Book Reading #7 - Opening Skinner's Box



Book Author: Lauren Slater  

CHAPTER 1: Opening Skinner’s Box

Summary
Lauren Slater starts this chapter with a biography of B.F. Skinner. She attempts to address the controversies, myths, and obsessions surrounding the man, and put misconceptions to rest. Skinner is known as one of America's premier behaviorist. He bacame a pscyhologist at a time where only psychoanalytic study was done. Essentially a numberless field. His experiments on rats, and findings on positive reinforcement would prove influencial in the field. Skinner's two main influences were Pavlov, and Watson. 

Some of his contemporaries in the field did not all share a positive view of him. Slater visits Kagan who seems to be dismissive about Skinner and favor the idea of free will.
Lauren Slater then describes her attempt to reconcile two aspects of Skinner that stand out. One the one hand, you have a person who made major discoveries and advanced the field of psychology with the introduction of his positive reinforment method, and on the other hand, you get the idea of an eccentric person who would like to devise a method of human subjugation through reinforcement. Another aspect the author mentions is Skinner's "Baby in box" experiment where he used his daughter Deborah as a subject.
To try to find out the truth, Slaten decides to get in contact with Skinner's daughter Julie where it is found that Deborah still lives, and that contrary to rumours, he was a loving father, and that his work was misunderstood primarily because Skinner was not effecient in conveying the ends of his experiments.

Discussion

The first chapter conveys an admiration of B.F. Skinner from the author, and an attempt to clarify some of the misconceptions surrounding  the man. She also makes a point of highlighting Skinner's contributions to the field of psychology, even though his primary focus was only on one aspect of learning which is through positive reinforcement.