B.F.

SKINNER: BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS

On Personality:
“At best a repertoire of behavior imparted by an organized set of contingencies”
(Skinner, 1974)

HIS LIFE…

Complete Name: Burrhus Frederic Skinner

Birth date: March 20, 1904
Birth place: Susquehanna, Pennsylvania
Father: William Skinner, lawyer & aspiring politician
Mother: Grace Mange Burrhus Skinner, housewife
Religion: Presbyterian

 As a child, Skinner was inclined toward music and literature.

 After taking his bachelor’s degree in English from Hamilton College, he informed his
father of his desire to spend a year at home working on his writing. His father reluctantly
agreed to support him for one (1) year on the condition that he would get a job if his
writing career was not successful.
 The “Dark Year” (18 months) exemplified a powerful identity confusion in his life. His
efforts to write were unproductive because he had nothing to say and no firm position on
any current issue.
 After reading some works of Watson and Pavlov, he became determined to be a
behaviorist. Elms (1981, 1994) contended that such total dedication to an extreme
ideology is quite typical of people faced with an identity crisis.
 Harvard accepted him as a graduate student in Psychology despite his lack of
undergraduate degree on the said field. After completing his PhD in 1931, he received a
fellowship to conduct his research in Harvard.
 He married Yvonne Blue. They had two daughters: Julie, born in 1938 and Deborah
(Debbie), born in 1944.
 He published his first book, The Behavior of Organisms, in 1938.
 His two most interesting ventures were that of a pigeon-guided missile and a baby-tender
built for his second daughter, Debbie.
 His frustrations over the said two projects were believed to have led him into a second
identity crisis.
 In the summer of 1945, Skinner wrote Walden Two, a utopian novel that portrayed a
society which problems were solved through behavioral engineering. His concern with
human condition was elaborated in Science and Human Behavior (1953) and reached
philosophical expression in Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971).
 His next years were spent on teaching and doing more research on behaviorism. Skinner
wrote several important books on human behavior that helped him attain the status of
America’s best-known living psychologist.
 On August 18, 1990, Skinner died of leukemia.

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PRECURSORS TO SKINNER’S SCIENTIFIC BEHAVIORISM

Edward L. Thorndike
- observed that learning takes place mostly because of the effects that follow a response,
and he called this observation the law of effect.

John B. Watson
- studies both animals and humans and became convinced that the concepts of
consciousness and introspection must play no role in the study of human behavior

CONDITIONING

Skinner recognized two kinds of conditioning:

a. Classical Conditioning (respondent conditioning)

- a response is drawn out of the organism by a specific, identifiable stimulus
- behavior is elicited from the organism
- learning occurs when an originally neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with a
stimulus that naturally elicits a response. With repeated pairings, the neutral
stimulus begins to elicit a similar or identical response

b. Operant Conditioning (Skinnerian conditioning)

- a behavior is made more likely to recur when it is immediately reinforced
- behavior is emitted by the organism
- Skinner believed that most human behaviors are learned through operant
conditioning

OPERANT CONDITIONING:

Shaping
- a procedure in which the experimenter or the environment first rewards gross
approximations of the behavior, then closer approximations, and finally the
desired behavior itself.

Reinforcement
- reinforcement has two effects: it strengthens the behavior and it rewards the
person

Reinforcements can be classified into two:

a. Positive Reinforcement
- any stimulus that, when added to a situation, increases the likelihood that a given
behavior will occur
- food, water, sex, money, social approval and physical comfort usually are
examples of positive reinforcers

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 b. Negative Reinforcement
- refers to the removal of an aversive stimulus from a situation which increases the
probability that the preceding behavior will occur
- effect is the same with positive reinforcement: both strengthen behavior

Punishment
- refers to the presentation of aversive stimulus (giving of electric shock) or the
removal of a positive one (confiscating a teenager’s cellphone)
- although a punishment does not strengthen a response, neither does it inevitably
weaken it
- not the opposite of reinforcement
- Skinner and Thorndike agreed that the effects of punishment are less predictable
than those of reward

Schedules of Reinforcement

1. Continuous Schedule
- the organism is reinforced for every response
- increases the frequency of a response but is an inefficient use of the reinforcer

2. Intermittent Schedule
- make more efficient use of the reinforcer and produce responses that are more
resistant to extinction

a. Fixed-Ratio
- the organism is reinforced intermittently according to the number of responses it
makes
- ratio refers to the ratio of responses to reinforces
- Example: a bricklayer is paid Php100.00 for every 1,000 bricks that he lays

b. Variable-Ratio
- the organism is reinforced after every nth response
- Example: playing slot machines

c. Fixed-Interval
- the organism is reinforced for the first response following a designated period of
time
- Example: workers receive their wages every fifteen days

d. Variable-Interval
- organism is reinforced after the lapse of random or varied periods of time

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 THE HUMAN ORGANISM

ural Selection
- Human personality is the product of a long evolutionary history. Natural
selection plays an important part in human personality (Skinner, 1974, 1987a,
1990a).
- Individual behavior that is reinforcing tends to be repeated; that which is not tends
to drop out.

2. Cultural Evolution
- Selection is responsible for those cultural practices that have survived, just as
selection plays a key role in human revolutionary history and also with the
contingencies of reinforcement.

 Inner states
- Self-awareness
• Skinner (1974) believes that humans not only have
consciousness but are also aware of their environment but
are also aware of themselves as part of their environment;
they only not observe external stimuli but are also aware of
themselves observing that stimuli.

- Drives
• Simply refers to the effects of deprivation and satiation to
the corresponding probability that the organism will
respond.

- Emotions
• Skinner recognized the subjective existence of emotions,
but he insisted that behavior must not be attributes to them.
• He accounted for emotions by the contingencies of survival
and contingencies of reinforcement.

- Purpose and Intention

• Purpose and intention exist within the skin, but they are
not subject to direct outside scrutiny.

 Complex Behavior
- Human behavior can be exceedingly complex yet Skinner
believed that even the most abstract and complex behavior is
shaped by natural selection, cultural evolution or the
individual’s history or reinforcement.

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  Higher Mental Illness
- Thinking, problem solving and reminiscing are convert behaviors
that take place within the skin but not inside the mind.
- As behaviors, they are amendable to the same contingencies or
reinforcement as overt behaviors.

• Creativity
- To Skinner, creativity is simply the result of
random and accidental behavior (overt or covert)
that happen to be rewarded.

• Unconscious Behavior
- Nearly all our behavior is unconsciously motivated
(Skinner, 1987a).
- In a more limited sense, behavior is labeled
unconscious when people no longer think about it
because it has been suppressed through punishment.
- Behavior that has aversive consequences has a
tendency to be ignored or not thought about.

• Dream
- Skinner (1953) saw dreams as covert and symbolic
forms of behavior that are subject to the same
contingencies of reinforcement as other behaviors
are.

• Social Behavior
- Groups do not behave, only individuals do.
- Individuals establish groups because they have been
rewarded for doing so.

CONTROL OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR

 Ultimately, an individual’s behavior is controlled by environmental contingencies. These

contingencies may have been erected by society, by another individual, or by oneself; but
the environment, not freewill, is responsible for behavior.

A. Social Control

1. Operant Conditioning
- society exercises control over its members through positive reinforcement,
negative reinforcement, and punishment

2. Describing Contingencies
- it involves language, usually verbal, to inform people of the consequences of their
not-yet emitted behavior. Examples are threats, promises and advertising

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 3. Deprivation and Satiation
4. Physical Restraints

B. Self-Control

- Skinners says that just a people can alter the variables in another person’s environment, so
they can manipulate the variables within their own environment and thus, exercise some
measure of self-control

THE UNHEALTHY PERSONALITY

1. Counteracting Strategies
- happens when social control is excessive; may take place in the form of:

 escape
- people withdraw from the controlling agent either physically or psychologically

• revolt
- behave more actively, counteracting the controlling agent

• passive resistance
- conspicuous feature is stubbornness

2. Inappropriate Behaviors

- follow from self-defeating techniques of counteracting social control or from

unsuccessful attempts at social control

 Karen Joy Patayon  Shi Festin 

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