SKINNER’S THEORY OF PERSONALITY:Biographical Sketch, Books

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Personality Psychology PSY 405

Lesson 36

SKINNER'S THEORY OF PERSONALITY

Radical Behaviorism is the brand of Psychology that is practically synonymous with Skinner's name.

Skinner's Radical Behaviorism

He rejected the use of inner states such as anxiety as the explanation of our overt / observable behavior.

Example: You are not comfortable at social gatherings, you are invited to a party so you prepare yourself

for the party you begin to feel nervous, tense, so you stay at home so you avoided the party because you are

anxious. For Skinner such an explanation is incorrect. The behavior does not change because you feel

anxious. It changes because of the aversive contingencies which generate the condition felt as anxiety

which is the inner cause

Example: You rush in to a building which is on fire to save people from dying alive , it is not because you

are heroic or supreme but because you have a history of exposure to reinforcements in similar situations.

Behaviorism is a school of thought that focuses on the idea that all behavior is learned.

Behavior is basically overt and observable.

It is an association between stimulus and response.

Stimulus and response behavior is respondent or classical conditioning.

Core Concepts

Biographical Sketch

Classical Conditioning

Operant Conditioning

Schedules of Reinforcement

Techniques of Treatments

Applications

Summary

Evaluation

Biographical Sketch

The son of a small-town lawyer, Skinner was born in 1904 and raised in small town Pennsylvania, in a

warm and stable family setting. It is interesting to note the inventor of the "Skinner box," the "baby box,"

and various teaching machines observe in regard to his childhood:

"I was always building things. I built roller-skate scooters, steer able wagons, sleds, and rafts to be poled

about on shallow ponds. I made seesaws, merry-go-rounds, and slides. I made slingshots, bows and

arrows, blow guns and water pistols from bamboo, and from a discarded water boiler a steam cannon with

which I could shoot plugs of potato and carrot over the houses of our neighbors. I made tops, model

airplanes driven by twisted rubber bands, box kites, and tin propellers which could be sent high into the air

with a spool-and-string spinner. I tried again and again to make a glider in which I myself might fly."

As an undergraduate he attended Hamilton College, where he majored in English and determined to

become a writer. Encouraged in various ways, including a letter from Robert Frost appraising three of

Skinner's short stories, he decided to spend a year or two in full-time literary endeavor, while living at

home. This period turned out to be relatively unproductive, and following a brief interval in Greenwich

Village and Europe he gave up writing and turned to Harvard and psychology.

Although Skinner abandoned a career in creative writing, he did not give up his interest in literature, as a

number of his subsequent articles testify (Skinner, 1961).

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At this time Harvard was an stimulating setting for a young psychologist. Skinner had significant

encounters with E. G. Boring, Carroll Pratt, and Henry A. Murray.

Skinner received his Ph.D., in 1931 and spent five postdoctoral years working in laboratory at Harvard.

His first academic position was at the University of Minnesota where he moved in 1936. The nine

subsequent years at Minnesota were remarkably productive and established Skinner as one of the major

experimental psychologists of his time. During this period of intense scientific activity he found time to

begin a novel, Walden -II (1948), which described the evolution of an experimental society based on

psychological principles.

Skinner was accorded many honors including the Distinguished Scientific Award of the American

Psychological Association, membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the Gold Medal Award of

the American Psychological Foundation, serving as the William James Lecturer at Harvard, and received

the presidents Medal of science.

B. F. Skinner died of leukemia on August 18, 1990, only eight days after receiving the award of the

American psychological Association for outstanding Lifetime Contribution to psychology.

Books

1-Walden-II

2-The behavior of organisms (1938),

3-science and human behavior (1953)

4-Verbal behavior (1957),

a collection of papers entitled Cumulative record (1961).

6-The technology of teaching (1968) detailed his approach to learning in the school setting.

7-Contingencies of reinforcement (1969)

(Beyond freedom and dignity (1971), probably his most controversial book.)

9-Skinner published a three-volume autobiography (1976, 1979, and 1983b)

Classical Conditioning

It is credited primarily to two early leaders in the study of behavioral modification, I. P. Pavlov and

Watson.

Pavlov discovered the principle at reinforcement as it applies to classical conditioning. It can be illustrated

with a famous example. Suppose that on a number of occasions a bell is sounded in the presence of a

hungry dog, and suppose that on each of these occasions the sound of a bell is immediately followed by the

presentation of meat to the dog.

What do we observe?

On each presentation of the bell-and-meat combination the dog salivates. But at first the dog salivates only

when the meat is presented and not before. Thus the presentation of the meat is a reinforcing operation. It

strengthens the likelihood that the salivary response will occur when the bell is sounded on a later occasion.

Furthermore, because its presentation increases the chances of salivation, it is classified as a positive

reinforcer.

Conditioning is most effectively carried out when the reinforcement follows the conditioned stimulus,

regardless of whether the response has occurred or not.

Reinforcement is reward which can be:

1- Material or Symbolic

2- Positive or Negative

Stimulus response connection is similar to Dollard and Miller theory.

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Our last personality theory was the one which focused on it as well.

See the connection between them.

Following the development of a strong conditioned response, an experimenter might wish to see what

happens when the conditioned stimulus is consistently presented without its being followed by the

reinforcing stimulus. In the example outlined above the bell would be sounded but no meat would follow.

Extinction is the decrease in responding that occurs when the reinforcement following the response no

longer occurs.

Classical conditioning begins with S-R associations.

In his experiment Pavlov used the S-R association between food and salivation.

He presented hungry dogs with meat powder (stimulus) and they salivated (response) please note this S-R

association existed without any conditioning from Pavlov

So meat powder is unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and the salivation is unconditioned response (UCR)

In the second step of the experiment Pavlov paired unconditioned stimulus (UCS) say meat with

conditioned (CS) bell

In the third step the UCS meat was presented with CS bell on a number of occasions salivation took place.

In the fourth step CS bell was sounded and the dog salivated so conditioning or S-R connection between

bell and salivation has been established.

Once when one S-R condition or association has been established it can be used to establish another S-R

association

For example with the Pavlov`s bell if you pair a green light with it and present it on number of trials the

dog will salivate when ever green light is presented.

This process of building one conditioned S-R association on another is called second- order- conditioning.

Once when one S-R condition or association has been established it can be used to establish another S-R

association

For example with the Pavlov`s bell if you pair a green light with it and present it on number of trials the

dog will salivate when ever green light is presented.

This process of building one conditioned S-R association on another is called second- order- conditioning.

Example:

You see a spider (stimulus) and jump and run away (response).

You see an injured man bleeding (stimulus) and feel that you might faint (response).

Research suggests that you are not aware of the many S-R associations that influence your behavior.

Your preferences for food, clothing and music, books and friends are determined by S-R associations.

Operant Conditioning

The other type of learning, which was first systematically investigated by Thorndike, is called instrumental

or operant conditioning.

Skinner noted that there are some responses that, such as painting a picture or crossing a street. These

responses seem to be spontaneous and voluntary.

Skinners use of the term "operant."

An operant is a response that operates on the environment and changes it. The change in the environment

affects the subsequent occurrence of the response.

when an operant response is conditioned, it is essential that the reinforcer be presented after the occurrence

of the response. Only in this way does the frequency of the response increase.

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Thorndike put hungry cats in puzzle boxes and to escape from the puzzle boxes thereby to receive a piece

of meat or fish they had to perform a series of actions .

The cats soon learned what they had to do in order to get reward.

These finding helped Thorndike formulate his Law of Effect

1- That behaviors more likely to repeated that lead to satisfying consequences-when behaviors are

rewarded they are reinforced

2- That behaviors are less likely to repeated if they lead to unsatisfying consequences -when behaviors are

punished they are not reinforced

So rewards and punishments mold the behaviors of animals as well as humans

Teachers, judges and employers rely on connection between actions and consequences to shape behavior.

The technique of shaping or successive approximations will be discussed later in detail.

Operant conditioning is concerned with effect of certain kinds of consequences on the frequency of

behavior.

A consequence that increases the frequency of a behavior is called reinforcement.

A consequence that decreases the frequency of a behavior is called punishment.

Example

you are hungry an ice-cream can be a reinforcement .

But if you have common cold or you do not like ice cream it can be punishment.

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