Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century

“Poised between the first world war and a future one soon to come, Skinner may have sensed—although he would reject such a flimsy word—the need for action, for interventions and results that could be bronzed, each one, like bullets. He therefore avoided anything ‘soft.’”

When B.F. Skinner entered the field of psychology in the early 1930s, psychology was perceived as a “soft” science, devoid of numbers and metrics to quantify its findings. Slater, in this passage, contextualizes Skinner’s work in a broader scope of the field, and the world at large. Skinner, with his boxes and hard notions about conditioning, sought to study concrete subjects and make concrete findings.

“We sit there for a minute, he down there, I appear. I think I hear that damn dog in the hall, scratching. I’m afraid to go back out there, but I no longer want to be in here. I am caged by contingencies, and so I sit very still.”

Slater conducts first-person research in the book. This method not only gives Slater unique insight on her subjects, but it also leads to some cinematic moments in the narrative. For example, in this scene, Slater interviews Jerome Kagan, one of B.F. Skinner’s biggest detractors. To demonstrate that we are not bound by our mechanical biological impulses, as B.F. Skinner suggests, Kagan leaps underneath his desk at random, “proving” that the only thing that compelled him to do that was free will.

“His glasses are folded on the desk. His vitamins are lined up, several bullet-shaped capsules he never got to swallow on that dim day when he was carted away, and not much later buried in his final box, the real black box, bones now.”

Slater observes the room in B.F. Skinner’s home where he was moments before he was taken to the hospital in 1990 with a fatal heart attack. Skinner’s daughter has preserved the room exactly as he left it. This scene is exemplary of Slater’s unique mode of narrative-driven exploration of her subjects.

“He wanted to devise an experiment that would cast such a glow or pall, over the earth it would leave some things simmering for a long, long time.” 

Stanley Milgram’s experiment, detailed throughout Chapter 2, was designed to shock the world. Literally, the experiment did just that; but it also shocked in the other sense, meaning “surprise.” Characteristic for Slater, she uses a pun here—the language of electricity, “glow” and “simmering”—to express this point. Slater chooses poetic expression to make her point, driving home the idea that psychology has an artistic quality to it. 

“And that is pretty stunning—an experiment so potent it does not describe or demonstrate, so much as detonate, a kind of social psychological equivalent of the atom bomb, only this time in the service of creation, not destruction, for as Milgram himself said, ‘From these experiments comes awareness and that may be the first step towards change.’” 

The Milgram experiments have contested meaning—it is unclear what exactly it measures and if its methods are sound. Still, Slater underscores the value of the experiments in an unconventional, non-scientific way. Similar to a great work of art, Slater measures the value of the Milgram experiment in terms of its cultural impact, which is undeniable.

“That Spitzer doesn’t say or much sound sorry when he hears this reveals the depths to which Rosenhan’s study is still hated in the field, even after forty years.”

Slater always makes sure to collect the opinions of naysayers and detractors, a common motif throughout the book. The 10 experiments were bold, landmark studies that pushed the boundaries of psychology. In Chapter 3, Slater interviews one such detractor to David Rosenhan’s experiment on criteria for diagnosing insanity. Slater reads more than just simple detraction into Spitzer’s reaction; she also sees “hatred” for the study. 

“The strange thing was, the other patients seemed to know Rosenhan was normal, even while the doctors did not.”

Slater points out an irony in Rosenhan’s infamous experiment on sanity vs. insanity. He found that when his “sane” co-conspirators faked their way into mental institutions, the medical staff was easily fooled—however, the “insane” patients in the institution seemed to recognize that they were not meant to be there. Slater continuously highlights the paradoxical contradictions that are rife throughout psychology’s body of work. 

“Now, this is funny. This perhaps more than any other experiment shows the pure folly that lives at the heart of human beings; it runs so counter to common sense that we would rather risk our lives than break rank, that we value social etiquette over survival.” 

Darley and Latané’s experiments tested human helping behavior—that is, what are the circumstances in which people will offer help in a crisis. In one experiment on small groups, Darley and Latané discovered that people would not even save themselves in a crisis. In her characteristic subjective voice, Slater describes this as “funny.” In her interpretation, she sees this as a phenomenon that is indicative of a larger human truth, beyond the scope of psychology. It gets at the very core, the “pure folly” that lives “at the heart of human beings.” 

“I know the five stages, and still the story swerves.”

In Chapter 4, Slater’s research shows that if people are made aware of the five stages of human helping behavior, then they are more likely to help in a crisis. Slater often points out paradoxes and ambiguity in psychological research. In this passage, Slater tells an anecdote in which she mistakes a young man for a neo-Nazi about to commit a crime; she highlights the paradox that, even though she knows the five stages as defined by Darley and Latané, she did not act in what was a perceived crisis.

“Throughout all of history there have been examples of people who, instead of clapping their hands over their ears, pushed into dissonance, willing to hear what might emerge.” 

Chapter 5 focuses on Leon Festinger’s concept of cognitive dissonance. Slater points out an inconsistency in the theory, which is that it does not account for the innovations borne from people who resist resolving their cognitive dissonance. She does not resolve this question by the end of the chapter, which emphasizes her larger themes surrounding meaning in ambiguity.

“In other words, East Asians may be better able to sit with it, hold in their cupped hands a thing that makes no sense—a cart without water, a tree without roots, a beautiful brain-dead girl.”

Slater will often use a poetic expression or phrase to conclude each chapter. In this section on cognitive dissonance, she presents a poetic string of images. This supports her intention to re-cast psychological experiments as stories and to derive new meaning from them. 

“But there he was, the PIG, up on the podium, in 1959, speaking science in a way no one had dared to before, injecting statistics with hemoglobin and heart, the Nabokov of psychology. His experiments were long meditations on love, and all the ways we ruin it.”

This excerpt describes Harry Harlow, the controversial psychologist who experimented on infant monkeys to explore the psychology of mothering and attachment. Slater compares Harlow to the famous Russian novelist, Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and another celebrated figure who ruminated on what drives people to love. This is just one example of many throughout the book in which Slater likens a psychologist to an artist and psychology to an art form.

“The beauty is this: we are creatures of great faith. We will build bridges, against all odds we will build them—from here to there. From me to you. Come closer.”

The passage above concludes Chapter 6 on Harry Harlow’s primate experiments on emotional attachment. Slater has a unique tone throughout the book. Here, she switches perspective to directly address the readers, beckoning them to “come closer” as a way of emphasizing a point about emotional attachment and the human condition.

“The real drug war may not exist in our streets, but in our academies, where scientists hiss and search, compulsively, intoxicated by the questions they are pursuing.”

In Chapter 7, Slater explores the nature of addiction and finds that the “real” war on drugs may be among scholars themselves. How we perceive the nature of addiction will determine how we view addicts and the larger “war on drugs.” Therefore, as Slater points out, it is right to consider how contested this subject is within the academy. It is unclear how much of addiction is influenced by biology vs. culture, and how the two are intertwined.

“In the final analysis done, Alexander the renegade is really a traditionalist in tie-dye. Years of radical inquiry has led him to this conservative conclusion: what matters are the ties that bind, love, affection, and the daily rhythms that rise from these—friendship, family, a small plot to work.”

Bruce Alexander’s research on addiction has led him to believe some radical ideas: first and foremost, that bad social conditions (and not biology) is the primary cause of addiction. Slater, however, sees his core message as a “conservative” one, a departure from his anti-establishment beliefs. Slater’s evaluation of Alexander in this excerpt shows the ways in which Slater embraces paradox; in her estimation, he can be both a conservative and a radical. 

“Our notions of memory are largely based on these two men’s ideas: Freud and Plato, by no means bad company to keep. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, however, decided to challenge the fields great fathers.”

In this passage, Slater aligns the work of Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who studied memory, with Freud and Plato. In doing so, Slater emphasizes how Loftus’s work was duly groundbreaking. First, it challenged conventional wisdom of memory, and second, a woman conducted the research. In referring to Plato and Freud as the field’s “fathers,” Slater subtly acknowledges the patriarchal leanings of psychology.  

“They felt certain of their current description, which illuminates the tenuous connection between feeling sure and being right. The false memories were saturated with subjective veracity, so fictions felt like facts in a topsy-turvy world.”

“They” in this excerpt refers to the individuals that Loftus interviewed about their memory of the Challenger exploding. The idea was that she wanted to test if a traumatic event would lodge itself differently in the minds of individuals, and if it was less susceptible to changing. When Loftus interviewed the same subjects years later, their memories had changed.

“What did Henry feel as Scoville sucked out his hippocampus? He was, after all, wide awake, thoroughly alert, and the hippocampus, although no one knew it at the time, is the seat of many of our memories. Did Henry feel his past leave him in a single suck?” 

Henry is the epilepsy patient who, in 1953, inadvertently led to the scientific discovery that the hippocampus is the part of the brain that contains human memory. Slater amplifies the climactic nature of the moment when Henry’s surgery was performed. This excerpt illustrates the way in which Slater seeks to bring science to life through storytelling.

“We may be postmodern, but we are not, in fact, posthuman. No science, in any field, has yet to deliver us from our own flesh. Eventually, the lights go out. We go back, into blackness.”

In this passage, Slater explores the ultimate ambiguity: death. In her discussion of Eric Kandel’s memory-enhancing drugs in Chapter 9, she elucidates that many scientific advancements are rooted in fears surrounding our mortality. However, as she points out, there is no scientific advancement that can prevent death forever.

“Moniz strode into the landscape of people’s lives and took things he shouldn’t have—which is why he’s not liked—but he left, he always left, some useful things behind. The father of psychosurgery, you can hate him, but chances are in many ways, he could have helped your head.”

Slater has a controversial opinion of António Egas Moniz, the founder of the lobotomy. While Moniz is “not liked” in popular culture because society views the lobotomy as a brutal procedure, Slater emphasizes what an important contribution the lobotomy was to psychosurgery and to our understanding of the brain. In her characteristically provocative tone, Slater addresses the reader (“your head”), suggesting that even if Moniz is disliked, he was skilled enough that he could likely heal the reader’s ailments.

“Why, then, has lobotomy been preserved in the dust bins of history, told as a long dark tale in the development of somatic treatments, a dangerous digression?”

Throughout the book, Slater shines a light on our shared beliefs, as a society, about psychology. In Chapter 10, she tackles the “long dark tale” of the lobotomy. The lobotomy is often regarded as a brutal and outdated procedure; but as Slater discovers, it nonetheless has helped people suffering from mental illness. Slater attempts to understand why it is that certain myths persist—for example, that the lobotomy is universally “bad.”

“Without experiments such as Milgram’s, or Rosenhan’s, or Moniz’s, we would be poorer in knowledge and in story, but who, in the end, can calculate the cost-benefit ratio and say with confidence what it is?”

Slater offers no conclusions about the “cost-benefit” of the psychological experiments profiled in the book, beyond the fact that we would be “poorer in knowledge” without them. The phrase “cost-benefit” points to how that which psychology seeks to measure is indefinable, in many ways. The philosophical questions explored by psychology are important, but they are difficult to measure.

“A question: as we move further into the twenty-first century, will experiments that are decidedly nonsomatic, like Milgram’s or Rosenhan’s or Festinger’s, finally fall by the wayside? Will all experimental psychology occur at the level of the single synapse?”

Psychology has long held a tenuous place among the “hard” sciences. Slater wonders in this chapter if the psychological experimentation will be rendered obsolete if technological advancements allow us to study the inner workings of the human brain. Slater answers that, as human beings, we will always have questions.