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Title: Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century by Lauren Slater ISBN: 0-393-05095-5 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 15 March, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.21 (38 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Somewhat Creepy
Comment: After reading how controversial Opening Skinner's Box is, I had to read the book myself. Some of the people interviewed in the book are claiming to have been incorrectly quoted, and some psychologists take issue with Slater's scholarship and conclusions. Having been warned not to take the facts too seriously, I thought it would still be intriguing to consider the deeper questions posed by the scientists who performed the experiments described in the book.
And it was intriguing. Slater debunks the myth that B.F. Skinner raised his first child in a "box" in order to conduct an elaborate behavior experiment on her. The box turns out to have been a high-tech playpen designed and built by the doting father that Skinner apparently was. Another famous experiment which revealed that most people would torture another if encouraged by a benign authority figure was especially chilling in light of the Abu Ghraib torture by American guards.
However, I came away with the distinct impression that Slater is a nut. Slater seemed especially enthusiastic about recreating an experiment in which normal people pretended to be demented enough to enter a mental hospital, then reverted to normal behavior and waited to see how long it would be before they would be discharged. Slater checked into some eight different hospitals. She also took some of the anti-psychotic meds she was prescribed rather than tossing them.
She reveals that she was unable to recreate the experiment strictly, because under the original conditions, the pseudo-patients would be truthful after being admitted, but Slater actually had a mental hospital stay in her past, so she lied. And I simply didn't believe that bit about biting the ten-year-old chocolate bar in the Skinner House at first. As I read more of the book and learned more about Slater, it wasn't so unbelievable any more.
Anyway, Opening Skinner's Box is definitely an unusual book. It poses many thoughtful questions about the nature of humanness. It is well-written, but I can't vouch for how well-researched it is or how factual. It is extremely interesting and thought-provoking, and more than a little creepy.
Rating: 2
Summary: Readers beware
Comment: A factual point first. In her chapter on Skinner, Slater does eventually spell out unambiguously that the stories about his daughter Deborah that Slater has previously presented as what is widely believed in some circles are completely untrue. But by exonerating her on this one issue I am far from giving a welcome to this book. On the contrary, even before I read the complaints by prominent psychologists to the President of Norton Publishers that Slater had invented parts of the purported conversations she had with them, and that her accounts of psychological experiments contained serious errors, I had reason to doubt the veracity of the author. From lengthy extracts in the Guardian newspaper in January, and lengthy excerpts from the book on BBC Radio 4 "Book at Bedtime" (five quarter-hour readings from different chapters), I formed the opinion that some of the author's accounts of her experiences, including passages in the alleged conversations she had with current psychologists, were very unlikely to be true. Likewise the detailed account of her first attempt at replicating Rosenhan's experiment concerning the diagnosis of someone who only pretended to have symptoms of severe mental illness seems to me to be largely a product of her imagination. Rebecca Berlin, from Montreal, deplores what she calls a "smear campaign" against Slater. It is depressing that genuine attempts to ascertain, and on clear evidence, doubt the veracity of material in Slater's book, including material that is extremely damaging to psychologists working today, is described as a "smear". It would be better for people like Ms Berlin to keep an open mind until they have had an opportunity to see the evidence adduced by critics of Slater's book.
Rating: 4
Summary: Get over the controversy
Comment: There's been a lot of controversy about this book regarding the veracity of some of its claims. However, it appears that most of the criticms are from various psychologists who did not like the protrayl of their character in the book. No one has challenged the accuracy of the description of the experiments, which is the heart and soul the book.
This is one of the rare books that discusses the facinating behavioral psychology studies that have been conducted throughout the 20th century. How easily are people subjected to authority? To what extent do we exercise free will? How accurate is human memory? There are 10 studies in all and at the end of the book I found myself searching for more.
Some of the psychologists in this book are upset with Slater whereas in fact they should praise her. Despite this book's flaws, it is written in a manner that will motivate the layman to take interest in these thinkers and their studies. Before this book, only those in academia were aware of Loftus' or Milgram's work. This book is the first to introduce them to the general public in an inviting and readable fashion.
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Title: The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram by Thomas Blass ISBN: 0738203998 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 16 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Songs of the Gorilla Nation : My Journey Through Autism by DAWN PHD PRINCE-HUGHES ISBN: 1400050588 Publisher: Harmony Books Pub. Date: 09 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life by Steven Johnson ISBN: 0743241657 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 10 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Freedom Just Around the Corner : A New American History: 1585-1828 by Walter A. McDougall ISBN: 0060197897 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 28 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Spiral Staircase : My Climb out of Darkness by Karen Armstrong ISBN: 0375413189 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 02 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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