Biography: B.F Skinner

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Research Paper: B.F Skinner

"The consequences of behavior determine the probability that the behavior will occur again". This was said by one of the most famous psychologists, B.F Skinner. Skinner was born on March 20, 1904 in Susquehanna. He attended Hamilton College in New York and obtained a BA in English. Skinner wanted to be a writer of fiction it didn't work out as he realized he didn't truly want it. He joined Harvard University and received his PhD in psychology in 1931. He stayed their as a researcher till 1936 and returned in 1948 as a tenured professor after his teaching at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and later at Indiana University. Skinner died of Leukemia on august 18th, 1990. He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts.

Before his death, Skinner received many awards. He was given the National Medal of Science in 1968. He received the Gold Medal of the American Psychological Foundation in 1971.

In 1972 he received the Humanist of the Year Award of the American Humanist Association. "Just eight days before his death, he received the first Citation for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology by the American Psychological Association" (Epstein, 1997). Skinner was known as the creator of operant conditioning.

Skinner performed a research to study classical conditioning and operant conditioning, which is where people and animals learn to do certain things. He used operant conditioning to study behavior of animals and humans to their environment. To study behavior of animals, Skinner came up with a laboratory-observation method. He invented "skinner-box" to study the behavior of organisms such as lab rats, or pigeons. Rats were deprived for food in this box and it was designed in way where if you press a lever inside, food pellets would drop. The rats started...