B. F. Skinner Essays -- essays research papers

B. F. SkinnerBurris Frederic Skinner was born on March 20th, 1904 in Susquehanna,Pennsylvania. His mother, tenderness M. Burrhus, was a stenographer and a secretary,in a rectitude daub and later in a railroad chief executives office. His father,William A. Skinner, was an attorney, who studied law with another local attorneyat a New York justness School. Skinners parents were both good students. His fatherhad bought several sets of books, so there was a lot of reading material theirchildren. Skinner said that his parents never utilise physical punishment, exceptfor the time they washed his mouth out with scoop for bad language. (Ulrich,1997) B. F. Skinner was very adventurous child. He lead a 300 mile canoe tripdown the Susquehanna River when he was completely 13 years old. He was a naturalinventor and he loved build things. One of his inventions included a device that automatically reminded him to hang up his pajamas in the morning. He played thesaxophone in a jazz band durin g high school and played voiced until his failingeyesight made it hard for him to read the music. In college, he was veryindependent, and sometimes even a prankster. He graduated from Hamilton Collegein 1926 and later received his P.h.D. in psychological science at Harvard University.(Ulrich, 1997) buns B. Watson     John Broadus Watson was born in Greenville, South Carolina on January9th 1878. He went to college at Furman University and the University of Chicago.Watson created "psychological behaviourism" in 1912. He told the world about histheory of carriageism in a 1913 paper entitled Psychology as the behaviouristViews It. In the paper he described Behaviorism as the crock up of psychology thatshows deportment as "a series of observable movements in time and space". (Turner,1997) He rejected both conscious and unconscious mental activities and definedbehavior as a response to a stimulus. A few of John B. Watsons literary worksinclude the by-line books and papers Animal Educomputed tomographyion, Behavior, Psychologyfrom the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, Behaviorism, and Psychological share ofInfant and Child. (Turner, 1997)     Along with his own theories of behaviouristic psychology, Skinner developed the theoryof operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is based on the idea that "webehave the direction we do because this kind of behavior has ... ...duces thestimulus."(Skinner, 1938) For Skinners Behaviorism Page 7 example, Skinners cattries to remove his flea collar because it irritates his sensitive skin. Skinnerremoves the collar from the cat as a form of negative reinforcement. (Skinner,1938) In his time, B. F. Skinner attempted to wangle a lot of changes in modernpsychology. Made people didnt find out with his changes because he didnt thinkthat psychology had to do with feels or emotions. He entangle that psychology hadsuffered in the past because it tried to explain human behavior in terms offeelings and states of mind. Skinner thought that psychology had wasted a lot oftime making theories about the mind and personality. He suggested thatpsychology should only deal with behavior that is "observable in the world inwhich it occurs." (Henderson, 1990) In conclusion, B. F. Skinner was a veryintelligent man that viewed behavior as "a response to a stimulus." Though he may have based his theories mostly on animal testing and he many have evenportrayed man as a being without feelings, creativity, or morality, he was trulygreat and saw behaviorism like no one had seen it before. (Skinner, 1938)