In other words, when we introduce an inner cause like anxiety to explain
our actions, we may think we have identified the cause of the behavior, but we
are mistaken. When you say you began eating because you were hungry, youhave only put a label on your behavior. You have not explained why you are
eating. Similarly, saying that people behave the way they do because they are
friendly or aggressive or introverted does not explain where these behaviorscome from. Although radically different in many ways, Skinner ’s view is
much like Freud ’s in one respect. Both maintained that people simply do not
know the reason for many of their behaviors, although we often think we do.B. F. Skinner
1904 –1990
When Burrhus Frederick
Skinner was born inSusquehanna, Pennsylvania,his father, a lawyer,announced the birth in the
local paper: “The town has
a new law firm: Wm. A.
Skinner & Son. ”But all of the father ’s efforts to shape
his son into the legal profession failed. After growingup in a “warm and stable ”home, Skinner went to
Hamilton College to study English. He planned acareer as a professional writer, not a lawyer. Thisambition was reinforced the summer before his senioryear when an instructor introduced Skinner to the
poet Robert Frost. Frost asked to see some ofSkinner ’s work. Skinner sent three short stories, and
several months later received a letter from Frostencouraging him to continue writing.
Skinner devoted the 2 years after his graduation to
writing, first at home and later in Greenwich Village inNew York. At the end of this time he realized he hadproduced nothing and was not likely to become a greatnovelist. “I was to remain interested in human
behavior, but the literary method had failed me, ”he
wrote. “I would turn to the scientific. The relevant
science appeared to be psychology, though I had onlythe vaguest idea of what that meant ”(1967, p. 395).
So Skinner went to Harvard to study psychology.
He immersed himself in his studies, rising at 6 o ’clock
each morning to hit the books. After teaching at theUniversity of Minnesota and Indiana University,Skinner returned to Harvard in 1948, where heremained the rest of his career. Literature ’s loss waspsychology’ s gain. A survey of psychology historians
taken just about the time of his death ranked Skinner as
the most influential of all contemporary psychologists(Korn, Davis, & Davis, 1991).
Although his work in psychology earned him
numerous professional awards and recognitions,
Skinner never relinquished his interest in literature. Inthe 1940s, he returned to fiction, writing a novel,Walden Two, about a utopian society based on the
principles of reinforcement he had found in hislaboratory experiments. “It was pretty obviously a
venture in self-therapy, ”Skinner wrote, sounding more
psychoanalytic than behavioristic. “I was struggling to
reconcile two aspects of my own behavior representedby [the characters] Burris and Frazier ”(1967, p. 403).
As this statement suggests, Skinner was not always as
anti-Freudian as he is often described. Indeed, early inhis career, he developed what he described as aprojective test based on vague sounds emitted by a
phonograph and once sought out an opportunity to go
through psychoanalysis himself (Overskeid, 2007).
Nonetheless, Skinner remained an adamant
believer in the power of the environment and even-tually became an unwavering critic of those whointroduce nonobservable concepts to explain humanbehavior. “I do not believe that my life shows a type
of personality à la Freud, an archetypal pattern à laJung, or a schedule of development à la Erikson, ”
Skinner wrote nearly 8 decades after his birth. “There
have been a few abiding themes, but they can betraced to environmental sources rather than to traitsof character. They became part of my life as I lived it;they were not there at the beginning to determine itscourse ”(1983, p. 401).
“If I am right about
human behavior, an
individual is only theway in which a spe-
cies and a culture
produce more of aspecies and a
culture. ”
B. F. SkinnerBettmann/CORBIS344 CHAPTER 13 The Behavioral/Social Learning Approach