Assignment 10 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 1 - Opening Skinner's Box

Summary: The chapter talks about the experiments conducted by psychologist B.F. Skinner and the controversy that surrounded his methods of experimentation. Operant conditioning, one of the main categories studied by B.F. Skinner, is the ability to train other humans and animals to perform a range of tasks through positive reinforcement (rewards). Skinner believed that humans are controlled and that free will is simply a response to life's "cues". He also believed that positive reinforcement worked better in establishing behavior than negative reinforcement (punishment).

Discussion: This chapter was very interesting because of the unconventional and controversial ways that B.F. Skinner conducted his experiments. Reading about the myth that Skinner's daughter sued him for keeping her in a box when she was younger, and that she later committed suicide when she lost the case in court was crazy. It is a good way to draw in the reader and get them excited to read on. Reading about all the other types of experiments was pretty cool, too. And, although there may have been a lot of controversy surrounding B.F. Skinner, he contributed greatly to the field of psychology (positive reinforcement > negative reinforcement or reward > punishment).

Chapter 2 - Obscura

Summary: This chapter talks about Stanley Milgram and describes Milgram's obedience to authority experiment. The experiment involved a subject who would be called the teacher and two actors (learner and experimenter). The subject would read a set of words to the learner and for every wrong answer, he would administer shock that rose in intensity for every incorrect answer. When the subject would try to stop the experiment the experimenter (the authority) would ask the subject to continue to test obedience to an authoritative figure. The results of the experiment showed that 65% of people would obey a credible authority, even if it meant harming another human being. The chapter went on to discuss the importance of the Milgram's study.

Discussion: I thought that Stanley Milgram's experiment, although controversial and somewhat messed with the mind of participants, was awesome. It's crazy that someone would even think of an experiment to test how people react to authoritative figures. It makes you think of how you would react if you were in that situation, but the thing is you don't know. You can never know how you would react in a certain situation until you are actually put into the situation. I've always wondered if I would have the guts to cut off my arm if I ever needed to to survive. Right now I say I don't think I would be able to, but I can't know for sure until a situation like that occurs. There are so many things that weigh in on a person's decision, so until given the stresses of a certain situation, you can't fully know how you would react in that situation.

Chapter 3 - On Being Sane in Insane Places

Summary: The author talks about David Rosenhan and an experiment he performed to test how well psychiatrists differentiate between sane and insane people. Rosenhan and 8 friends went to different mental hospitals and pretended to hear a "thud". One in the mental facility for a while, they acted normal and said they were no longer hearing any noises. This allowed them to determine whether or not the psychiatrists could distinguish them from insane patients. However, even though they were perfectly normal and sane, they were given the same treatment as insane patients. Slater then talks about how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders changed due to the results of Rosenhan's study. She also talks about the same study repeated by herself and her findings.

Discussion: It was very interesting to read about Rosenhan's study and how psychiatrists, who go through extensive coursework and training, could wrongly classify a patient. It kind of bothers me how psychiatrists could possibly diagnose someone as insane even though they are perfectly normal because psychiatrists should be reliable. It makes you think about all the patients who are possibly normal but are too drugged up to speak out so they just conform to insanity. When the author repeated the experiment, although she was not admitted to the mental facility, she was given anti-depressants. This is another remarkable finding because it just shows that psychiatrists may not have any idea about what they are doing, but no one questions them because of their authority.  

Chapter 4 - In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing

Summary: Lauren Slater talks about a crime that happened in New York in 1964, where a woman was stabbed and raped by man. There were witnesses, however, none of them stepped in to stop the crime from happening. After the incident, Latane and Darley conducted studies at NY University to determine why people did not intervene and help stop the crime when they had the time/opportunity to do so. One of the experiments involved a college student that was put in a room and made to believe there were student's in other rooms, by putting tape recorders in the rooms. One of the tape recorders played a recording of what sounded like a student having a seizure and the results showed that: 31% of students reacted to the "seizuring" student when they thought others were around and 85% tried to help when they thought they were the only person around.

Discussion: This chapter I found interesting because it relates to my life very well. I was at the Rec one day and a girl wasn't paying attention to where she was going and tripped over/fell on several bikes. It happened right in front of me and since there were several people around, I just kept walking and assumed someone else was going to help her. Her friend was right next to her, so that may have had something to do with me continuing on without helping but I can't believe I didn't stop to help, now that I look back on it. It's an interesting thing to think about.

Chapter 5 - Quieting the Mind

Summary: In this chapter, the author talks about Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance.Cognitive dissonance is the phenomenon in which an individual adjusts his/her beliefs to better fit or justify one's behavior. One experiment of cognitive dissonance performed by Festinger was one where a group of people believed the world was going to end on December 21st by a huge flood. Festinger predicted that when the prophecy turned out to be false, a huge effort to gain social support would happen to downplay the disconformation of the original belief. He infiltrated the flood group and his prediction was later confirmed. He also performed an experiment where student's were paid $1 and $20 to perform boring tasks. The student's who were paid $1 said the experiments, which were time consuming and boring, were fun, while those that were paid $20 straight up told the truth and said the tasks were boring. The students that were paid $20 experienced little dissonance, so they were honest in their responses. However, those that were paid $1 had to justify spending a considerable amount of time doing pointless tasks, so they said the tasks were enjoyable.

Discussion: This chapter, to me, was kind of boring; however, the theory of cognitive dissonance was quite interesting. I was watching a show the other day about the "end" of the world on December 21, 2012 and there were quite a few people who had given up a lot because of their belief. It is going to be real interesting when the world does not come to end; I wonder what all the believers are going to say/do. Their was also a real interesting belief from one of the people . His belief was that the world is a computer game and at a certain time on December 21, 2012 there is going to be a portal that opens up, in the middle of a canyon somewhere, that will enable you to teleport out of this "virtual" world. He is going to jump off a cliff at that time to jump into this portal and be released from the video game. Stupid belief that is somewhat related to cognitive dissonance.  

Chapter 6 - Monkey Love

Summary: This chapter is about the experiments performed by Harry Halow on monkeys to determine what the basis for love was. He separated new born monkeys from their mothers and gave them a mother figure in soft, cloth towels. The baby monkeys became extremely attached to the towels. Harlow then made surrogate mother monkeys out of wire and nails, but gave them the ability to dispense milk. He found that the new born monkeys were still extremely attached to the soft, cloth surrogate mothers, although they would approach the wire surrogates whenever they were hungry. The baby monkeys preferred the soft surrogate mothers who could not feed them over the metal surrogates that could provide food. Based on these results, Harlow concluded that touch was the basis of forming love.

Discussion: Although the experiments performed on the new born monkeys were done to further the field of psychology, the torturing of the monkeys was not cool at all. It just makes you question what kind of person Halow was and what kind of environment he grew up in. I don't see how anyone could be so cruel to harm an animal like that. The ONLY silver lining to the experimentation is that now we are more aware of what is needed for proper child development.

Chapter 7 - Rat Park

Summary: I really liked the topic of this chapter and the nature of the experiments. The chapter talks about a psychologist, Bruce Alexander, and his research and experiments regarding addiction to narcotics. One psychologist by the name of Dr. Herbert Kleber believed that the ease of access to narcotics was the main factor in the risk of addiction. Bruce Alexander believed that there is nothing addictive about drugs and that even repeated exposure to enticing drugs does not lead to problems. In experiments on rats, narcotics were proven to be addictive since rats would suffer pain in order to suck drugs through a straw. However, Alexander argued that the rodents became addicted because of the environments they were kept in (i.e. tiny cages). He believed that if the rodents were kept in an environment that was comfortable and "happy", the rats would not care for the drugs. So he created a "Rat Park", a park for rats with sufficient space and clean water, and performed the narcotics experiment. He found that in this environment, the rodents preferred not to ingest the narcotics even if they were previously addicted. Bruce Alexander showed that drug addiction is more likely to occur in sad environments or in times of misery/difficulty; however, if we are happy and have nearly everything that we desire, addiction is not a problem.

Discussion: This was a really interesting experiment, however, like the new born monkeys experiment, it was cruel to force addiction upon the rats and cause them to harm themselves to satisfy their addiction. I do agree with Alexander's theory because I feel like those who grow up in good environments are less likely to become addicted/try to drugs. The results may not be 100% accurate because some people just want to do  drugs because they like the way they feel, but I think there is a high percentage of accuracy.

Chapter 8 - Lost in the Mall

Summary: This chapter discusses Elizabeth Loftus's research about human memory and imagination. Loftus says that humans often confuse things from memory and their imaginations. She says long term memory is very fragile and can be easily manipulated. This led her to believe that many people were wrongly convicted in child abuse cases because evidence based on childhood memories could be easily altered. To prove this, Elizabeth Loftus created an experiment called "lost in the mall" which involved telling participants about ture childhood memories along with a fake memory about being lost in a mall when they were young. The parents of the participants cooperated in the experiment, too. The results showed that a large number of participants actually believed that they were lost in the mall and fabricated stories of how they became lost. Loftus claims that the human mind replaces white spaces in memory with filler memories that may deviate from the truth. If someone trustworthy tell us something about our past, we often believe them and make memories as if it really occurred. However, some psychologist argue that traumatic memories are different from normal memories and are stored differently in the brain; traumatic memories can't be forgotten or messed with.

Discussion: I really liked this chapter because it made me think about memories that I think happened when I was younger and whether or not they are true, partially made up, or fully made up. I recently watch a show that also discussed how memory can be messed with. A robbery occurred and people who witnessed it were asked to describe the person that committed the robbery. Several actors were put in place to make things up about the robber and when they did so, several participants began to agree with them. This showed that memories can be tampered with easily, especially by outside sources.

Chapter 9 - Memory Inc.

Summary: This chapter discusses Eric Kandel and his research on human memory and its storage in the brain. It talks about Henry who experienced seizures and convulsions, due to epilepsy, and had his hippocampus removed by Dr. Scoville. The brain surgery stopped Henry's seizures but also kept him from being able to make new memories. After reading about this story Kandel learned about neurons and human memory. He performed experiments on sea slugs because of their easily accessible neurons and discovered CREB and CREB repressors. CREB is a brain molecule that triggers the production of proteins that hold memories. Later, Kandel started a company that produced pills to help with memory enhancement.

Discussion: This chapter was pretty cool. Reading about something as complex as the human brains is usually interesting and the part about the brain surgery was intriguing. I do think that messing with the human brain whether it be through surgery or pills is not a good idea, though. Unless we know the consequences of removing part of the brain or the effects of taking memory enhancing pill, we should leave the human brain as is and let nature do its thing. Messing with the brain could have undesirable effects and mess up someone's life.

Chapter 10 - Chipped

Summary: Psycho surgery and lobotomies are the main topics of this chapter. The author talks about Antonio Moniz, the father of lobotomy, and his experiments in psycho surgery. The author also talks about the positive and negative effects that a psycho surgical procedure can have on a person's life. However, she notes that some people would rather face the negative effects of a surgery than deal with their depression, anxiety, and other related issues. Late in the chapter, Charlie Newitz and his OCD is discussed. He tried a bunch of different medications, however nothing worked so he underwent psycho surgery. After the surgery his OCD was gone, but also reported feeling depressed. He did think that dealing with depression was better that dealing with OCD.

Discussion: It's crazy to think about how far research on the brain, medicine, and surgical procedures has come. I do not agree fully with taking medicine or surgery because I feel as if it would make you a completely different person. I would not know what it is like, but when you take medicine it puts you in a different place and doesn't allow you to be yourself. Surgery is a little worse because once the surgery is performed, you are stuck with it. Medications can at least stop being taken, but with surgery you will be stuck the way you end up, which could be good OR bad.