Skinner, B. F. (1904–1990)

The Shaping of a Behaviorist

Skinner arrived at Harvard in 1928 and found a psychology department more aligned with structuralist theories of mind than a science of behavior. He turned to William J. Crozier's Department of General Physiology, which engaged Loeb's science. With support from his colleague, Fred S. Keller, Skinner began several lines of research to demonstrate the lawfulness of behavior on which the environment acted—reflex behavior (e.g., food elicits salivation in dogs). This was Pavlov's science. What emerged, though, were new apparatus (e.g., the Skinner box) and a preparation that revealed the lawfulness in behavior that acted on the environment—instrumental behavior (e.g., bar pressing by rats is reinforced by food). This science in which cause was unmediated functional relations, influenced by Ernst Mach, would be Skinner's science.

Skinner received his Ph.D. in 1931, but remained at Harvard on fellowships, where he distinguished between respondent and operant behavior, and conducted research on the latter. He was influenced by Percy W. Bridgman, who taught him about operationalizing his terms, and by reading Charles S. Peirce, who inclined him toward hard-nosed philosophical pragmatism (e.g., truth as successful working). Skinner moved to the University of Minnesota as an instructor in 1936 and, that fall, married Yvonne (Eve) Blue from Flossmoor, Illinois. Their first child, Julie, was born in 1938, the same year he published The Behavior of Organisms. This seminal account of his experimental analysis of behavior is among his most important contributions to psychology and was the foundation of a new discipline—behavior analysis.