Skinner’s Baby Box
On psychologist B.F. Skinner’s controversial invention
Note: Unfortunately I am not able to share an image of the ‘baby box’ as the LIFE photographs are owned by Time Inc. I would have had to pay $325 to use the image — which I was told was a discounted rate. To avoid getting kicked off of Medium, I’ve not posted the image of the crib, but you can view it here. I highly recommend checking it out. The photographer is Bernard Hoffman who is most known for being the first American photographer on the ground after the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Psychologist and behaviourist B.F. Skinner is best known for his theory on operant conditioning, a principle that says that changes in behaviour are the result of an individual’s response to external events that occur in the environment. To put another way, behaviour followed by undesirable consequences is less likely to be repeated, and behaviour followed by desirable consequences is more likely to be repeated.
Skinner put this theory to the test by conducting experiments using animals and placing them in what he called a ‘Skinner box’ (also known as an ‘operant conditioning chamber’).
Skinner was soon inspired to make another type of box similar to the chamber except this box would house infants, not animals.
