Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century

by Lauren Slater

Book Overview

Beginning with B. F. Skinner and the legend of a child raised in a box, Slater takes us from a deep empathy with Stanley Milgram's obedience subjects to a funny and disturbing re-creation of an experiment questioning the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. Previously described only in academic journals and textbooks, these often daring experiments have never before been narrated as stories, chock-full of plot, wit, personality, and theme.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393326551
• ISBN13: 9780393326550
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

A Fascinating Journey Into the Human Mind

I think many of the negative reviews here reflect the inherent tensions in the "science" of psychology. There are those who wish to emphasize the mind as purely matter, an intricate neurochemical network (reflected in this book by Kandel's work on the minds of sea slugs). Slater is not in this camp-- she invests psychology with a more emotional and human perspective, which of course veers closer to literature and the humanities. As Slater notes, this inherent tension in psychology has existed since Freud. That said, the book is a fascinating recounting of the most revolutionary psychological experiments in the past century. I took few psychology classes in college, but the only things I took away were the "rats on cocaine" experiments, endlessly pushing a lever to trigger "fixes" while they starved to death. As a layman reader, this book truly fleshed out my understanding of the dramatic experiments of the past, and also brought me up to speed on some of the present controversies in the field. While Skinner's behaviorist studies and Milgram's obedience experiment have been around for a long time, many people (like my wife) refuse to accept their disturbing central findings. The experiments show that the psychological is always political/philosophical, and reflect the tension between free will v. social construction. Slater doesn't try to artifically structure the history of psychology for consistency, but actively courts these tensions. For example, Slater covers recent studies that are extremely controversial. The "Rat Park" experiment challenges the "rats on cocaine" experiments and the inevitability of physical addiction-- this can't help but be controversial, as it challenges the central tenets of many recovery programs. Loftus' experiments also challenge the notion of adulthood recovery of repressed childhood memories, which I'm sure would infuriate most survivors of abuse. Slater is passionate in courting these controversies and pushing buttons, but this all helps to create a living, breathing history of psychology and its players. The controversies are still there, even for the older "classic" experiments of Milgram et al., and I personally would rather have these controversies explored than ignored or supressed. (For those of a more scientist (reductionist?) bent, I would recommend "The Blank Slate" by Pinker.)

Controversial reevaluations vividly presented

This is a remarkable book not only for its content, but for the way it is written. What Lauren Slater does extremely well is (1) provide a context for the experiments and personalize them; (2) insinuate herself into the narrative in meaningful ways; and (3) write the kind of prose that is vivid and psychologically engaging. She has the gift of the novelist, and she is not satisfied with the conventional surface of things.But there is an edge to Slater's prose. She dwells on the horrific: the lobotomies, the monkeys being abused for the experimenter's purposes, the living rats with their brains exposed... She does/doesn't believe that the means of animal experimentation justifies the ends of neurological knowledge. This dialectic that she holds in her mind, now favoring the value of experimental psychology, now questioning it, may leave the reader dissatisfied and confused. Where DOES Lauren Slater stand? She says she stands "with this book" for which there is no conclusion, even though she writes a concluding chapter with that title.So it is not so strange that among these "great psychological experiments" she finds nothing like solid ground. Instead she waffles between experimenter and experiment, between one interpretation and another. And while she addresses the experiments themselves and the controversies they raised, more significantly she addresses the experimenters themselves, challenges them with sharp and sometimes impertinent questions; and when the experimenters are not available, she finds relatives or friends and fires loaded questions at them. Slater wants to find the truth, if possible, and to be fair; but often what she finds is that she doesn't know what the truth is, and that life is oh, so complex.This is refreshing and of course disconcerting. She began with an attitude of deep distrust, for example, toward B. F. Skinner, the man who had put his daughter in a box, the man who apparently cared more for experiment and establishing behaviorism than he did for human beings, a man whose conclusions could pave the way to a new and more horrible fascist state. But Slater plunges in and finds that his daughters loved him and that the one who supposedly committed suicide is alive and well. Slater even realizes, after being confronted by Julia Skinner Vargas, one of the daughters she interviewed by telephone, that she, Slater, hadn't read Skinner's magnum opus, Beyond Freedom and Dignity--had instead, like most of us, myself included, known it only by reputation, bad reputation.So Slater reads the book and when she is through she compares Skinner to a "green" Al Gore and speculates that "maybe" Skinner "was the first feminist psychologist." Quite a turnaround.But this is characteristic of Slater's approach. Become engaged. Keep an open and flexible mind. Dare to believe what others are afraid to believe. Turn on a dime. And this is right for this book since many of the experimenters did exactly that: they sought to sh

Scientists and their experiments come to life

I knew Fred Skinner personally when I was at Harvard, and I also met Stanley Milgram. So it was with great curiosity that I picked up Opening Skinner's Box. The portraits Slater paints of these great men and their experiments are true to my memory, but there's something more as well. Slater made me see, or rather think about, Skinner and Milgram (plus their work) in ways I had not considered before. This is the book's great strength. It asks counterintuitive questions and examines all sides of an issue so that, in the end, the reader is left with a truly prismatic perspective. I hope Slater writes a second volume of Great Experiments. Ieagerly await it.

If Only Lauren Slater Would Write an Intro Psychology Text

I try to teach Intro to Psychology with candor and a real-world emphasis. Thank you, Lauren Slater, for emphasing candor and the real-world in your excellent book. Too many psychologists (particularly the authors of bland intro textbooks and self-help paperbacks) avoid the really tough real world implications and value of some of the greatest experiments of all time. Dr. Slater does an impressive job of showing that psychologists have taught us much about the human mind, including some things we might find it troubling to know. Do some adults invent childhood memories of abuse? Sometimes. Can almost anyone be persuaded do be immoral? Yes. Are some of our beliefs and convictions simply the result of learning, not free will? Sometimes. Is love all you really need to be happy and healthy? Maybe. Lauren offers these questions, insights, and much more. Please, Lauren, write an Introduction to Psychology textbook... or at least follow-up this book with a second volume dedicated to more compelling research. Your willingness to share the questions psychological experiments truly ask and answer is necessary to help students and others truly appreciate the complexity of the human mind. Until then, I await the paperback edition as an excellent resource for my introductory psychology students.

terrific and true

Slater has written an excellent account of ten of the greatest psychological experiments of the last century. I admit a bias, as I was one of her assistants during the time she was researching this book. I am also, however, in a unique position to corroberate many of the accounts she describes in the book; I was actually with her when she "replicated" part of the Rosenhan study, and I sat in on an interview with a Milgram subject as well. The book revolutionizes the way we read and interpret the great experiments, which may be why it evokes such passion in so many psychologists.