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History of B.F Skinner
Shaping Behaviour
Operant Conditioning
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BURRHUS FRIEDERICH SKINNER (1904-1990)
B.F Skinner, is a man who started his career as a writer, before realising he had 'nothing to say', He is also the man who is perhaps undoubtedly the most celebrated psychologist since Sigmund Freud.
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The crazy side of Skinner's work
Discovering a passion for psychology, he taught pigeons how to play table tennis, believed that human behaviour could be manipulated in much the same way as a rats, raised his second daughter in an 'air crib' (a combination playpen and crib with glass sides and air conditioning - much like a baby aquarium)and wrote a book about the possibility of a utopia of automatically moral, wise and happy people. |
We're too complex to be 'like rats' aren't we?
Check out the quotes from Skinner, and evidence from his experiments that suggest humans are able to be shaped in much the same way as animals in 'Shaping Behaviours'.
Taking the next logical step, see how Skinner's Utopia could be realised in "Walden Two" by clicking on the book below.
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Pigeons playing table tennis?
"The experiments of Skinner did far more than teach us how to pull habits out [of a pigeon]. They explored the precise conditions that foster efficient and enduring learning." (Myers, 1990:170)
In his experiments, Skinner used the concept of 'Shaping' to effect a change on animal behaviours, and made some startling connections to humans. Check out 'Shaping Behaviours' for Skinner's animal experiments.
Operant Conditioning
The concept that started it all, a brief outline of the steps and laymans terms of operant conditioning is available on it's own page. |
At home in a lab, he invented most of his own 'apparatus'
Look in 'Shaping Behaviours' for explanations of his 'Skinner Box' used with rats and pigeons to test his reinforcement theories.
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