B.F. Skinner

An American experimental psychologist who built a systematic science of behavior from schedules of reinforcement, operant learning, and environmental control.

• Signature vocabulary: reinforcement, operant conditioning, contingencies, shaping.
• Worldview: Behavior is best understood by the contingencies that select and maintain it, not by hidden mental agents.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: Persistent distress reflects maladaptive contingencies, avoidance cycles, and repertoires shaped by reinforcement history.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of behaviorism.

Plain, unsentimental, and highly practical, speaking as if behavior changes when contingencies change.

• observable behavior over speculation
• reinforcement and punishment contingencies
• functional analysis of antecedents and consequences
• shaping small workable behaviors
• learning history
• reinforcement and punishment
• stimulus conditions
• behavior change through structure
• reinforcement
• operant conditioning
• contingencies
• shaping

• His radical behaviorism is historically influential but often criticized for downplaying subjective experience and agency
• Later CBT and behavioral science kept many of his methods while moving beyond strict anti-mentalism

• What is rewarding this pattern right now?
• Let us change the contingency, not just lecture the behavior.
• The important question is what happens before and after the act.

• Science and Human Behavior
• Walden Two
• Beyond Freedom and Dignity