B&f skinner biography psychology terms
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B. F. Skinner
American psychologist and social philosopher (1904–1990)
B. F. Skinner | |
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Skinner, c. 1950 | |
| Born | Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-03-20)March 20, 1904 Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | August 18, 1990(1990-08-18) (aged 86) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Hamilton College (AB) Harvard University (PhD) |
| Known for | Behavior analysis Operant conditioning Radical behaviorism Verbal Behavior (1957) |
| Spouse | Yvonne (Eve) Blue (m. 1936) |
| Children | Julie and Deborah |
| Awards | National Medal of Science (1968) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychology, linguistics, philosophy |
| Institutions | University of Minnesota Indiana University Harvard University |
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, inventor, and social philosopher.[2][3][4][5] He was th
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B.F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist and author. He conducted pioneering work on experimental psychology and advocated behaviorism, which seeks to understand behavior as a function of environmental histories of reinforcement. He also wrote a number of controversial works in which he proposed the widespread use of psychological behavior modification techniques (primarily operant conditioning) in order to improve society and increase human happiness.
Life
Skinner was born in rural Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. He attended Hamilton College in New York with the intention of becoming a writer and received a B.A. in English literature in 1926. After graduation, he spent a year in Greenwich Village attempting to become a writer of fiction, but he soon became disillusioned with his literary skills and concluded that he had little world experience and no strong personal perspective from which to write. During this time, whi
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B. F. Skinner
“To say that a reinforcement is contingent upon a response may mean nothing more than that it follows the response. It may follow because of some mechanical connection or because of the mediation of another organism; but conditioning takes place presumably because of the temporal relation only, expressed in terms of the order and proximity of response and reinforcement. Whenever we present a state of affairs which is known to be reinforcing at a given drive, we must suppose that conditioning takes place, even though we have paid no attention to the behavior of the organism in making the presentation.”
– B.F. Skinner, “Superstition’ in the Pigeon” (p. 168)
In the 20th century, many of the images that came to mind when thinking about experimental psychology were tied to the work of Burrhus Frederick Skinner. The stereotype of a bespectacled experimenter in a white lab coat, engaged in shaping behavior through the operant conditioni