Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 15. Skinner: Behavioral
Analysis© The McGraw−Hill^451
Companies, 2009environment, and the book he was writing remained unfinished until many years
later (Skinner, 1957).
In 1945, Skinner left Minnesota to become chair of the psychology department
at Indiana University, a move that added more frustrations. His wife had ambivalent
feelings about leaving friends, his administrative duties proved irksome, 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 be-
havioral engineering. Although not published until 1948, the book provided its au-
thor 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, Farazier and Burris,
represented his attempt to reconcile two separate aspects of his own personality.
Walden Twowas 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 Free-
dom 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 addi-
tion 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 con-
vention, he received an unprecedented Citation for Outstanding Lifetime Contribu-
tion 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 Distinguished Sci-
entific 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 study
Chapter 15 Skinner: Behavioral Analysis 445