March 20th marks the birthday of famed behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, who would have turned 108 today. Besides Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner was the most famous and perhaps the most influential psychologist of the 20th century. But his own “radical behaviorism”—the idea that behavior is caused solely by environmental factors, never by thoughts or feelings—made him a magnet of controversy, which grew even more intense with the publication of his best-known book, Beyond Freedom & Dignity.

“He was looked at as beyond the pale by a lot of other psychologists, including me,” says Dean Keith Simonton, a psychologist at the University of California Davis, who was a graduate student at Harvard when Skinner taught there. Some even called Skinner a fascist for his radical views of human malleability. But, says Simonton, “people who knew him would also say, ‘You really should talk to Skinner, because he’s a much broader, more open person than you think.’”

Who was B.F. Skinner? University of Oslo psychologists Geir Overskeid and Cato Grønnerød, along with Simonton, used a variety of source material plus an instrument that scores people on five major personality factors, to describe him and compare him with other eminent scientists. The study, which appears in Perspectives in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, reveals a complex man—but nothing like the monster his detractors called him. [continue reading…]