Full Blog: Opening Skinner's Box

Reference Information
Title: Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
Author: Lauren Slater
Editor: W.W Norton & Company, 2008


Summary
Opening Skinner's Box discussed some of the greatest psychological experiments, describing them in a narrative-type view. Each chapter discussed a particular experiment or psychologist, including effects that occurred due to the research. In many chapters, the author included personal interviews and even some experiments that she conducted on her own.

Chapter 1 discussed the positive reinforcement experiments of B.F. Skinner, in which he created operated conditioning, or the training of a human or animal by another human to perform tasks that they would not normally perform, based on a system of rewards and reinforcements. His research was very experimental, with many arguing that he was showing the lack of free will that humans had. However, the experiments did produce quantifiable data from which it was determined how organisms learn, and how the learning experience can be predicted and controlled.

Chapter 2 discussed Milgram's experiments of obedience to authority, whereby a set of people were tricked into thinking that they were shocking a person to death for a learning experiment, when really they were taking part in an experiment to see how far a person would go on the orders of someone in authority. The results were astounding, in that 65% of people would obey the experimenter and shock the other person to "death". The author described the effect the experiment had on the participants themselves, and even  interviewed some of them.

Chapter 3 discussed the experiments of Rosenhan, which consisted of a group of people faking their way into a mental institution, then acting normally to see if the psychiatrists could detect their sanity. The experimenters experienced inhumane treatment, and being treated as insane. When this experiment went public, it led to refinements in psychiatric codes. The author tried the experiment herself, with much nicer treatment and the prescription of many unnecessary drugs.

Chapter 4 was about social cuing and the bystander effect, discussing the events and repercussions of Darley and Latane's experiments. These experiments included seizure and smoke experiments, whereby something happened to a person while in the vicinity of other people, to test the likeliness of people to help others in a scenario of turmoil or danger. The results were that the larger the group, the less likely someone is to help.

Chapter 5 discussed Festinger's research about cognitive dissonance, or the event of an individual changing their beliefs due to incompatible ideas. The author described the "Sananda cult", which changed their beliefs to believe visitors would come on a certain day. When they did not appear, they modified their beliefs accordingly. The author also described interviewing a woman whose comatose daughter is considered to be a saint. This chapter considered only observational conclusions, as opposed to experimental results.


Chapter 6, "Monkey Love," discussed Harlow's attachment experiments with monkeys, where he provided a soft, surrogate mother to determine the variables of love: touch, motion, and play. In the end, the monkeys ended up being autistic-like. His findings were explained to the public, causing some changes in how society handled children.

Chapter 7 outlined the addiction experiments of Alexander, in which he tested two different test groups, rats offered morphine that lived in cages, and rats living in a rat utopia that were also offered the drug. Those in the cages lived off of it; those not in cages avoided it. Alexander used this to conclude that addiction arises only due to circumstances and situation, not because of chemical dependence or helplessness. The author conducted her own addiction experiment on herself, which led to no addiction.

A rat cage with morphine, symbolizing the addiction experiments.
 Source: wn.com/Rat_Park

Chapter 8 discussed Loftus's false memory experiments, where a false memory was implanted into someone's memory by showing them written statements of the event by family members. She showed that many people wold start to "remember" details about the memory, even though it did not exist, and she used this to conclude that human memory is unreliable.

Chapter 9 discussed H.M., the man with his hippocampus removed, eliminating his ability to retain new memories. It also explained Kandel's sea slug experiments, whereby he tested individual neurons in sea slugs to determine their purpose and to produce fast learning. From this, he realized that learning can be increased or removed due to different chemicals, and started testing chemicals that could be marketed to the general public. This explained the physical properties of memory.

Chapter 10 discussed the practice of psychosurgery, including procedures such as lobotomies, which the author claims to be started by Moniz. She discussed his procedures and findings, then narrated the procedure of one particular patient that she was allowed to interview and observe. While many believe these surgeries to be questionable, there have been many improvements with time, and many benefits are cited as a result of the procedure.


Discussion
I found Opening Skinner's Box to be highly interesting. The writing style that the author used, narrating rather than stating research results, was very good at keeping my attention. In addition, each of the experiments and research topics seemed to be of great importance, having influenced some aspect of society. While some of the author's own personal experiments could be deemed questionable, and some of her comments within the chapters are also controversial, the points raised were very good. In particular, I liked the experiments on behavior, as they could be easily applied to some aspects of computer science. If you know how a person is most likely to learn, or how they are most likely to act when put in some social situation, it is easier to design a system for that person to use. In particular, though, I believe the idea of conducting user studies and observing people is most applicable to our field. These experiments showed that people and their opinions differ, and human behavior does not always follow what is expected. Therefore, to design an optimal system, the computer scientist should observe the actual people that are intended to use the system.