Chapter 16 Skinner: Behavioral Analysis 463In 1945, Skinner left Minnesota to become chair of the psychology depart-
ment at Indiana University, a move that added more frustrations. His wife had
ambivalent feelings about leaving friends, his administrative duties proved irk-
some, and he still felt out of the mainstream of scientific psychology. However,
his personal crisis was soon to end, and his professional career would take
another turn.
In the summer of 1945, while on vacation, Skinner wrote Walden Two, a
utopian novel that portrayed a society in which problems were solved through
behavioral engineering. Although not published until 1948, the book provided its
author with immediate therapy in the form of an emotional catharsis. At last Skinner
had done what he failed to accomplish during his Dark Year nearly 20 years earlier.
Skinner (1967) admitted that the book’s two main characters, Frazier and Burris,
represented his attempt to reconcile two separate aspects of his own personality.
Walden Two was also a benchmark in Skinner’s professional career. No longer
would he be confined to the laboratory study of rats and pigeons, but thereafter he
would be involved with the application of behavioral analysis to the technology of
shaping human behavior. His concern with the human condition was elaborated in
Science and Human Behavior (1953) and reached philosophical expression in
Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971).
In 1948, Skinner returned to Harvard, where he taught mostly in the College of
Education and continued with some small experiments with pigeons. In 1964, at age
60, he retired from teaching but retained faculty status. For the next
10 years, he took two 5-year federal career grants that allowed him to continue to write
and to conduct research. He retired as professor of psychology in 1974 but continued
as professor emeritus, with few changes in his working conditions. After he retired
from teaching in 1964, Skinner wrote several important books on human behavior that
helped him attain the status of America’s best-known living psychologist. In addition
to Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), he published About Behaviorism (1974),
Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978), and Upon Further Reflection (1987a).
During this period, he also wrote a three-volume autobiography, Particulars of My Life
(1976a), The Shaping of a Behaviorist (1979), and A Matter of Consequences (1983).
On August 18, 1990, Skinner died of leukemia. One week before his death,
he delivered an emotional address to the American Psychological Association
(APA) convention in which he continued his advocacy of radical behaviorism. At
this convention, he received an unprecedented Citation for Outstanding Lifetime
Contribution to Psychology, the only person to receive such an award in the history
of APA. During his career, Skinner received other honors and awards, including
serving as William James Lecturer at Harvard, being granted the 1958 APA Dis-
tinguished Scientific Award, and winning the President’s Medal of Science.
Precursors to Skinner’s
Scientific Behaviorism
For centuries, observers of human behavior have known that people generally do
those things that have pleasurable consequences and avoid doing those things that
have punitive consequences. However, the first psychologist to systematically