Book Reading #10: Opening Skinner’s Box

Chapter 2
Summary
Lauren Slater discusses Stanley Milgram’s shock experiment and its implications. She begins with a narrative describing what the experiment was like for the subject: how they slowly increased the voltage of a shock they gave each time a person in another room gave a wrong answer and how that person screamed in pain. After the experiment, it was found that 62-65% of people when faced with an authority, would follow orders to the point of delivering a lethal shock to another person.

Slater then gives a short history of Milgram and the other related experiments he did to show that “any normal person can become a killer if he finds himself in a place where killing is called for.” She then discusses how others – including Milgram himself – questioned whether one’s personality also played a part in something thought to derive fully from the situation.

Slater interviews both a defiant and an obedient from the shock experiment, both of which were greatly affected by the experiment. Slater also describes the criticism Milgram got for the methods he used during his experiment.

Discussion
This is yet another subject that we discussed in my psychology class though not in such great detail. We discussed his shock experiment but not the barrage of criticism that followed nor the impact it had on the subjects – though I did consider the impact on my own.

This is an experiment that cannot be fully redone today. Rules are stricter about informing the subjects about possible risks prior to the study. As for its results, I do think that the situation plays a part, but I also believe there is more to it. The author puts it best when she says, “…we are not simply the situations in which we find ourselves.”