This book was about different people and their experiments and how they have impacted our world today.
The beginning of the book introduced Skinner and how people think of him. People think he is scary and his name is startling. Skinner's experiments were based on animals and making them do certain things for food. These experiments are famous because they have to do with the idea of free will and why we do certain things as humans.
The following experiments are discussed in the book.
Stanley Milgram's experiment with obedience to authority where he wanted to see how many people would continuously shock somebody when told to do so even if it appeared to be hurting them badly. This experiment is important because it shows how people think in an unknown environment when instructed by somebody else.
The next experiment is about David Rosenhan's experiment that challenged psychiatric medicine. Rosenhan and several others admitted themselves to a ward and then acted completely normal. The experiment was to see how long it took for the doctors to see they were normal and healthy. It is worth noting that the author of the book also tried something like this and made the comment that it was too easy to get medicine for this and that maybe the doctors were unsure of themselves.
There was also an experiment opposite of Skinner's in chapter 1. It involved dealing with unkown situations when there was no authority around. A room was filled with smoke and an actor was instructed not to react to the smoke. When the actor was present people were hesitant to get help for the smoke but when the actor was removed most people recognized the need to get help when the smoke appeared.
Harry Harlow's experiment with monkeys and how he thought he isolated the variables of love. He showed that baby monkeys preferred a mother that was soft over one that was hard with food. This went badly though when the monkeys couldn't interact with each other socially.
Bruce Alexander's rat park experiment is discussed as well. This dealt with addiction and if it was in our heads or not. He placed rats in a luxury environment called Rat Park and rats in a simple cage. He showed that rats in the simple cage constantly stayed high. This showed that the environment greatly influenced the rat's decision to drink the drugged water.
There are also experiments about memory. The first one deals with Dr. Elizabeth Loftus and her idea that somebody can believe in a memory that doesn't exist if they are led to believe that it does over and over. Her idea was to plant a false memory of being lost in the mall and see how many people would go along with it. The results showed that many people went along with it.
Dr. Scoville's experiment about removing a man's hippocampus is discussed. It was noted that removing this part of the brain removed the man's short term memory. This led to Eric Kandal's experiments with sea slugs. From this he discovered drugs that enhanced and repressed a persons memory.
The last chapter is about lobotomies and the history of them. They have become more sophisticated over time but are still risky and require the approval of an ethics board for somebody to get one done.
Discussion:
I really enjoyed this book because of the variety of topics covered. Even for similar topics such as memory, there were different experiments done. I liked how the author reflected on each experiment and how it has impacted our society today.
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