B. F. Skinner

Lore & Background

Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, to Grace and William Skinner, a lawyer. He became an atheist after a Christian teacher tried to assuage his fear of hell. His brother Edward died at age 16 of a cerebral hemorrhage. As a boy, his closest friend was Raphael Miller, with whom he built a telegraph line and an elderberry-separating device. Skinner attended Hamilton College intending to become a writer, but after receiving a Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1926, he attended Harvard University. There, fellow student Fred S. Keller convinced him he could make an experimental science of behavior, leading Skinner to invent a prototype for the Skinner box. After graduation, he lived with his parents during a period he called the 'Dark Years,' unsuccessfully trying to write a novel. His encounter with John B. Watson's behaviorism led him into graduate study in psychology.

Skinner received a PhD from Harvard in 1931 and remained as a researcher. In 1936 he went to the University of Minnesota to teach, then in 1945 moved to Indiana University, where he was chair of the psychology department from 1946 to 1947. He returned to Harvard as a tenured professor in 1948, remaining there for life. He married Yvonne Blue in 1936; they had two daughters. In 1973 he signed the Humanist Manifesto II. He was diagnosed with leukemia in 1989 and died on August 18, 1990, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ten days before his death, he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Psychological Association.

Reader's Guide

Skinner's significance lies in his development of radical behaviorism and operant conditioning, which shifted psychology toward experimentally testable predictions about behavior. He invented the operant conditioning chamber (Skinner box) and the cumulative recorder to study how consequences shape behavior, work summarized in his 1957 book Schedules of Reinforcement with Charles Ferster. His ideas extended to human society in his 1948 utopian novel Walden Two and to language in his 1958 work Verbal Behavior. Skinner distinguished respondent behaviors (elicited by stimuli, modifiable through classical conditioning) from operant behaviors (emitted and strengthened by reinforcers). He argued that what is introspectively observed is not a nonphysical mind but the observer's own body, and that behavior is a consequence of environmental histories of reinforcement. His research on operant conditioning has influenced therapy, education, and the workplace, and remains a central framework for understanding how consequences affect future actions.

Did You Know?

• Skinner invented a device as a boy that separated ripe elderberries from unripe ones using a bent piece of metal and water.
• He was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity at Hamilton College.
• Skinner's 1948 utopian novel Walden Two imagined applying his ideas to design a human community.
• He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II in 1973.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Burrhus Frederic Skinner (20 March 1904 – 18 August 1990) was an American behaviorist, author, inventor, baseball enthusiast, social philosopher and poet." — B. F. Skinner "Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless." — B. F. Skinner "Man's power appears to have increased out of all proportion to his wisdom. He has never been in a better position to build a healthy, happy, and productive world; yet things have perhaps never seemed so black." — B. F. Skinner "Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive." — B. F. Skinner