Burrhus Frederic Skinner: The Father Of Great Psychology

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born in March of 1904 and died August of 1990. He was a psychologist, behaviorist, author, and inventor. He believed that actions equal consequences and that if the consequences were bad the action would not be repeated. If the consequences were good then the action would be repeated more frequently in the future. This is called reinforcement. At a young age Skinner would invent ways to communicate with his friend and invented a mental device to pick berries off a branch then separate the ripe ones and unripe ones. Skinner then went on to invent “Skinner’s Box’’, “Project Pigeon”, and “Baby Tender.”When he got older he attended Hamilton College which during that time was a big fraternity school. “The year before Skinner entered

Where he invented project pigeon and the baby tender. During the year of 1936 he married Yvonne Blue and they had two daughters. In 1943 his wife convinced him to do an experiment with their baby’s crib. It was supposed to be safer than the bars that could hurt the baby. Rumors went on and Lauren Slater the author of Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychology Experiments of the Twentieth Century, said that because of Skinner’s baby crib his daughter Deborah killed herself. Which was a false rumor but lots of rumors said she went crazy even when she was very young. Deborah even wrote that she was not a lab rat for her dad and she didn’t sue him ever. http://www.skeptically.org/skinner/id6.html He went back to Harvard as a professor in 1948. He continued teaching until he retired in 1974 but even after he retired he was still inventing and researching. Until he was diagnosed with leukemia in 1989. Before he died in 1990 he was rewarded with an lifetime achievement award by the American Psychological Association. Ten days after receiving this award he died on August 18,