Aug. 18, 1990: B.F. Skinner Goes in a Box

1990: American psychologist B.F. Skinner dies. He is known for transforming — for better or for worse — the study of animal and human behavior, Burrhus Frederick Skinner embarked on his career in the late 1920s, during a backlash against the perceived overreach of biologists and naturalists who placed animals at different points on the […]

__1990: __American psychologist B.F. Skinner dies. He is known for transforming -- for better or for worse -- the study of animal and human behavior,

Burrhus Frederick Skinner embarked on his career in the late 1920s, during a backlash against the perceived overreach of biologists and naturalists who placed animals at different points on the same existential continuum as humans.

The sometimes-romanticized sentiments of naturalists -- Darwin, for one, claimed that earwigs feel parental affection -- were rejected by behaviorists, who insisted that animals were incapable of feeling, and that their actions should be interpreted in the simplest, most mechanical way possible.

Animal studies were taken out of the field and put into laboratories, where they could be analyzed in highly controlled conditions. One methodological apparatus was designed by Skinner, who outfitted a rat cage with a loudspeaker, lever, food dispenser and electrified floor. Variations of the Skinner box became a basic tool for studying how animal behavior can be shaped by reward and punishment.

Behaviorism did not, however, stop with animals. Behaviorists interpreted humans in the same light: All organisms were just physical vessels of behaviors shaped externally, through positive and negative conditioning. Self-aware, self-guiding consciousness did not exist, except as an illusion. Skinner called the mind "an unwarranted and dangerous metaphor."

As cold as this may sound, however, Skinner's sympathies were gentle. A lover of mystery stories and painting, who built a thermostat-controlled crib to keep his baby daughter comfortable, he hoped the principles of behaviorism would be used for peaceful ends. "The ideal of behaviorism is to eliminate coercion, to apply controls by changing the environment in such a way as to reinforce the kind of behavior that benefits everyone," he once told an interviewer.

Skinner's science-fiction classic Walden Two, published in 1948, described a behaviorally engineered utopia of rewarding labor, rich family relationships and ample time for art and play. "I am opposed to the military use of animals,'' he wrote. "I am also opposed to the military use of men."

In the 20th century's later years, behaviorism's influence waned. Scientists acknowledged the importance of conditioning, but cognition is no longer considered a matter of mere mechanics. The Soviet Union and China have soured most people on the idea of utopian engineering. Meanwhile, researchers are slowly accepting that many animals do in fact think and feel.

Earwigs might not love their parents, but neither are rats in a cage an accurate model of humanity.

Source: Various

Image: Pigeons play ball in a Skinner experiment on conditioning.
All-about-psychology.com

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