The Personality of a Nonperson

Abstract

B. F. Skinner is consistently rated as one of the most important figures in the history of psychology. Much has been said about his character, some of it strongly negative. Yet little is known about what kind of man he really was. Drawing on information from published sources, archival material, and people who knew him, we used "blind" raters to assess Skinner's score on the Big Five personality factors. We found that Skinner was a highly conscientious man and highly open to experience. He was also somewhat neurotic and somewhat extraverted but neither agreeable nor disagreeable. The resulting personality profile was compared with meta-analytic results concerning scientists versus nonscientists, creative scientists versus noncreative scientists, and artists versus nonartists. In general, Skinner's personality profile was consistent with findings regarding those of other notable scientists.

Do We Need the Environment to Explain Operant Behavior?

“…Behaviorism is more than a century old, though it’s doubtful if anyone now subscribes to the views of Watson (1913) , the movement’s founder. B. F. Skinner’s school of thought is another matter (see Overskeid et al, 2012 ). This American iconoclast once planned to make over “the entire field” of psychology “to suit myself” ( Skinner, 1979 , p. 38) – and before the cognitive revolution of the 1950s and ‘60s it may have seemed as if he was on his way to doing just that (e.g., de Waal, 2017 ).…”