it would eventually stop chewing but this is a negative reinforcement and the animal would eventually become frightened of your hand. You’ll need to use operant conditioning with a positive reinforcement as well if you want the desired results. Also, operant conditioning wouldn’t work well with complex concepts, you can run into too many issues.
Operant Conditioning in the Classroom
Skinners theories are very much still relevant today and in the classroom. Operant conditioning is used to help keep an orderly classroom. Although we do not shock our students to achieve a desired response, many teachers use reward systems to motivate desired behaviors from their students such as using behavioral charts, prizes, sticker charts, and other rewards as well as negative reinforcement for undesired behaviors such as losing rewards and privileges. When teachers reward good behavior, other students see and will copy the desired behavior to receive the reward as well, thus creating a manageable environment.
Works Cited
- B. F. Skinner: The Life of Psychology’s ‘Radical Behaviorist’ (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2020, from http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_skinner.htm
- B.F. Skinner. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2020, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhskin.html
- Skinner – Operant Conditioning. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2020, from http://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html
- B.F. Skinner. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2020, from http://www.biography.com/people/bf-skinner-9485671#later-work
