Burrhus Frederic Skinner

BEHAVIORAL
ANALYSIS
 Biography

 Born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania in 1904

 Constructed gadgets, played music and wrote novels
as a child.
 Earns his PhD in psychology in Harvard in 1931
 Published The Behavior of Organisms in 1938
 Train pigeons to guide bombs into enemy ships in
World War II, which he demonstrated in 1944
 Died in 1990 of Leukemia
 Conditioning

 Classical Conditioning
 A response is drawn out of the organism by a specific,
identifiable stimulus
 A neutral (conditioned) stimulus is paired with an
unconditioned stimulus a number of times until it is capable of
bringing about a previously unconditioned response
 Conditioning

 Operant Conditioning
 Consequences

Punishment Reinforcement
 Reinforcement

Positive Negative
Reinforcement Reinforcement
Schedules of Reinforcement

Fixed Variable
Ratio Ration

Fixed Variable
Interval Interval
 Punishment

Positive Negative
Punishment Punishment
 EXTINCTION

 Tendency of a previously acquired response to

become progressively weakened upon
nonreinforcement.
 CRITIQUE

Organize Internally
Generates Falsifiability Guides Action
Knowledge Consistent
Research
High Very high
Very Moderate Very
high high
 CONCEPT OF HUMANITY

Determinism over free will

Optimism over pessimism

Causality over teleology

Unconscious over conscious

Social Influence over biology

Uniqueness over similarty