Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American nationality, an author, inventor, social philosopher, and a behaviorist. He was born in 1904 and died in 1990 at the age of 86 years. He was raised in Susquehanna, a small town in Pennsylvania in the United States. He lived with both his father and mother. His mother, a homemaker, and his father, a lawyer, lived together with his two-year younger brother. His brother, who suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage, died at 16 years (Cherry, 2020).
Skinner went to join Hamilton College after high school, where he intended to be a writer. Therefore, in 1926 he graduated with a B.A. in English literature (Cherry, 2020). He later pursued his Ph.D. at Harvard University and graduated in 1931. He continued working at the university and later married Yvonne Blue in 1936, who had two daughters, namely Deborah and Julie (Cherry, 2020).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Since an early age, Skinner had interests in inventing and building things. Consequently, using these skills in psychological experiments later on. He is known for several inventions and his contribution to the psychology fraternity, including operant conditioning, the skinner box, schedule of reinforcement, radical behaviorism, and cumulative recorder (Vargas, 2015). While working at Harvard University, Skinner studied human behavior, which led to his operant conditioning apparatus later known as Skinner box. During World War two, Skinner came up with a project called project pigeon, which entailed coaching pigeons to direct bombs since there was no missile guiding systems by then (Vargas, 2015).
Despite his remarkable work, he received criticisms from Chomsky and Staddon for his works. Chomsky criticized Skinner on several of his careers and even mentioned him to emulate science despite him, not a scientist. Staddon criticized Skinner's determinist theory that it was not in line with traditional punishment and reward (Morris et al. 2005).
Skinner’s contribution to psychology is incredible. Publishing 20 books and almost 200 articles leading him to be the utmost influential psychologist by 2002 (Morris et al. 2005). His works being used by teachers, trainers, and mental health specialists.
References
Cherry, K. (2020). Burrhus Frederic Skinner biography . Retrieved from https://verywellmind.com
Morris, E., Smith, N.G. & Altus D. B.F. (2005). Skinner’s contributions to applied behavior analysis . Behavior analyst. 28 (2):98-130. Kansas. DOI: 10.1007/bf03392108
Vargas E.A. (2015). B. Skinner’s theory of behavior . European journal of behavior analysis. Vol. 18, 2-37
