The Behavior of Organisms

The Behavior of Organisms  
Author(s) B.F. Skinner
Country United States
Language English
Subject(s) Behavior analysis, Behaviorology
Publisher Copley Publishing Group
Publication date 1938
Pages 473
ISBN ISBN 1-58390-007-1, ISBN 0-87411-487-X

The Behavior of Organisms is B.F. Skinner's first book and was published in May 1938 as a volume of the Century Psychology Series.[1] It set out the parameters for the discipline that would come to be called the experimental analysis of behavior (EAB) and Behavior Analysis. This book was reviewed in 1939 by Ernest R. Hilgard.[2] Skinner looks at science behaviour and how the analysis of behaviour produces data which can be studied, rather than acquiring data through a conceptual or neural process. In the book, behaviour is classified either as respondent or operant behaviour, where respondent behaviour is caused by an observable stimuli and operant behaviour is where there is no observable stimuli for a behaviour. The behaviour is studied in depth with rats and the feeding responses they exhibit.[3]

References

  1. ^ B.F. Skinner (1938). The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: B.F. Skinner Foundation. ISBN 1-58390-007-1, ISBN 0-87411-487-X
  2. ^ Ernest R. Hilgard (1939). "Review of B.F. Skinner's The Behavior of Organisms". Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (1988), 50(2), pp. 283–286.
  3. ^ Skinner, B.F. (1938). The behavior of organisms: an experimental analysis. Oxford, England: Appleton-Century. pp. 457. 

Further reading

External links

Thompson, T. (1988). Benedictus behavior analysis: B.F. Skinner's Magnum Opus at fifty. Contemporary Psychology, 33, 397-402.