Final answer:
B. F. Skinner is the researcher who believed human behavior is best understood through the influence of rewards and punishments. He developed the operant conditioning theory and demonstrated that behavior is driven by its consequences.
Step-by-step explanation:
The researcher who believed that human behavior could be best understood in terms of how rewards and punishments exert an influence on people's actions is B. F. Skinner. Skinner was a behaviorist who focused on how behavior is affected by its consequences. He spoke of reinforcement and punishment as major factors in driving behavior. In his work, Skinner developed the concept of operant conditioning and the operant conditioning chamber, also known as the Skinner box, which became a vital tool for researchers studying behavior.
Skinner's perspective was that we develop certain response tendencies due to the pattern of reinforcers and punishments that we encounter. He argued against inborn personality traits and stated that personality develops over a lifetime through interactions with our environment. Skinner's studies on operant conditioning provided evidence that behavior is motivated by reinforcements and punishments, an idea based on the law of effect by psychologist Edward Thorndike.