Skinner's reinforcement theory is a theory put forward by American psychologists and behavioral scientists such as Skinner, Hersey and blanchard. It is a theory of understanding and correcting human behavior based on the principle of learning reinforcement. The so-called reinforcement, in its most basic form, refers to the positive or negative consequences (rewards or punishments) of an act, which will at least determine to some extent whether this act will be repeated in the future.

Skinner was born in 1904. 193 1 obtained a doctorate in psychology from Harvard University, 1943 returned to teach at Harvard University until 1975 retired. 1968 won the national medal of science award, the second psychologist to win the medal. He belongs to an extreme behaviorist in the academic point of view of psychology. His goal is to predict and control people's behavior, not to speculate on people's internal psychological process and state. He put forward a theory of "operant conditioning", which holds that people or animals will take certain actions to act on the environment in order to achieve a certain goal.

At first, Skinner only used reinforcement theory to train animals, such as military dogs and circus animals. Later, Skinner further developed reinforcement theory and applied it to human learning, and invented Skinner's program teaching method and teaching machine. He stressed that in learning, we should follow the principle of small steps and quick feedback, and divide big problems into many small ones step by step. He also put the compiled teaching program into the machine to teach people, and achieved good results.