B. F. Skinner

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, inventor, and social philosopher.

After receiving his Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1926, he attended Harvard University, where he would later research and teach.

While attending Harvard, a fellow student, Fred S. Keller, convinced Skinner that he could make an experimental science of the study of behavior.

This led Skinner to invent a prototype for the Skinner box and to join Keller in the creation of other tools for small experiments.

After graduation, Skinner unsuccessfully tried to write a novel while he lived with his parents, a period that he later called the "Dark Years".

He became disillusioned with his literary skills despite encouragement from the renowned poet Robert Frost, concluding that he had little world experience and no strong personal perspective from which to write.

His encounter with John B. Watson's behaviorism led him into graduate study in psychology and to the development of his own version of behaviorism.

Skinner received a PhD from Harvard in 1931, and remained there as a researcher for some years.

In 1936, he went to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis to teach.

In 1936, Skinner married Yvonne "Eve" Blue.

The couple had two daughters, Julie (later Vargas) and Deborah (later Buzan; married Barry Buzan).

In 1945, he moved to Indiana University, where he was chair of the psychology department from 1946 to 1947, before returning to Harvard as a tenured professor in 1948.

He remained at Harvard for the rest of his life.

He imagined the application of his ideas to the design of a human community in his 1948 utopian novel, Walden Two, while his analysis of human behavior culminated in his 1958 work, Verbal Behavior.

Skinner, John B. Watson and Ivan Pavlov, are considered to be the pioneers of modern behaviorism.

Using these tools, he and Charles Ferster produced Skinner's most influential experimental work, outlined in their 1957 book Schedules of Reinforcement.

Skinner was a prolific author, publishing 21 books and 180 articles.

He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.

Considering free will to be an illusion, Skinner saw human action as dependent on consequences of previous actions, a theory he would articulate as the principle of reinforcement: If the consequences to an action are bad, there is a high chance the action will not be repeated; if the consequences are good, the probability of the action being repeated becomes stronger.

Skinner developed behavior analysis, especially the philosophy of radical behaviorism, and founded the experimental analysis of behavior, a school of experimental research psychology.

He also used operant conditioning to strengthen behavior, considering the rate of response to be the most effective measure of response strength.

To study operant conditioning, he invented the operant conditioning chamber (aka the Skinner box), and to measure rate he invented the cumulative recorder.

Skinner's public exposure had increased in the 1970s, he remained active even after his retirement in 1974, until his death.

In 1973, Skinner was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II.

Yvonne died in 1997, and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Accordingly, a June 2002 survey listed Skinner as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.

Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, to Grace and William Skinner, the latter of whom was a lawyer.

Skinner became an atheist after a Christian teacher tried to assuage his fear of the hell that his grandmother described.

His brother Edward, two and a half years younger, died at age 16 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Skinner's closest friend as a young boy was Raphael Miller, whom he called Doc because his father was a doctor.

Doc and Skinner became friends due to their parents' religiousness and both had an interest in contraptions and gadgets.

They had set up a telegraph line between their houses to send messages to each other, although they had to call each other on the telephone due to the confusing messages sent back and forth.

During one summer, Doc and Skinner started an elderberry business to gather berries and sell them door to door.

They found that when they picked the ripe berries, the unripe ones came off the branches too, so they built a device that was able to separate them.

The device was a bent piece of metal to form a trough.

They would pour water down the trough into a bucket, and the ripe berries would sink into the bucket and the unripe ones would be pushed over the edge to be thrown away.

Skinner attended Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, with the intention of becoming a writer.

He found himself at a social disadvantage at the college because of his intellectual attitude.

He was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.

He wrote for the school paper, but, as an atheist, he was critical of the traditional mores of his college.