Burrhus Frederic Skinner

When Burrhus Frederic (B. F.) Skinner passed away on August 18, 1990, of leukemia at the age of 86, he left behind a 60-year legacy of research and writing that fundamentally reshaped psychology. Combining the inductive positivism of the 17th-century philosopher Francis Bacon, the pragmatic progressivism of John Dewey and Charles Pierce, the experimental biology of Jacques Loeb, the precision of Ivan Pavlov, and the behaviorism of John B. Watson, Skinner's version of behaviorism remains one of the most conceptually complete and powerful systems in 20th-century psychology. For Skinner, behavior is a lawful and orderly phenomenon that should be studied using the same techniques and measurement systems employed by the other sciences. He insisted that psychological explanations should describe relationships between physical events rather than ascribing observed behavior to inferred nonphysical mental or cognitive events, which Skinner called “mental fictions.” He argued strongly for the direct practical application of the principles of behavior derived from the science of behavior. Skinner's methodological advances have become foundational to research in many areas of psychology, including animal behavior, behavioral pharmacology, developmental disabilities treatment, human and nonhuman language, and even large-scale social change.

Skinner was born on March 20, 1904, in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. Intensely curious and skilled with tools, Skinner was also a talented student. A favorite of teacher Mary Graves, she introduced the teenaged Skinner to literature and science. Skinner attended Hamilton College to study literature—graduating in 1926. Unsuccessful as a writer, a reference to John B. Watson by philosopher Bertrand Russell led Skinner to Watson's 1924 Behaviorism. Transfixed by the idea of an objective psychology of behavior based on the work of Watson and Pavlov, Skinner enrolled in the psychology program at Harvard in 1928.

Skinner arrived at Harvard knowing little psychology beyond Watson and Pavlov. His mentor, physiologist William Crozier, a student of radical biologist Jacques Loeb, emphasized the study of the “organism as a whole” and approached scientific discovery as a form of engineering. Both become features of Skinner's system. Skinner eventually developed techniques for studying “contingencies of reinforcement.” He proposed an unconventional dissertation that argued for viewing the reflex as a descriptive relationship between observable events rather than the manifestation of invisible nervous activity.

In 1936, Skinner moved to the University of Minnesota, where he completed The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis published in 1938. The Behavior of Organisms formalized the distinction between operant behavior (behavior controlled by its consequences) and respondent behavior (reflexive behavior controlled by the properties of antecedent eliciting stimuli). Not as successful at the time as Clark Hull's superficially similar approach based on inferred internal drives, Skinner's work nevertheless attracted the attention of a group of young researchers and established Skinner as an important new figure in psychology.

In the 1940s, during World War II, Skinner worked on a secret project to produce a missile guided by pigeons housed inside. The system passed its technical tests but was never used. The discovery of “shaping”—producing desired behavior by reinforcing successive approximations—was a side benefit of the project. Drafty Minnesota houses inspired Skinner to construct an enclosed, temperature-controlled crib for a second daughter. The “baby tender” has been mistaken for an experimental chamber and inspired erroneous tales that Skinner experimented on his children. In 1945, Skinner moved to the University of Indiana.

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