Burrhus Frederic Skinner

Burrhus Frederic Skinner

Introduction

One of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, Burrhus Frederic skinner, was a pioneer in his field, writing more than 200 articles and authoring more than 20 books. An ardent lifelong believer that there was no such thing as free will he developed his own theory of radical behaviorism that emphasized that we will only do actions which we associate with pleasurable results and avoid those with painful ones. An inventor, he also invented the 'air crib' which helped parents in the day to day task of rearing their child and was described as an improvement to the standard crib that was available (though later it was controversially characterized as being inhumane and was virtually unsuccessful commercially)

Theory of behaviorism

Skinner's particular version of behaviorism was known as "Radical" behaviorism. Radical behaviorism being a philosophy of behavioral science tries to look at the behavior as a complete product of its surrounding environmental histories. This application of behaviorism is still standing on the complete opposite of the ideology of cognitive science. Skinner himself throughout his career stood opposed to humanistic psychology, and denied the belief that humans possessed freedom of action and dignity (Wleklinski, 2013). His theories were supposedly based on observation that he made of himself; hence he supported behaviorism throughout his life. A strong advocate of engineered behavior, he proposed that people should be manipulated using the system of external rewards, thus concluding in his work that certain behaviors are maintained throughout the course of life due to the positive rewards associated with them.

Part of analysis conducted by skinner also involved the examination of the aftereffects of continuous schedules of reinforcement over time. The most noteworthy of these were interval (fixed or variable) and ratio (fixed or variable).

Continuous Reinforcement

Constantly delivering a specified result for an action; every time the subject performed a specific act, the subject was instantly and always given reinforcement.

Interval Schedules

These were primarily time based gaps in the middle of reinforcements (Skinner, 1987).

Variable Interval Schedule

This principle involves the reinforcing of behavior after there has been a time lapse since the last reinforcement.

Fixed Interval Schedule

This principle usually involved the reinforcing of behaviors at the unchanging time periods, provided that the response made was suitable.

Both of these schedules however, produce slow and methodical results, due to the fact that reinforcements followed a time scale that was independent of the ...