B. F. Skinner: life and work of a radical behaviorist.

A summary of the concepts and theories of B.F. Skinner, one of the fathers of behaviorism.

What we understand by Psychology can be very broad. It is a field of study and intervention that encompasses a large number of theoretical and practical proposals on issues that are not so similar to each other, and which has historically given birth to a great number of theories y proposals about human behavior.

Biography of B. F. Skinner

However, not all of these currents of psychology have been ascribed to the scientific method with the same strength: some seem to be essentially related to philosophy, while others only conceive the study of psychological processes as something that can be approached by science.

This second tradition of psychology owes much of its existence to a researcher named Burrhus Frederic Skinnerin charge of revolutionizing the investigation of human action through his radical behaviorism..

The beginning of his career

B. F. Skinner was born in March 1904 in a small town in Pennsylvania, USA. Encouraged by the creative possibilities of prose, during his youth he set out to create a career as a he set out to create a career for himself as a writerHe was encouraged by the creative possibilities of prose, and during his youth he set out to create a career as a writer, but gave up his intentions when he realized that he did not have the facility for it. He decided, however, that the study of psychology could give him a broader perspective on how human beings are and how they act, so he began to study this discipline at Harvard.

This renewed enthusiasm did not last long. When he arrived at the university he found a poorly developed psychology, very focused on private mental processes, some disjointed ideas about the human mind, and very abstract theories about states of consciousness that were more related to philosophy than to the scientific study of behavior.

Towards a scientific psychology: the influence of John Watson

For it was observable human behavior that B. F. Skinner aspired to understand. Influenced by the behavioral psychologist John B. Watsonhe believed in the importance of developing experimental psychology and leaving behind psychoanalysis and theories about the mind based on simple common sense. However, the use of the scientific method was not the norm in psychology studies at Harvard.

If he did not give up his academic and professional career, it was thanks to Fred S. Keller, who in the late 1920s was one of the young promises of behaviorism at Harvard. Fred Keller convinced Skinner that it was possible to make psychology a science.and shortly thereafter they both received their doctorates in the discipline. That small meeting, besides consolidating a friendship between the two Freds that would last for decades, made it possible for Frederic Skinner to become one of the most important figures in scientific psychology.

Psychology according to B. F. Skinner

Skinner developed his studies within the methods and philosophy of behaviorism, a tradition of Psychology young at that time that rejected introspective methods as a way to study and modify the mind. This same concept, that of "the mind", seemed to Skinner as something too confusing and abstract to be taken into account, and that is why he placed his object of research in the field of "the mind". that is why he placed his object of study in pure observable behavior..

The fact of maintaining this approach based purely on the empirical evidence empirical evidence is what meant that neither the methods nor the object of study of psychology studied by this researcher were the same as those used by psychoanalysts, centered on introspection and whose approach to the study of the psyche does not withstand the Popperian principle of falsifiability.

In the rivalry established between mentalistic psychology and behaviorism, B. F. Skinner bet strongly on the second option in order to make psychology a behavioral science.

The birth of Radical Behaviorism

Skinner did not want psychology to fully embrace the scientific method simply so that his field of study would be better considered by having the endorsement of science. This researcher sincerely believed that internal mental processes are not responsible for the origin of human behavior, but external and measurable factors..

B. F. Skinner believed, in short, that the propositions and hypotheses of psychology should be tested exclusively by means of objective evidenceand not through abstract speculations. This theoretical principle was shared by behaviorist psychologists in general, but B. F. Skinner differed from most of them in one fundamental respect.

While certain researchers who at the beginning of the 20th century were attached to the behaviorist current took behavior as an indicator of methodological objectivity to create explanatory models of human psychology that included some non-physical variables, Skinner believed that behavior itself was the beginning and the end of what should be studied in psychology. Thus, rejected the inclusion of non-physical variables in the investigation of what he considered to be of what he believed psychology should be.

The term "radical behaviorism", coined by Skinner himself, served to give a name to this type of philosophy of behavioral science.. In opposition to methodological behaviorismmethodological radical behaviorism behaviorism takes to its ultimate consequences the principles of behaviorism that had already been developed by researchers such as John B. Watson or Edward Thorndike. That is why, according to this philosophical position, concepts that refer to private mental processes (as opposed to observable behavior) are useless in the field of psychology, although their existence is not denied.

Skinner and operant conditioning

B. F. Skinner is, of course, one of the major referents of behaviorism, but he was not a pioneer of this psychological approach. Before him, Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson had described the fundamentals of classical conditioning in animals and humans respectively. This is important, since initially behaviorism was based on learning by stimulus associations as a method for modifying behavior, and classical conditioning allowed the establishment of relationships between stimuli and responses so that behavior could be predicted and controlled.

For Skinner, however, classical conditioning was unrepresentative of the learning potential of the human being, since it could exist practically only in the case of the human being.The importance of operant behavior in the development of the human conditioned behavior was also evident in the fact that it could practically only exist in highly controlled and artificial environments in which conditioned stimuli could be introduced.

The importance of operant behavior

Contrary to what other behaviorists thought, Burrhus believed that it is the operant behavior believed that operant behavior, and not response behavior, is the most common, universal and versatile type of behavior.This means that when it comes to modulating behavior, consequences are more important than the stimuli that precede it.

It is the results of the actions that are fundamental, says Skinner, since it is from these that the true usefulness or otherwise of the actions is revealed. A behavior on the environment is considered to be operant because it has a series of verifiable consequencesIt is these responses of the environment (including in this category also other living beings) that alter the frequency with which this behavior or a similar one is reproduced again.

Thus, B. F. Skinner basically uses the form of associative learning known as operant conditioningbased on the increase or decrease of certain behaviors depending on whether their consequences are positive or negative, such as giving incentives to children when they perform their tasks.

Skinner's boxes

Skinner experimented with animal behavior based on the principles of operant conditioning. To do so, he used environments in which he tried to have total control of all the variables in order to be able to observe cleanly what affected the animal's behavior.

One such artificial environment was the so-called "Skinner's box," a kind of rat cage, a kind of rat cage with a lever and a food dispenser.. Each time the rat, by chance or deliberately, activated the lever, a piece of food fell next to it, which was a way to encourage the rodent to repeat the act. In addition, the frequency with which the rat moved the lever was automatically recorded, which facilitated statistical analysis of the data obtained.

Skinner's box served as a means to introduce various variables (including electric shocks) and see how they affected the frequency with which certain behaviors occurred. These experiments served to describe certain behavioral patterns based on operant conditioning and to test the possibility of predicting and controlling certain animal actions. Today, many spaces used to experiment with animals are called Skinner boxes.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner, the great polemicist

One of the consequences of professing radical behaviorism is having to deny the existence of free will. free will. In the book Beyond Freedom and DignitySkinner clearly expressed in writing this logical consequence of the philosophical principles on which he based himself: if it is the environment and the consequences of actions that shape behavior, the human being cannot be free. At least, if by freedom we mean indeterminacy, that is, the capacity to act independently of what happens around us. Freedom is, then, nothing more than an illusion far removed from reality, in which every act is caused by triggers outside the will of a deciding agent.

Skinner, however, believed that the human being has the capacity to modify his environment to make it determine him in the desired way. This persective is just the other side of the coin of determination: the environment is always affecting us in our behaviors, but at the same time everything we do also transforms the environment. Therefore, we can make this loop of causes and effects take on dynamics that benefit us, giving us more possibilities for action and, at the same time, greater well-being.

His denial of free will brought him harsh criticism.

This philosophical stance, which today is relatively normal in the scientific community, sat very badly in an American society in which the principles and values of liberalism were (and are) strongly rooted, sat very badly in an American society in which the principles and values of liberalism were (and are) strongly rooted in the American society..

But this was not the only point of friction between B. F. Skinner and public opinion. This researcher devoted much of his time to inventing all kinds of gadgets based on the use of operant conditioning and liked to appear in the mass media to show his results or proposals. In one of his coups, for example, Skinner went so far as to train two pigeons to play ping-pong, and even proposed a ping-pong game.He even proposed a system for guiding bombs by using pigeons to peck at a moving target on a screen.

Public opinion branded Skinner as an eccentric scientist.

This sort of thing earned B. F. Skinner an image as an eccentric scientist. eccentric characterThis was not surprising considering the extreme and far from common sense approaches of the time that germinated in his conception of radical behaviorism. Nor did it help that he invented a kind of cradle with adjustable temperature and humidity, which was accompanied by the myth that Skinner was experimenting on his own daughter who was only a few months old.

Otherwise, his views on politics and society expressed in his book Walden Two did not fit in with the dominant ideology either, although it is true that Skinner did not miss any opportunity to appear in the media to explain and qualify his proposals and ideas.

The legacy of B. F. Skinner

Skinner died of leukemia in August 1990, and was working until the week of his death. was working until the same week of his death..

The legacy he left behind served to consolidate psychology as a scientific discipline.He also revealed information about certain learning processes based on association.

Beyond Skinner's media facet, it is unquestionable that he became a scientist who took his work very seriously and devoted much time and thoroughness to generate knowledge backed by empirical verification. The importance of his legacy has outlived the behaviorism of his own time and has gone on to strongly influence Cognitive Psychology and the emergence of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies.

It is therefore not surprising that nowadays, 25 years after his death, B. F. Skinner is one of the most vindicated figures in Scientific Psychology..