The Behavior of Organisms

The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis is B. F. Skinner's first book, published in nineteen thirty-eight, and it summarises close to ten years of laboratory work carried out at Harvard. Its argument is that behaviour can be studied as a subject in its own right, by observing what an animal does and what follows from it, rather than by inferring inner or neural processes behind it. Skinner distinguishes respondent behaviour, which is elicited by an identifiable stimulus, from operant behaviour, which is emitted rather than elicited and is shaped by its consequences. He defines the operant as the basic unit of behaviour and proposes rate of responding as the basic datum, on the grounds that a rate can be recorded continuously and shows change as it happens. The experimental work reported is carried out with rats pressing a lever for food, and from it Skinner derives the effects of reinforcement, extinction, discrimination and the scheduling of reinforcement, setting out a research programme whose object is to identify the variables of which behaviour is a function. The book launched a science built on selection by consequences, and established the field later known as the experimental analysis of behaviour.

Written from the publisher description, B. F. Skinner Foundation.

What this vault takes from it

Reliability

Not audited here. 1 note in this vault draws on it.