FATHER OF BEHAVIORISM

Burrhus Frederic Skinner- The Father of Behaviorism



Burrhus Frederic Skinner- The Father of Behaviorism

Introduction

Behaviorism is the philosophy behind the science of behavior. This philosophy includes determining whether a science of behavior is possible, whether it is inclusive of all behavior, what types of methods are necessary in its use, and whether its laws are as rigorous and accurate as those in the hard sciences. Behaviorism began to be applied to education in the 1950s, both to help understand student learning and to guide teaching. The application of behaviorism to education was based on using principles that had been developed in the laboratory and on improving and thus reforming the educational system. Behaviorism, like any science, has a history, a purpose, and a structure. The specific purpose of behaviorism is to discover lawful relationships among environmental stimuli and behavior, and to use this understanding to develop a technology to improve human conditions. For behaviorism to be a science, it must pursue knowledge by applying attitudes and procedures consistent with the natural sciences. This paper discusses the behaviorism perspective given by B.F. Skinner, also known as the father of behaviorism. Furthermore the paper explains how Skinner's perspective relates to the learned behavior.

Discussion

Behaviorism developed more than 100 years ago when the field of psychology was in its infancy. Early psychology emphasized the examination of consciousness and other mental states through introspection, a process by which an individual reflected on, or “observed,” their own internal thoughts, images, and feelings. Thus, in some ways, this early psychology was not well differentiated from the field of philosophy. The lack of clearly specified subject matter and lack of well-defined and rigorous research methods in psychology resulted in a search for a more precise science (Watson, 1998).

Perhaps the person most associated with behaviorism is B. F. Skinner, who was greatly influenced by both Watson and Pavlov. Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born in 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. He attended Hamilton College in upstate New York and graduated in 1926 with a degree in English literature. He pursued a brief career as a writer, but eventually returned to school. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University in 1931. He then began a remarkable career, producing more than 200 publications. He was ranked as the most preeminent psychologist of the 20th century in a recent survey of university psychology department chairs (Bjork, 1997).

Skinner began his work in the early 1930s by studying reflexes, but that research led him to a new area and approach. He published a summary of his research in 1938 in a book titled The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis. This landmark book impacted behaviorism in several ways. First, it extended Pavlov's work on reflexes from analyzing aspects of an organism to analyzing the organism as a whole. Second, it moved behaviorism from analyzing reflexive (involuntary) behavior to analyzing operant (voluntary) behavior. Third, the rate of response became the main dependent variable of analyses of behavior. Fourth, it demonstrated that operant behavior is influenced ...