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Commentary On Opening Skinner's Box By Lauren Slater

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Opening Skinners Box

In Lauren Slater book “Opening Skinner’s Box” her main argument is about who Skinner was and what he did. Some might ask why do we need to know about Skinner if we have never heard of someone with that name? Basically why was he important or what he did was important? Slater mentions that skinner had a daughter was he using her to help him find out new experiments?
According to Slater “There’s a man called Skinner.” He was born in March 20, 1904 In Pennsylvania where he also lived and grew up. Graduated on 1926 and wanted to become a professional writer. Things didn’t go as he planned he ended up going to Harvard University where he began his experiments. Skinner was a man that had an ugly name that to college student his name would mean evil. Despite his ugly name Skinner was a psychologist. In the year of 1971 Skinner was “named the most influential …show more content…

“The legend says he built a baby box in which he kept his daughter Deborah for two full years in order to train her.” In other word he used his daughter to achieve an experiment. Once she was thirty-one years old she sued her dad for abuse in a genuine court of law. She didn’t win the case. One question is that why would have he used his daughter for an experiment. According to slater, Skinner wrote books. Some of the books he wrote were “Walden Two and Beyond Freedom and Dignity.” Walden Two was about a behavioral engineering, where the reinforcement that was being used by the scientific control of humans. Skinner points out that his community would all be governed by “benevolent behaviorists armed with candy canes and blue ribbons.” The book of Beyond Freedom and Dignity is about a taming of mankind to go through the dog obedience system. Besides having an ugly name Skinner has become an intelligent person who sadly passed away. He came up with a lot of experiments that are still being distributing all over the

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In conclusion, I believe the way Slater presents her evidence is very convincing. She makes it a point to explain all of the controversial points that surround Stanley Milgram and his experiments. While we might not agree on all of her points, we both share the thought that Milgram and his experiments have affected positively despite the issues of its purpose, results, usefulness, and morality shroud the experiments in

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Through The Psychologist Eye In Lauren Slater’s book, “Opening Skinner’s Box,” we discover in the first three chapters the mysteries behind a few psychological experiments and the discoveries that three profound psychologists have made. Each chapter is about a different psychologist, the first is B.F. Skinner; a behaviorist who designed a process of learning in which behavior is controlled, he called this operant conditioning. Lauren Slater wanted people to know about his experiment, she read his books, talked to friends and family members to unearth the features behind this man. She found that he was a loving father, who could train animals to do unordinary things, like play the piano for an example, through the processes of operant conditioning,

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Skinners experiment was based on operant conditioning, using the concept of discrimination learning, he carried out experiments on animals with the idea that their behaviour is predetermined by their environment and using a well controlled environment would allow him to in turn control their behaviours using a range of triggers. Using reinforcement and expectancy, the animal associates acting out certain behaviours with rewards. (Toates, F., 2010, pp. 165-167) After performing a number of experiments on rats using mazes, he subsequently designed the Skinner box.

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He learned English from reading Charles Dickens, he attended New York Community college and received a Bachelor’s degree in 1928. He published many experiments among his most famous was the prestige suggestion, impression

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Behaviorists believe that anything to do with cognition is outside the study of psychology and they define psychology as the study of observable behavior whereas Freud placed much emphasis on mental life. Freud divided the mind into three parts the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious. He believed that the unconscious mind contained desires, inaccessible memories and impulses that are responsible for human behavior. Skinner embraced psychology as a science by using experiments and observations to prove his theories.

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Then, it was B.F. Skinner who made the concept became popular and well-known throughout the world and even pinned the name of operant conditioning to this concept That is why, he is called the Father of Operant Conditioning and his famous experiment, the Skinner Box. Operant conditioning determinants’ are reinforce, nature response and time interval between response and reinforcement. On the other hand, classical conditioning is a learning way that connects between two stimuli which produce natural response. It measures one stimulus that

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