Full Blog - Opening Skinner's Box

Summary:

Lauren Slater's Opening Skinner's Box book was very interesting. In every one of the chapter she describes the findings of important psychologists and analyzes the impact their findings have had in our daily lives. There are ten chapters in this book. I will try to give a short description of every chapter.

The first chapter describes B.F Skinner and his findings of how behavior is shaped by the environment. Slater talks about an example of she uses Skinner's principle of positive reinforcement in her personal life. The second chapter talks about Stanley Milgram and his studies of authority of obedience. Milgram conducted the fake shocking experiment and this chapter reveals that more 65% of the people in the experiment should apply the highest voltage. The third chapter describes David Rosenham's insane test in which along with seven other people fake being insane. Everyone in the group gets admitted into a mental institution and this chapters describes Rosenham's findings. The next chapter describes the study of diffusion of responsibility. This means that if an accident happens to an individual, the larger the present crowd the least responsible individuals feel to help the person involved in the accident. The following chapter describes Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance. The sixth chapter describes Harlow's monkey experiments which proved monkeys preferred a soft cloth surrogate mother than a milk bearing one. The next chapter talks about experiments done to rat to prove addiction to certain drugs. In specific the experimenters in this chapter wanted to disproved that the classic addiction experiments could not prove anything about addiction, instead they only revealed that the environment of the experiment inferred addiction. Chapter eight explains Loftu's work related to people distorting past memories. The next chapter talks about the molecule CREB which disrupted long term memory. The last chapter talks about the initialization of lobotomy and its founding father Antonio Egas Moniz.

Discussion
I really enjoyed reading this book because it was an easy reading, yet I was able to learn many facts about psychological findings. It was interesting seeing scientists trying to disproved other findings, and being able to prove new contradicting findings. There were many chapters which involved unethical activities according to several class lectures. I personally had never read any material to psychology and it is an interesting field to study.

Book Reading #34- Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 10: Chipped

Summary
This chapter talks about the founding father of lobotomy - António Egas Moniz. Slater describes his discovery and how we won the Nobel Prize in 1949. Egas Moniz was in a neurology conference when two researchers claimed that after they cut a bad attitude monkey's fibers connecting the frontal lobe to the limbic system, the monkey started behaving correctly. During the conference, Egas Moniz stood up and proposed to do the same to humans.
Discussion
Even though it might have been strangely and unethical to hear about the birth of lobotomy, the numbers could clearly show that he was heading in the right path. According to the chapter, about 65% of the patients treated with a lobotomy showed some sort of improvement in behavior. Even though the chapter also claims that some people did not like Egas Moniz because he chose his patients, how could anyone criticize him when this was something that could potentially help neurology.

Book Reading #32 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 9: Memory Inc.


Summary
This chapter talks about the scientists who challenged Elizabeth Loftu's claims that there are no neural mechanisms for repression. Dr. Scoville pulled out the hippocampus of Henry, a patient that suffered from severe epilepsy. His findings were that after surgery, Henry could not retain memory of meeting people. Henry could not remember the nurse who had introduces herself just five minutes ago, the only person he remembered was his mom. The curious thing is that he knew how to walk, and brush his teeth and those activities require memory. Later on in the chapter, it is explained that Eric Kandel was able to determine that with the blocking of the molecule CREB he disrupted long-term memory formation. 
Discussion
It is very interesting to see these scientists trying to challenge other scientist's findings, and actually being able to claim better findings. It can be extremely useful to identify certain parts of the brain with certain types of behavior or what those parts are responsible for.

Book Reading #29 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 8: Lost in the Mall

Summary
This chapter talks about a psychologist named Elizabeth Loftus and her work related to memories. Specifically, Loftus claims that the mind distorts memories and can create real memories. Loftus believes the mind mixes fiction and facts. Slater describes a time when Loftus was trying to defend George Franklin who was being accused of raping and killing his daughter's best friend. Loftus tried to explain to the judge that Franklin's daughter accusation could not be counted as reliable since she was accusing him more than a decade after the supposedly "rape" occurred. Loftus lost her case and Franklin was sentenced. This trial was what sparked Loftus's experiments to try to prove her point.
Discussion
I thought the accusation of Franklin was absurd, and I did not think that you could bring up a "rape" more than 10 years after it happened. It is very interesting to know about Loftus's Lost in the Mall experience, because the majority of us do that at some point. We briefly remember a time in our lifes when we had a certain experience, we try to remember as much as possible and then we start adding details to our stories that we think happened but in reality we are exaggerating quite a bit.

Book Reading #26 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 7: Rat Park

Summary
This chapter talks about the experiments that are to this day practiced on rats to determine addiction to drugs. In particular, it describes the experiment done by Bruce Alexander, Robert Coambs, and Patricia Hadaway. They did not believe that the classic experiments done to the animals revealed anything about drug addiction. Instead, they thought classical experiments revealed that the environment to which the animals were subjected to affected the addiction. In order to test their hypothesis, they built a rat park in which rats had the freedom of moving around instead of being in a box. Their hypothesis was right, the rats that were placed in the park did not show any signs of addiction and instead rejected the drug.
Discussion
It is interesting when someone believes to have found a flawed experiment, creates a new experiment and proves their hypothesis right. This same thing happened to these scientists, as they did not believe that animals were actually needing to come back and get more of a certain drug. By creating a whole new environment where walls were painted with trees and other things, they were able to prove that the environment itself was the factor for the animals to come back for the drugs.

Book Reading #23 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 6: Monkey Love

Summary
This chapter talks about Harry Harlow's monkey experiments. Harlow was able to prove in his experiments that a monkey preferred a soft cloth surrogate mother than a milk-bearing one. Slater also describes Harlow's life as he got married for the first time, when he had an affair, his divorce, and his second marriage. Animal rights activists claim that Harlow's experiment were extremely cruel, although we have to admit we were able to learn a lot from them.
Discussion
I think in his experiments, the ends justify the means. Slater writes in this chapter how social service agencies, the birthing industry and other industries were affected by Harlow's findings, for the good I would say. Some of the findings might appear very obvious to us now. However, it is very interesting to see the different variations that Harlow played with in his experiments.

Book Reading #20 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 5: Quieting the Mind

Summary
This chapter talks about Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance. Slater describes in this chapter a group of people that started believing that a flood was coming on midnight December 21. The only way to survive this was by believing in a "god" named Sananda. This caught the attention of the media, and on midnight of December 21, several media channels were waiting outside of the cult's meeting location. Nothing happened at midnight and the cult started to proselytize. Festinger infiltrated the cult and proved his work, cognitive dissonance.
Discussion
Out of all the chapters that I have read so far, this definitely was the worst one. At the beginning of the chapter the idea of cognitive dissonance is described briefly. As the chapter continues, Slater describes two incident: the cult that believed in Sananda and the flooding, and the story of Linda Santo. The two stories sort of describe that extreme cases of Festinger's theory.

Book Reading #16 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 4: In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing

Summary
This chapter describes the works by psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané. They were trying to study groups of people in crisis and how individuals acted. Their study become of interest when in 1964 a woman by the name of Catherine Genovese was stabbed to death in Queens, New York. Her murder was of particular interest because it became famous as it was published in the NY Times. As the murderer was attacking Genovese, she was screaming for help and even though she was heard by approximately 38 neighbors, nobody came to her rescue. Darley's and Latané's interest started from trying to figure out the reason why nobody had come to the rescue. They set up an experiment to study what they called diffusion of responsibility.
Discussion
What I am about to write might sound absurd, but it is really the truth. I was reading this chapter in McDonald's on Wednesday before going to class. I had finished reading part of the chapter where the author talks about helping behavior in small and large crowds. As I was about to walk in to Zachry, I stepped on an icy stair and I feel to the ground and hurt my knee. As I was starting to get up, I heard someone offer me some help and I replied "Thanks, I am sure I am fine". As I answered to the individual who tried to help me, I immediately thought of the findings revealed in the chapter, it was true!!!! There was only me and the person who tried to help in this situation. Had I fallen in a place with more people, maybe nobody would have tried to help me.

Book Reading #13 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 3: On Being Sane in Insane Places

Summary
This chapter is about a psychiatrist called David Rosenham and his experiment to determine if psychiatrists could identify the "sane" and the "insane". He was able to recruit eight people including himself to lie and get admitted into a mental institution. Once in the mental institution they were told to act normal. The "disorder" they faked was to say that they were hearing a voice, specifically a thud. A thud was not an identified symptom for hallucination, so all eight volunteers were admitted to various mental institutions all around the nation. This chapter describes some of Rosenham's findings and how other psychiatrists devoted papers to criticize his findings.
Discussion
I have got to admit that when I read the title of this chapter I did not think it made any sense, but I was mistaken and it cannot fit the chapter any better. I found interesting how Rosenham was able to find volunteers to fake their way in to mental institutions. Furthermore, it was even more interesting that he himself was part of his experiment. I think that his findings about the admission tests to mental institutions not being very effective raises a red flag. There may be able thousands of cases where people that are "sane" taken for granted and taken to mental institutions without even needing it.

Book Reading #10 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 2: Obscura

Summary
In this chapter, Slater describes a psychology professor by the name of Stanley Milgram and his studies in obedience to authority. His belief is that humans can abandon their morals when in a persuasive situation. He wondered what kind of role authority played on the SS (part of the Nazi Party) officers. When a professor at Yale, he conducted an experiment where volunteers had to apply different amount of voltages to another "volunteer" whenever they answered a question wrong. What the volunteers did not know was that the "shocking" machine was fake, and the learner was a hired actor pretending to suffer electric shocks. Also in the experiment there was another actor dressed up with a white coat to pretend to be a figure with authority. According to Milgram's results, 65% of the people involved in the experiments would apply the maximum voltage possible due to the effect of obedience to authority. The chapter later describes that Milgram gives his professor Solomon Asch credit for making Milgram what he now is. Asch had done some research regarding group pressure.
Discussion
I have found this book to be one of the most interesting ones from the bunch since I have never taken a pscychology class, and to be honest these people are interesting. What I liked about this chapter is that once again Slater writes the chapter so descriptive that you actually feel that the book is relating one of your personal experiences. Even though I do not think I would volunteer for an experiment like this, I found it incredible to believe that more than 63% of the volunteers actually applied the maximum voltage. I was thinking all along this chapter that I would definitely be part of the other 37% to quit the experiment to get to the final voltage, but under this amount of pressure you just never know!

Book Reading # 7 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 1: Opening Skinner’s Box

Summary
This chapter introduces a psychologist by the name of B. F. Skinner and his contributions in the field of psychology. The most interesting fact that is introduced at the beginning of this chapter is that Skinner aspired to be a novelist. The chapter describes Skinner's theories of behaviorism, which claims that behavior is shaped by the environment. The author Lauren Slater even gives an example where she employs Skinner's principle of positive reinforcement. This idea is based on Skinner's idea that rewards work much better than any form of punishment.
Discussion
After reading this chapter, I had to go and do some research on Skinner. It turns out that his contributions have made him one of the best psychologists of the 20th century. I find Skinner's theory to be really interesting and I think I agree with his positive reinforcement principle. Slater points out in this chapter how interesting it could be if some of his observations could make an impact on politics.