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BURRHUS FREDERIC SKINNER
By: Troy Showers
BACKGROUND AND FAMILY INFO
• Born in 1904
• Spent first 18 years of his life in a small Pennsylvanian town called
Susquehanna, a city that flourished with the invention of the railroad but
soon faded away.
• Born To William and Grace Skinner.
• Had a younger brother named Edward, “Ebbie”.
WILLIAM SKINNER
• Fred’s father came from a poor family and went to law school to make a
name for himself.
• After graduation he became the attorney for the Eire Railroad.
• Director of the Susquehanna board of trade, United states commissioner for
the Susquehanna district, director of Susquehanna telephone and Telegraph
company and, the director of the First National Bank.
• Also a fierce republican who spoke at rallies in Susquehanna.
GRACE SKINNER
• Oldest of four daughters in a rich family.
• Had a wonderful music career with a beautiful singing voice before she
married.
• She worked as a secretary as well before the marriage.
• Volunteered in the community, but never truly did enjoyed it.
• Both Grace and William graduated their high school as the salutatorian.
EBBIE SKINNER
• When Fred was 2 ½ his brother Edward was born.
• Nicknamed Ebbie, Edward was more socially outgoing and athletic than
Fred.
• He loved raising pigeons and playing clarinet as well as playing basketball
for the high school.
• Treated as the favorite it seemed to Fred and much more leniently.
• Had an incident with a revolver when he was younger.
• Did more of what was expected of a young man of the time,
FRED’S THOUGHTS ABOUT HIS
PARENTS AND EBBIE
• Fred thought his father was very laid back and never argued with his wife.
• Pitied his father for his inability to socialize without talking about himself and
how uncomfortable he was speaking with someone with of a higher social
status.
• Fred attributes his own strong moral code to his mother that governed his
and Ebbie’s childhood.
• Had an “ill will” towards his mother for her constant hypocrisy within the
moral code.
• Lack of behavior modifier used by his parents.
• Fred was never jealous of Ebbie even though most of the activities and
things they enjoyed seemed to be the opposite of each other.
FREDRIC’S CHILDHOOD
• Even from the beginning Fred was very inventive and showed ingenious and
creative ways of doing things.
• After being continuously scolded by his mother about never hanging up his
pajamas he made a small device to help remind him to do so, perhaps the
first behavior modifying thing he created.
YOUNG FRED’S HOBBIES
• Was a very curious kid making things like sling shots,
wagons, rafts, water pistols and even a steam cannon.
This curious inventive side of Fred at times got him in
trouble. (Halloween tricks, Steam cannon misfire)
• Fred loved music as well and made kazoos and other
music/noise making devices with his inventive
personality.
• Loved learning specifically from reading. He loved
having tiny books that a person could hide in their
hands. He said he loved having all the knowledge in the
palm of his hands and how many he could hold in his
hands and pockets.
CHILDHOOD INFLUENCE
• A teacher of Fred’s in middle school and high school, (which was the same
building he had learned in all his life) helped encourage Fred’s curiosity and
desire for knowledge.
• Mary Graves was Fred’s favorite teacher
• She showed Fred the limitations of his parents intellect and fostered Fred’s
desire to learn, pushed and rewarded this behavior for him.
• Sir Francis Bacon was another major influence in Fred's early life and into
later life.
• Fred himself said he was a Baconian in the ideas of the scientific method,
education and that knowledge is power.
FINISHING HIGH SCHOOL
• Fred graduated from his high school just like his parents as Salutatorian.
• Shortly after graduating the town of Susquehanna started to decline.
• The Skinner family moved to Scranton and Fred went off to Hamilton college
in Clinton, New York.
COLLEGE LIFE FOR FRED
• Adapting to college was difficult for Fred in Hamilton College.
• The college required public speaking which Fred felt inept at.
• Sophomores would pelt speakers for hesitating while speaking publically.
• Upper classmen also preformed mean pranks on the freshmen like
abducting them and leaving them out in the middle of the country
• The campus being on a hill and secluded also showed Fred Isolation.
• By the end of the first month Fred felt completely disappointed with how
college actually was with how he thought it would be.
TRAGEDY FOR THE SKINNERS
• After Fred’s first spring term at Hamilton he came home for the summer.
• One day during the spring Ebbie had come home from getting a sundae
with his friend and went to the bathroom. He emerged after a long period of
time complaining of a headache to Fred and asking for a doctor.
• Fred got a doctor to come as Ebbie suddenly got much worse. Fred left the
house to get his parents from church, but Ebbie had died while Fred went for
his parents.
• Fred’s parents were devasted and never recovered from the loss of Ebbie,
while Fred appeared almost unfazed and emotionless about the untimely
death of his brother.
2ND AND 3RD YEARS AT HAMILTON
• Fred’s next three years were rather uneventful.
• At a college called Bread Loaf School of English Fred spent his sophomore
year of summer with a famous writer Robert Frost.
• He submitted some of his writing to him and Frost thought.
• Frost would be an excellent writer.
• Fred and his two friends started going to a whorehouse after Fred’s failed 2
relationships.
SENIOR YEAR AND GRADUATION
• Fred’s senior year he and his friend pulled a prank that soon developed into
a catastrophe that almost got them expelled.
• He graduated as, guess what, salutatorian yet again.
• He wrote his speech in Latin and quite satirically.
• Fred then moved in with his parents for 18 months to try his hand at writing
novels.
• He referred to this time and his dark year.
FRED’S DARK YEAR
• 18 months of recurring depression and general negative things happening.
• His writing career was going nowhere and he felt depressed unable to write
• His grandfather had passed away in front of him and yet again this generally
emotional person was completely unemotional in watching it.
• Fred’s father didn’t get the promotion he wanted so he went rather
unsuccessfully into private practice as a lawyer.
• First heard of behaviorism during this time and about Watson.
THE END OF THE DARK YEARS
• After working on a taxing project with his father Fred decided to go to
graduate school
• He got into Harvard and decided to go into psychology.
GRADUATE SCHOOL
• Fred conducted his first official experiment with shocking frogs to see how quick they
would react and try and get away from the shock.
• Experiment was deemed unscientific because it wasn’t testing conditioned reflex
but instead lowered threshold.
• Next experiment he tried was to scare rats with a clicking of a telegraph machine
and see how long it took them to adapt to it and be less fearful of it.
• Again it didn’t quite work how he wanted it to the rats did other things instead of
coming out when not scared and the data was too skewed from it.
INVENTION: SKINNER BOX
• In graduate school while trying to find a quantitative way to measure
animals behavior for getting food Fred made one of the greatest tools for
behavior psychology. The Skinner Box
• The box had a lever for the animal (usually rats) to push and receive
something. In the original it dispensed food and therefor Fred was able to at
any point after collecting data tell how hungry the rat was at any time from
the curve created by the data.
• The box used operant conditioning and showed the effect of immediate
reinforcement.
A RADICAL THEORY
• Fred’s Skinner box was widely recognized and extremely successful Fred
could have easily coasted through graduate school but he wanted to go
further.
• Fred’s Discertation was a theory that reflex was not to have such a narrow
description but instead more broad definition of simply a correlation
between stimulus and response to variables outside the organism.
• This helped Behaviorism really take off.
AFTER GRADUATE SCHOOL
• Fred continued his work in behavioral psychology and developed a name
for himself not only as a psychologist but as a “womanizer”.
• Courted many women but could not find a woman that he was happy with
until he met Yvonne Blue.
• She was a Literary graduate of University of Chicago.
• The met in July of 1936 and were married on the 1st of November after going
back to a hotel room to convince Yvonne to not call of the wedding.
IDEA: PIGEON-GUIDED MISSILES
• www.military.com/video/operations-and-strategy/second-worldwar/project-orcon-pidgeon-guided-missile/897399315001
INVENTION: AIR CRIB (BABY TENDER)
• Idea similar to Skinner box but more
human. Prompted by the birth of his
first daughter Julie and second
Deborah on the way.
• A crib built to both restrain a baby
and protect the infant while giving
them remarkable freedom to move
around and explore and practice
motor skills.
• It was thermostatically controlled
and had safety glass to protect the
baby.
DISCUSSION QUESTION
• What do you think of the Air Crib? Would you leave your child in one?
UNSUCCESSFUL AIR CRIB
• After Fred tried many different marketing techniques the Air Crib was never
really embraced as a household item.
• Rumors that because Fred used it on his daughter Deborah and that he had
been doing experiments on his kids his neighbor believed that she
committed suicide.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRNf1RseGXQ
WALDEN TWO
• Fred wrote a book called Walden Two a continuation of Henry David
Thoreau’s Walden.
• The original Walden described the perfect society in Thoreau’s mind.
• Walden Two was written just after WWII and was Fred’s idea of a society that
had been started and running on the ideas he came up with using positive
reinforcement.
• Heavily inspired by what had happened with WWII.
CONCEPTS DISCOVERED BY FRED
• Fred discovered and made terms for 4 different ways of conditioning.
• Fixed-Ratio: reward after set number of responses. Token collecting video
games
• Variable-Ratio: Reward randomly after so many responses. Slot machine
• Fixed-Interval: Reward given after set amount of time passed. Weekly
Paycheck
• Variable-Interval: Reward given after a random amount of time. Pop Quizes
INVENTION: TEACHING MACHINE
• A box like machine that would give questions and then immediate feedback on the
answer.
• Originally had problems teaching new skills and could only help with reviewing.
• Eventually developed a way to teach in very small incremental steps to teach new
skills with the machine.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTH3ob1IRFo
END OF FRED’S LIFE
• Towards the end of Fred’s life he wrote another book called Beyond
Freedom and Dignity.
• In this book Fred proposed that we don’t actually have a free will and that
we are governed by our behaviors which we have little control over
normally. This book receive harsh criticism and really was widely looked at in
the 60s when Walden Two also became popular.
• In August of 1989 Fred was diagnosed with leukemia. He was awarded the
lifetime achievement award from the American Psychology Association and
died on august 18th 1990 a few weeks after receiving the award.
FINAL DISCUSSION QUESTION
• Fred really emphasized operant conditioning and reinforcing and their uses
in the world around us. Do you think he took it too far and became fixated
on it or should we use it more in today’s society?
SOURCES
• Bjork, D. W. (1997). B. F. Skinner a life. Washington D.C.: American Psychology
Association.
• Cherry, K. A. (2005). B. F. Skinner Biography (1904-1990). Retrieved from
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_skinner.htm