What Was B. F. Skinner Really Like?

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Recommended: Skinner's operant conditioning theory summary

The first podcast that I listened too was Episode 191 from the audioboom.com website. This was titled “What Was B.F. Skinner Really Like?”. I liked this podcast a lot because it gave a lot of quotes from Skinner himself. In the podcast, the host started off by talking about how Skinner was “a real human”. He wanted to point out that Skinner did in fact have feelings and he was not a stereotypical psychologist. One of the first Skinner clips that he played was one where Skinner talked about good behavior in children. Skinner asked the question, “How is good behavior reinforced.” He talked about how there is no real positive reason for treating people well because you don’t get rewarded from it. Skinner also thinks that mistreatment of others should result in punishment. …show more content…

The way to stop this is to punish mistreatment of others, just as Skinner has said. This podcast also talks about how it is a good idea to get rewarded when learning to do something like learning to play piano. If you are rewarded through the process of learning to play piano, you will be more likely to continue on with it. It is the same way in today’s society with video games because you get internally rewarded in the game for your successes. In class, we learned about Skinners’ operant conditioning theory. We watched the Big Bang Theory example where Sheldon tries to positively reinforce the woman by giving her chocolates for good behavior. This was a great example of one of Skinners theories and it was nice to see it on display in the real world, even though it is a TV

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