B. F. Skinner Quick Facts

September 18, 2018

B. F. Skinner Quick Facts

B. F. Skinner (1904 –1990) was an American psychologist, philosopher, inventor and poet.

Profile

Birth Name: Burrhus Frederic Skinner
Nickname: Fred
Date of Birth: March 20, 1904
Place of Birth: Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, USA
Zodiac Sign: Pisces
Date of Death: August 18, 1990
Cause of Death: Leukemia
Place of Death: Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Place of Burial: Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Ethnicity: White
Nationality: American
Father: William Arthur Skinner (1875- 1950)
Mother: Grace Madge Burrhus (1878- 1960)
Siblings: Edward Skinner (1907- 1923)
Spouse: Yvonne (Eve) Blue Skinner (b.1911- d.1997; m. 1936-1990, i.e. until Skinner’s death)

Children:

Daughter - Julie S. Vargas née Skinner (b. 1938)
Daughter- Deborah Buzan née Skinner

Alma Mater: Hamilton College, Harvard University
B. F. Skinner is known for: inventing the operant condition chamber and for his own experimental analysis of behaviour, the philosophy of that science he called radical behaviourism.
B. F. Skinner is criticized for: for attempting to apply findings based largely on animal experiments to human behaviour in real-life settings
B. F. Skinner was influenced by: Charles Darwin, Ivan Pavlov, Ernst Mach, Jacques Loeb, Edward Thorndike, William James, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henry David Thoreau
B. F. Skinner’s works inspired: NA

Quotes

“The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.”
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

Major Works

The Behavior of Organisms (1938)
Walden Two (1948)
Science and human behavior (1951)
Schedules of Reinforcement (1957)
Verbal Behavior (1957)
Cumulative Record (1959)
The Analysis of Behavior: A Program for Self-Instruction (1961)
The Technology of Teaching (1968)
Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis (1969)
Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971)
About Behaviorism (1974)
Particulars of My Life (1976)
Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978)
The Shaping of a Behaviorist: Part Two of an Autobiography (1979)
Notebooks (1980) (edited by R. Epstein)
Skinner for the Classroom (1982) (edited by R. Epstein)

Did You Know?

Skinner was the eldest of the two sons born to a lawyer and a housewife.
His brother Edward died at the age of sixteen of a cerebral hemorrhage.
In early life Skinner became an atheist after the demise of his brother, and after his grandmother's teachings on hell.
In 1926 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in literature from Harvard University where he later received a PhD in 1931.
After graduation, he attempted in vain to become a novelist, but was unsuccessful despite encouragement from renowned authors like Robert Frost.
B.F. Skinner was a prominent researcher in Harvard University till 1936.
In 1945, he became Chair of the Psychology Department at the University of Indiana.
John B. Watson's Behaviourism inspired him into graduate study in psychology and to the development of his own version of behaviourism.
Ten days before his death, he was conferred the lifetime achievement award by the American Psychological Association.
During his Master’s course Skinner in association with Fred Keller invented the "Operant Conditioning" or "Skinner Box” which helped him to envision a field of science based on understanding human behaviour.
He published the results of his Operant Conditioning experiments in The Behavior of Organisms (1938).
He died at the age of 86 of leukemia on August 18, 1990.

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