A daughter's retrospective of B. F. Skinner.
This paper describes characteristic behaviors of my father, B. F. Skinner, using family documents and my own recollections. Early contingencies in his upbringing strengthened his love of building things and his independence in discovering how the world works. Those skills, combined with a lack of supervision in graduate school, set the stage for his discovery of the operant. He did not stop with laboratory research. He extended his discovery of how consequences select behavior into education and the design of cultural practices. As well as solving society's problems, my father was always concerned with improving his own behavior. Some of the contingencies he set up to maximize his own productivity are described.
Vargas
Julie S
JS
B F Skinner Foundation, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States. julie.vargas@bfskinner.org
D001527:Behaviorism / Q000266:history*; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D004493:Education / Q000266:history; D049673:History, 20th Century; D009679:Nuclear Family; D014481:United States