Lauren Slater
Chapter 1: Opening Skinner's Box
In the first chapter of this we are introduced to Skinner and told about his views and experiments. Apparently he is sometimes seen as evil and his experiments as near forms of torture. We get to see how different people do not see things the same way as him and talk about how he takes the Pavlov experiments way too far. We also get to learn about how he got started and the many rumors about his life. At the end the author does some real investigation about his family by talking to his two daughters and their views on their father. They claim the only way to truly know him now is to read all of his work, not just the things that people talk about and review over and over.
I had heard of Skinner but I had never really gotten to study him. It is really funny how when my roommates saw what I was reading they confirmed everything that they said in the book like how people see him as evil. To me this is a very interesting branch of psychology the idea that you can change peoples behaviors through conditioning. It really makes me want to slow down and analyze situations and try to see if something that I do can change the behaviors of those around me to make them do what I really want them to. This chapter makes me want to look into his studies more.
Chapter 2: Obscura
In this chapter we get to find out about one of what the book claims is the most controversial studies ever done. Stanley Milgram once wanted to understand obedience to authority better, he proposed an experiment to see how far people would go. The experiment was simple: put people into a room, one in a fake electric chair, one that is instructed to punish him based on answering questions in correctly and see if they would go all the way to the end with the shocks saying "lethal warning" etc. He found that more than half of the patients would go all the way and were very shook up about it even after the debriefing. The author also talks about how she interviewed some of the patients many years afterward.
This is by far one of my MOST FAVORITE topics in psychology the idea that someone will listen to a figure of authority and essentially will do anything they ask them to. I also love the idea of the controversy behind this study, Milgram tells the patients they can leave, he tells them that its fake, and yet people get so wrapped up in what is happening and they just keep going. I really will never stand why people are so willing to listen to a figure of authority just because it wears a white coat. This is the precise reason why I love this study so much because I have always pretty much blindly listened to authority, and I wonder if I was faced with a morale situation if I would have the right mindedness to know when to not listen.
Chapter 3: On Being Sane in Insane Places
This chapter covers the experiments of David Rosenhan, an experimental psychologist who was always a skeptic about the study of psychology. He decided to put psychology to the test by trying to get sane people admitted to mental wards. Him and other colleges went into the hospitals complaining of a voice saying “thud” and answered all other questions correctly. They were all accepted and beyond that did not act insane and gave coherent answers. This led to a huge revolution in psychology and caused many psychologists to take another look at the study of their craft. The author re-performs this experiment nearly fifty years later and found that while modern metal hospitals have improved in quality and people skills, they have also become a bit more skeptical in that she was never admitted but only given prescriptions and then sent away. She did this at many different hospitals near her and got the exact same results and a lot of medication out of it. She claims that while it means that psychology as a practice has come a long way, it still is not a perfect science and something that needs to be watched.
I thought this chapter was very interesting in that I had never seen this experiment before. I think that it is an interesting thing that Rosenhan had enough knowledge about the subject to be able to say “this will get us in it’s a case that has no documentation”. I think that the descriptions of each of the institutions is a little inhumane but overall did not seem like they did anything bad other than make sure they had control of their hospitals. The interesting thing is that clearly most of these psychologists had no idea really what an insane person was, and even in the later studies of Rosenhan when he sent fake patients (of which he really sent none) they also made a lot of mistakes. I actually think the results that Slater found were a very big step in that psychology is no longer about jumping to conclusions but is more focused on studying the person and making sure they get it correct, and if they have to just prescribing medication and sending them on their way.
Chapter 4: In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing
In this chapter we look at the semi-famous case of Kitty Genovese. This incident had to do with how in large groups, there is a psychological phenomena that happens that we refer to as "responsibility diffusion" that is, when in a group the group as a whole somehow decides that responsibility will fall to someone else in the group and not to themselves. The author then goes into the stories surrounding the incident and how when the story was reported that people lashed out and called for these people to be punished and ridiculed. In fact none of the thirty seven people involved so much as called the police. Some of the people were interviewed and some of them knew what was happening yet sat and watched the whole thing, while others were unaware that anything was happening other than some very loud screaming. The author covered more peoples reports of how this should have been handled and even talked to psychologists about what people need to do to make sure something like this doesn't ever repeat itself.
It is a very interesting case as many people would think that if there were more people that there would be more of a chance of someone doing SOMETHING. However we have found that this is never the case. In fact, people are much more likely to respond to someone in distress when there is not a large group around or they are by themselves. Somehow the idea of being in a group and then formulation of what we refer to as "groupthink" allows people to ignore cries for help or creates an awkward social interaction that makes them not want to respond to someones pleas. The fact remains this is a very famous case that is studied nearly once a year mostly, surprisingly, by news stations. They set up experiments to show this exact interaction taking place partial for the shock value and partial to boost ratings in slow times or in response to some sort of local situation. Whatever it is, psychology can only go so far to help us understand why this happens or how to fix it.
Chapter 5: Quieting the Mind
In this chapter we explore the experiments of Leon Festinger in what they call cognitive dissonance. This is the phenomena in humans that happens where they lie about something SO MUCH that they actually start to believe the lie. The most famous experiment with this is where two groups are given money to lie, one is given $20 and the other $1. The interesting part is that the group that was only give $1 lied more and eventually started to believe the lie was true, more so than the $20 group who eventually (usually) cracked. There are many famous cases discussed such as groups who believed that they were going to be taken away by aliens and then came up with justifications as to why they did not. The most interesting one is when the author explored a miracle workers home and actually saw oil leaking out of the eyes of a statue. The author even says she was unsure if what she saw was real or hoax but this phenomena in some form was definitely true in some of the cases.
I have always wondered about this theory, and the surprising part is that I don't think I've ever seen such concrete cases of it. The interesting part to me is I really wonder if these people do this just to justify their actions or if they somehow feel a void in themselves and need to believe in something so they create it. I wonder if there was ever a member of any of these groups who think a lot of what they say is $#!* and go along just to feel accepted with the group. We will never know if what the author saw was real or not or if the miracles that claim to have happened are true, but I think that people really will lie so much that they eventually believe the lie and will use this to justify strange actions or events. For some reason this always reminds me of the movie K-PAX where I couldn't help but think that's what was happening the whole time.
Chapter 6: Monkey Love
In this chapter we find out about the studies of a famous psychologist Henry Harlow who is famous not for a exciting contribution but mostly famous for what he did to test animals. He performed experiments where he separated baby monkeys from their mothers and performed different tests such as replacing their mothers with terrycloth towels and making ugly wire models that were warm and saw how the monkeys were able to replace their mothers with these. He even found that when he gave a negative punishment such as stabbing the monkeys for clinging to them they still continuously came back. Essentially what he showed is that during birth, the thing we learn to love most is our mothers touch and that we want to be held and learn to live for the warmth another person provides. He did this in a way that destroyed all we know about rearing and made people quite upset with his experiments as a whole.
I think this is one of the MOST controversial and most powerful experiments ever done. I think that the idea that we live for another persons touch is inherently interesting because we are such independent creatures but when it comes down to it, our mammalian desires to be held by our mothers, no matter what, are the strongest. It was the most interesting when these monkeys were ignoring being shocked to do this and even more interesting how they grew up and how his experiments fell apart when he tried to get the motherless monkeys to mate. I think that these experiments did add something to psychology as we know it and to computing for that matter but I do not think that these need to be repeated ever.
Chapter 7: Rat Park
This chapter covers the studies of one of Harlow's students and fellow researchers named Bruce Alexander. He saw what Harlow was doing with love and decided to focus on addiction and how it affects people. He read that addiction was a brain disease but there was no medical proof for this. He decided to perform experiments getting rats addicted to various substances and seeing what it was that got them addicted. He also studied cases and worked in addiction clinics and tried to see patterns in the people who were there. What he found was that addiction is not itself a disease it is the lifestyle that is associated with the people and he proved this by making Rat Park. He put some rats in dingy cages and others in a luxurious cage with lots of ammenities and found that the spoiled rats did not even drink the addictive substances offered while the small caged ones drank until they were stark high. It gave us a different look at how addition works and though never published is a well recognized paper and has a small following.
I think the most interesting part about this is that when I think about it a lot of what he says makes a lot of sense and I can apply this to different cases. I fear that somehow I have the illusion of wanting to make it fit but I love the example case that the author gives when she tried this herself and did not get addicted. I would like to try something like this but I am still working on fighting caffeine cravings so I will take one thing at a time. It does lead me to more questions such as, if addicts can be cured by having better surroundings and less stressful lives wouldn't they simply get addicted to something else? And if that is true wouldn't we just say that in some way all people are addicted to something but some are more socially acceptable than others? Maybe, but I think that needs its own set of study and chapter. I like to cook, but I don't need to. An alcoholic likes to drink, but doesn't need to unless he is going to get drunk. Maybe not.
Chapter 8: Memory Inc.
In this chapter we learn about Elizabeth Loftus a woman who has spent her entire life looking at the phenomenon of being able to implant an idea into someones head and then the evolution of that idea into a memory that the person clearly recounts.She did experiments where she told people about an event and then the people were asked to come back later and see if they took to the event and how much vivid detail they talked about remembering it. She actually sites many famous cases where people had their children claiming they had touched them or inappropriately been touched twenty years later only to find out that the person was told that they did this and that their children would never lie and eventually they believed it and recounted it in vivid details. Essentially her work deals with people who have been force fed memories and then apparently become their own. Some of the cases went so far that the person was essentially tortured and forced to believe that something had happened when it hadn't and she became a lawyer to try and fight these kinds of cases siting her own work as to how it can happen.
I think this chapter is very interesting because of the stigma that surrounds it. Sometimes we are so sure of what we know and we believe that we could never be wrong about it. We also have some lies and other memories that we SWEAR we remember when really we are piecing together stories of other people we met throughout our lives. I know this phenomenon is real and have seen cases in my own life where it is very true. I try not to lie and be a good person but I used to have a bit of an issue with it and am sure some of my stories belong to someone else whether I remember if they are or not. I think everyone wants their lives to be interesting but hopefully this does not come at the cost of our own memories going to crud. I find the most interesting part of this is that in all the cases that she mentioned these people were essentially tortured until they cracked.
Chapter 9: Chipped
In this chapter we find out about a psychologist named Antonio Moniz who after hearing the story of a wild Chimpanzee named Becky being calmed by open-brain surgery wondered if the same effects could be applied to humans in deteriorating mental states. He announced his idea to sever the human brain at a psychology convention and stunned the crowd creating instant enemies and leaving others wondering (Walter Freeman). He took patients by availability and started drilling holes in their head and then using syringes full of alcohol was able to kill different parts of the patients brain. Nearly 70% of his patients reported that they were feeling much better and some even said "the tension is gone". People ridiculed him for not doing a double blind study but it would be rather difficult and expensive to do a "fake lobotomy" and if anything he figured he wasn't hurting these people and if nothing helping them. The patients personalities did become very "flat" but many did report relief of the mental states that bothered them and were released from institutions if attending.
The interesting part of this is how he came up with the idea. Knowing that our biology is so similar to monkeys that he figured if these kinds of operations could be done on a monkey why not on a human. It is a very bold statement to stand in front of a group of colleagues and say "I am going to cut humans brains" where no one had attempted it or even considered it before. We do now know that lobotomies can have very good effects and in some cases we have even split a persons corpus callosum to help deal with seizures and other mental illnesses. While we still do not entirely understand the human brain we have come a long way since injecting alcohol into the brain and can kill tiny clusters of cells in surgery leaving the person with no other side effects. I think this research is both necessary and important and we really should try to learn more about the brain as we advance in medicine.
In total:
Opening Skinner's Box by Slater was a culmination of famous psychologists and their research. While it might be hard to link these kinds of things to computer science the diligent reader finds the connections that Slater gives throughout the book. From her examples to her own investigations of each of the famous cases Slater really gets the reader involved and makes it to where the reader wants to know what happens at the end of the chapter. While some of the researchers were very wild and in some cases did things that people don't agree with their experiments have very important foundations in science and also in computer science. She shows us that we can learn from the research of others and truly that every problem is a solution in disguise.
I thought this was one of the more interesting books that we read. While it did appeal to the side of me that still loves psychology and despite the fact that I have read about a lot of these cases I still really enjoyed the book and wished it was actually longer. A lot of the cases that were looked at were really well done and provided good examples with only one exception where they showed only the most popular cases and simply just showed how they were examples and didn't really focus on what the true meaning of the chapter was. I really was able to apply this to computer science and learn from the cases, about how we can condition people in different ways, how people learn, and how people might perceive different things. It was a good all around read and I hope its continued to be done.
Chapter 4: In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing
In this chapter we look at the semi-famous case of Kitty Genovese. This incident had to do with how in large groups, there is a psychological phenomena that happens that we refer to as "responsibility diffusion" that is, when in a group the group as a whole somehow decides that responsibility will fall to someone else in the group and not to themselves. The author then goes into the stories surrounding the incident and how when the story was reported that people lashed out and called for these people to be punished and ridiculed. In fact none of the thirty seven people involved so much as called the police. Some of the people were interviewed and some of them knew what was happening yet sat and watched the whole thing, while others were unaware that anything was happening other than some very loud screaming. The author covered more peoples reports of how this should have been handled and even talked to psychologists about what people need to do to make sure something like this doesn't ever repeat itself.
It is a very interesting case as many people would think that if there were more people that there would be more of a chance of someone doing SOMETHING. However we have found that this is never the case. In fact, people are much more likely to respond to someone in distress when there is not a large group around or they are by themselves. Somehow the idea of being in a group and then formulation of what we refer to as "groupthink" allows people to ignore cries for help or creates an awkward social interaction that makes them not want to respond to someones pleas. The fact remains this is a very famous case that is studied nearly once a year mostly, surprisingly, by news stations. They set up experiments to show this exact interaction taking place partial for the shock value and partial to boost ratings in slow times or in response to some sort of local situation. Whatever it is, psychology can only go so far to help us understand why this happens or how to fix it.
Chapter 5: Quieting the Mind
In this chapter we explore the experiments of Leon Festinger in what they call cognitive dissonance. This is the phenomena in humans that happens where they lie about something SO MUCH that they actually start to believe the lie. The most famous experiment with this is where two groups are given money to lie, one is given $20 and the other $1. The interesting part is that the group that was only give $1 lied more and eventually started to believe the lie was true, more so than the $20 group who eventually (usually) cracked. There are many famous cases discussed such as groups who believed that they were going to be taken away by aliens and then came up with justifications as to why they did not. The most interesting one is when the author explored a miracle workers home and actually saw oil leaking out of the eyes of a statue. The author even says she was unsure if what she saw was real or hoax but this phenomena in some form was definitely true in some of the cases.
I have always wondered about this theory, and the surprising part is that I don't think I've ever seen such concrete cases of it. The interesting part to me is I really wonder if these people do this just to justify their actions or if they somehow feel a void in themselves and need to believe in something so they create it. I wonder if there was ever a member of any of these groups who think a lot of what they say is $#!* and go along just to feel accepted with the group. We will never know if what the author saw was real or not or if the miracles that claim to have happened are true, but I think that people really will lie so much that they eventually believe the lie and will use this to justify strange actions or events. For some reason this always reminds me of the movie K-PAX where I couldn't help but think that's what was happening the whole time.
Chapter 6: Monkey Love
In this chapter we find out about the studies of a famous psychologist Henry Harlow who is famous not for a exciting contribution but mostly famous for what he did to test animals. He performed experiments where he separated baby monkeys from their mothers and performed different tests such as replacing their mothers with terrycloth towels and making ugly wire models that were warm and saw how the monkeys were able to replace their mothers with these. He even found that when he gave a negative punishment such as stabbing the monkeys for clinging to them they still continuously came back. Essentially what he showed is that during birth, the thing we learn to love most is our mothers touch and that we want to be held and learn to live for the warmth another person provides. He did this in a way that destroyed all we know about rearing and made people quite upset with his experiments as a whole.
I think this is one of the MOST controversial and most powerful experiments ever done. I think that the idea that we live for another persons touch is inherently interesting because we are such independent creatures but when it comes down to it, our mammalian desires to be held by our mothers, no matter what, are the strongest. It was the most interesting when these monkeys were ignoring being shocked to do this and even more interesting how they grew up and how his experiments fell apart when he tried to get the motherless monkeys to mate. I think that these experiments did add something to psychology as we know it and to computing for that matter but I do not think that these need to be repeated ever.
Chapter 7: Rat Park
This chapter covers the studies of one of Harlow's students and fellow researchers named Bruce Alexander. He saw what Harlow was doing with love and decided to focus on addiction and how it affects people. He read that addiction was a brain disease but there was no medical proof for this. He decided to perform experiments getting rats addicted to various substances and seeing what it was that got them addicted. He also studied cases and worked in addiction clinics and tried to see patterns in the people who were there. What he found was that addiction is not itself a disease it is the lifestyle that is associated with the people and he proved this by making Rat Park. He put some rats in dingy cages and others in a luxurious cage with lots of ammenities and found that the spoiled rats did not even drink the addictive substances offered while the small caged ones drank until they were stark high. It gave us a different look at how addition works and though never published is a well recognized paper and has a small following.
I think the most interesting part about this is that when I think about it a lot of what he says makes a lot of sense and I can apply this to different cases. I fear that somehow I have the illusion of wanting to make it fit but I love the example case that the author gives when she tried this herself and did not get addicted. I would like to try something like this but I am still working on fighting caffeine cravings so I will take one thing at a time. It does lead me to more questions such as, if addicts can be cured by having better surroundings and less stressful lives wouldn't they simply get addicted to something else? And if that is true wouldn't we just say that in some way all people are addicted to something but some are more socially acceptable than others? Maybe, but I think that needs its own set of study and chapter. I like to cook, but I don't need to. An alcoholic likes to drink, but doesn't need to unless he is going to get drunk. Maybe not.
Chapter 8: Memory Inc.
In this chapter we learn about Elizabeth Loftus a woman who has spent her entire life looking at the phenomenon of being able to implant an idea into someones head and then the evolution of that idea into a memory that the person clearly recounts.She did experiments where she told people about an event and then the people were asked to come back later and see if they took to the event and how much vivid detail they talked about remembering it. She actually sites many famous cases where people had their children claiming they had touched them or inappropriately been touched twenty years later only to find out that the person was told that they did this and that their children would never lie and eventually they believed it and recounted it in vivid details. Essentially her work deals with people who have been force fed memories and then apparently become their own. Some of the cases went so far that the person was essentially tortured and forced to believe that something had happened when it hadn't and she became a lawyer to try and fight these kinds of cases siting her own work as to how it can happen.
I think this chapter is very interesting because of the stigma that surrounds it. Sometimes we are so sure of what we know and we believe that we could never be wrong about it. We also have some lies and other memories that we SWEAR we remember when really we are piecing together stories of other people we met throughout our lives. I know this phenomenon is real and have seen cases in my own life where it is very true. I try not to lie and be a good person but I used to have a bit of an issue with it and am sure some of my stories belong to someone else whether I remember if they are or not. I think everyone wants their lives to be interesting but hopefully this does not come at the cost of our own memories going to crud. I find the most interesting part of this is that in all the cases that she mentioned these people were essentially tortured until they cracked.
Chapter 9: Chipped
In this chapter we find out about a psychologist named Antonio Moniz who after hearing the story of a wild Chimpanzee named Becky being calmed by open-brain surgery wondered if the same effects could be applied to humans in deteriorating mental states. He announced his idea to sever the human brain at a psychology convention and stunned the crowd creating instant enemies and leaving others wondering (Walter Freeman). He took patients by availability and started drilling holes in their head and then using syringes full of alcohol was able to kill different parts of the patients brain. Nearly 70% of his patients reported that they were feeling much better and some even said "the tension is gone". People ridiculed him for not doing a double blind study but it would be rather difficult and expensive to do a "fake lobotomy" and if anything he figured he wasn't hurting these people and if nothing helping them. The patients personalities did become very "flat" but many did report relief of the mental states that bothered them and were released from institutions if attending.
The interesting part of this is how he came up with the idea. Knowing that our biology is so similar to monkeys that he figured if these kinds of operations could be done on a monkey why not on a human. It is a very bold statement to stand in front of a group of colleagues and say "I am going to cut humans brains" where no one had attempted it or even considered it before. We do now know that lobotomies can have very good effects and in some cases we have even split a persons corpus callosum to help deal with seizures and other mental illnesses. While we still do not entirely understand the human brain we have come a long way since injecting alcohol into the brain and can kill tiny clusters of cells in surgery leaving the person with no other side effects. I think this research is both necessary and important and we really should try to learn more about the brain as we advance in medicine.
In total:
Opening Skinner's Box by Slater was a culmination of famous psychologists and their research. While it might be hard to link these kinds of things to computer science the diligent reader finds the connections that Slater gives throughout the book. From her examples to her own investigations of each of the famous cases Slater really gets the reader involved and makes it to where the reader wants to know what happens at the end of the chapter. While some of the researchers were very wild and in some cases did things that people don't agree with their experiments have very important foundations in science and also in computer science. She shows us that we can learn from the research of others and truly that every problem is a solution in disguise.
I thought this was one of the more interesting books that we read. While it did appeal to the side of me that still loves psychology and despite the fact that I have read about a lot of these cases I still really enjoyed the book and wished it was actually longer. A lot of the cases that were looked at were really well done and provided good examples with only one exception where they showed only the most popular cases and simply just showed how they were examples and didn't really focus on what the true meaning of the chapter was. I really was able to apply this to computer science and learn from the cases, about how we can condition people in different ways, how people learn, and how people might perceive different things. It was a good all around read and I hope its continued to be done.
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