Summary Of Opening Skinner's Box By Lauren Slater
In the book “Opening Skinner’s Box”, Lauren Slater discusses many complicated ideas relating to certain experiments of recent times. In every chapter, she focuses on one specific experiment and poses many controversial thoughts. One of the chapters I found most interesting was the second chapter titled “Obscura”. In it she walks readers through the experiments of Stanley Milgram and questions the purpose, results, usefulness, and morality of the experiments. To begin, the purpose of the experiments seem to be off to me. According to Slater, the purpose of the experiments were to test the idea of “obedience to authority” (58). While I do see that the experiments appear to have started as a way to test obedience, I think they stopped too early for this to be true. If they had …show more content…
Among multiple issues including giving misleading information, the most dominate is the lack of consent Milgram received from his subjects to participate in such a test (102). While I do see that this is immoral, there is no way that Milgram could have completed his experiments effectively if he had done it morally. The first issue is if he explains what is actually going to happen during the experiments, that would obviously hurt the integrity of his results. Also, going back to how the experiments help us, if those who participated knew what was going to happen, it wouldn’t have affected them as severely. It was the shock that the experiment gave that brought their life choices into question. In conclusion, I believe the way Slater presents her evidence is very convincing. She makes it a point to explain all of the controversial points that surround Stanley Milgram and his experiments. While we might not agree on all of her points, we both share the thought that Milgram and his experiments have affected positively despite the issues of its purpose, results, usefulness, and morality shroud the experiments in
On Being Sane In Opening Skinner's Box, By Lauren Slater
55 Words | 1 PagesHas anyone else ever wondered how many sane people have been misdiagnosed or even committed to an institution unnecessarily? In chapter three; On Being Sane in Insane Places, in the novel Opening Skinners Box, Lauren Slater has written about experiments conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in 1972 and again by herself sometime in the 2000’s.
A Critical Analysis Of Opening Skinner's Box By Lauren Slater
874 Words | 4 PagesJacob, on the other end of the spectrum, gave up a career as a doctor to become “…a gay activist teaching inner –city kids,” (60). Jacob, who kneeled to authority and flipped the switch on the shock machine, lived his real life by sticking up for himself and others against the crowd or norm. It seems obvious that the only logical explanation is that Milgram’s experiment did not accurately display how our personalities affect whether we obey authority or
Jane Elliot's Classroom Experiment And The Civil Rights Movement
586 Words | 3 Pagesexperiment.4 A TV show, books, interviews, and appearances on national and appearances on nationally famous shows were what Jane Elliot received from this experiment. Although it is successful, it is also criticized a lot due to its ethical issues. On one hand, this experiment opened up people’s eyes to the corrupt nature of racism and segregation and inflicted change on
Stanley Milgram's Effect On Civil Disobedience
619 Words | 3 PagesMilgram’s generation needed conclusive answers about the “final solution”. Standard ethics in modern day psychology state that participants in any experiment must not be deceived, and that they must be made aware of any consequences. In fairness, research performed after the experiment, indicated that there were no long term psychological effects on the participants. However, the fact that these “teachers” thought that they had caused suffering to another human being, could have caused severe emotional
Commentary On Opening Skinner's Box By Lauren Slater
1069 Words | 5 PagesSlater starts off by talking about the title of her book and psychologist B.F Skinner. Skinner studied the effects of rats and how they can be trained with rewards and reinforcements. Skinner designed an experiment using rats that would be rewarded with one pellet of food if the lever
Milgram's Agentic State Theory
1659 Words | 7 PagesThis shows that despite the validity of Milgram’s findings, other factors shall also be taken into consideration, when studying human
Why Is The Milgram Experiment Re-Created Today
1509 Words | 7 PagesWhen the Milgram obedience experiments were being conducted the core of the experiments were all based on the false impression that an electrical shock would be administered to another individual at the push of a button with an incorrect answer, when in fact they weren’t. If the Milgram experiments were not based on lies and each participant did in fact administer a shock to another individual in response to a wrong answer, I feel that the results would have been the same with no alternative result. The reason for this would be because from the very beginning of the experiment the participants already believed that they would be actually administering an electrical shock. The participant’s reactions and concerns before, during and even after the experiments were all real with their true feelings and thoughts about their participation of either walking away from the experiment or completing the experiment. If the participants were to know that the electric shocks they were administering were not real, then the whole purpose of the experiment would have been useless and unnecessary.
The Milgram Experiments
992 Words | 4 PagesHis experiment was used to demonstrate how people respond to orders from people with authority no matter what the order was. He started by having participants test another “participant”, who actually was one of Milgram’s men who knew what was going on. Each time the fake participant chose the wrong answer, the real participant had to shock them with a higher voltage until they got to one that would be deadly. Milgram changed parts of the experiment to find variables that changed how far the real participant would go. He noticed that location and experimenter’s dress apparel changes how likely it is that the real participant would go to the deadly voltage.
Stanley Milgram's The Perils Of Obedience
1014 Words | 5 PagesLike Psychologist Diana Baumrind did so in her article “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments”. Where she makes it very clear that she disagrees with causing individuals stress and discomfort. In her article, Baumrind states “It is potentially harmful to a subject to commit, on the course of an experiment, acts which he himself considers unworthy, particularly when he has been entrapped into committing such acts by an individual he has reason to trust” which in this case the trustworthy individual would be Stanley Milgram. Baumrind also worried about the dangers of the serious aftereffects that may ensure because of the stress and discomfort Stanley Milgram’s experiment has caused. Even though Stanley Milgram states that “After the interview, procedures were undertaken to assure that the subject would leave the laboratory in a state of well-being.”
What Guideline Did They Violate?
1622 Words | 7 PagesName and describe three experiments that violated ethical guidelines. What guideline did they violate? Milgram: The Milgram experiment was an experiment that tested an individual's willingness the follow the instructions of an authority figure.
Why Is Milgram's Research Important?
950 Words | 4 PagesWhile arguably one of the defining psychological studies of the 20th Century, the research was not without flaws. Almost immediately the study became a subject for debate amongst psychologists who argued that the research was both ethically flawed and its lack of diversity meant it could not be generalized. Ethically, a significant critique of the experiment is that the participants actually believed they were administering serious harm to a real person, completely unaware that the learner was in fact acting. Although Milgram argued that the illusion was a necessary part of the experiment to study the participants’ reaction, they were exposed to a highly stressful situation. Many were visibly distraught throughout the duration of the test
Sociology Matters Chapter Summaries
610 Words | 3 PagesFirstly, in order for Milgram’s experiment to work the people had to obey and do what the researchers told them to do. The definition of obedience defined in the book is, “...a compliance with higher authorities in a hierarchical structure. ”(Schaefer, 103) This is exactly what happened in the experiment.
The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unethical Or Not
746 Words | 3 PagesThe experiment was executed well. Yet, there are unethical practices happened during the experiment. First, the participants were not fully informed about the experiment. The researchers did not explain to the participants the processes in conducting the experiment. The participants were not informed that they would be arrested by cops in their homes.
Bandura Strengths And Weaknesses
1503 Words | 7 PagesSkinners experiment was standardised and controlled it made the study more reliable because there were no influences from other factors like extraneous variables/confounding variables. This shows that researchers could have compromised ecological validity for other factors that are just as important in psychological
Jane Elliott's Argument Analysis: The Blue Eyed Experiment
724 Words | 3 PagesThe blue eyed – brown eyed experiment in my opinion is indeed ethical. The issue at hand with this experiment is will it cause permeant future psychological damage. Jane Elliott conducted this experiment with her third-grade students which some would say it is too harsh of an exercise for a group that young; She wanted to teach her student that discrimination is wrong which have been a topic they discussed from the first day of school but felt the student would become confused with the fact she just honored Dr. king in the month of February and now she had to explain to them that he was assassinated because of discrimination. Jane Elliott agreed that this exercise can do Psychological damage if not conducted correctly but the benefits are remarkable.
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