This 11-minute video introduces students to the influential psychologist B.F. Skinner through interviews and vivid footage of his original experiments, including pigeons playing a version of Ping-Pong. It illuminates the connections between Skinner’s theory of variable rewards and the rise of habit-forming internet applications. The video is useful for introducing Skinner and behaviorism, or for setting up a classroom discussion about the ethics of creating habit-forming products. The video includes recent interviews with Skinner’s daughter, who comments on what her father might have thought about social media, along with interviews with software engineers who incorporated Skinnerian principles into the products they designed.
Online All the Time? Researchers Predicted It.
Our social media addiction is explained by theories pioneered by B.F. Skinner decades ago.
Social media’s power over consumers is not by chance, it is by design. Theories pioneered decades ago by B.F. Skinner lie at the root of today’s multi-trillion-dollar “attention economy.”
View full episodes at PBS.org/RetroReport.
For teachers
- Lesson plan 1: Psychology: Behaviorism, B.F. Skinner and Social Media
- Read transcript
- Producer: Kit R. Roane
- Editor: Anne Checler
- Associate Producer: Katherine Wzorek
- Reporter: Meral Agish
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