''The Behavior of Organisms'' is
B.F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.
...
's first book and was published in May 1938 as a volume of the Century Psychology Series. It set out the parameters for the discipline that would come to be called the
experimental analysis of behavior The experimental analysis of behavior is school of thought in psychology founded on B. F. Skinner's philosophy of radical behaviorism and defines the basic principles used in applied behavior analysis. A central principle was the inductive reasoning ...
(EAB) and
Behavior Analysis
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual ...
. This book was reviewed in 1939 by
Ernest R. Hilgard
Ernest Ropiequet "Jack" Hilgard (July 25, 1904 – October 22, 2001) was an American psychologist and professor at Stanford University. He became famous in the 1950s for his research on hypnosis, especially with regard to pain control. Along wit ...
. Skinner looks at science behavior and how the analysis of behavior produces data which can be studied, rather than acquiring data through a conceptual or neural process. In the book, behavior is classified either as respondent or operant behavior, where respondent behavior is caused by an observable stimulus and operant behavior is where there is no observable stimulus for a behavior. The behavior is studied in depth with rats and the feeding responses they exhibit.
References
Further reading
A Celebration of the Behavior of Organisms at Fifty (9 articles).''Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior'', 50(2), pp. 277–358.
* Bissell, Margaret (2001)
In Daniel Schugurensky (Ed.), ''History of Education: Selected Moments of the 20th Century'' (online).
* Roche, B. & Barnes, D. (1997)
"The behavior of organisms?"''The Psychological Record'', 47, pp. 597–618.
*Thompson, T. (1988)
"Benedictus behavior analysis: B.F. Skinner's Magnum Opus at fifty" ''Contemporary Psychology,'' 33(5), 397–402.
External links
B. F. Skinner Foundation(the publisher's website).
Behaviorism
History of psychology
Works by B. F. Skinner
Appleton-Century books
1938 non-fiction books
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