Bfskinner Interview With B.F. Skinner Describe Your Essay

BFSkinner

Interview with B.F. Skinner

Describe your life and work in the field of psychology.

Please call me Fred. As a boy, I loved building things, especially if they solved problems. I'm still that way. I have a lot of interests, which I guess you could figure out by looking around my study. I do most of my reading in that chair and because my eyesight is poor, a bought a large magnifying glass with a strong light. To keep it from jiggling, I attached the lens with these hooks, pulleys and fishing line to a counterweight. I can put the lens wherever I want and it will stay in place.

If you're wondering about the cardboard over the clock face, I put that up because I found I was getting distracted by checking it all the time. I write my ideas in longhand on large blank sheets of paper so I can record them in different positions but still see them all at once. I tend to do a lot of revision, and I keep old drafts in a cardboard box. I keep everything in cardboard boxes -- notecards, pencils, paper clips, tape and other supplies. I keep a notebook with me all the time so I can write down ideas. That Japanese sleeping capsule next to the television was a gift from the manufacturer. I sleep her sometimes, so if I wake in the middle of the night, I can get right to my desk without disturbing my wife. I'm a behaviorist, so I modified my environment to work for me (Vargas and Chance, 2002). I am an example of what I believe, that human nature can be viewed in terms of responses to environmental stimuli.

What were your major contributions to the field?

After I received my Ph.D. from Harvard, I spent five years there doing research before accepting a faculty position at the University of Minnesota. I spent three years as a professor at Indiana University and then went back to Harvard, where I was a professor for thirty-six years. I wrote a number of books, including The Behavior of Organisms, Science and Human Behavior, Verbal Behavior, The Analysis of Behavior,…