The first chapter is mainly devoted to B. F. Skinner, his work, and the impact it had on people. The author, Lauren Slater, discusses Skinner’s early days studying frog reflexes, the days when he worked with variable schedules of reinforcement and his time later on when he took care of his daughters and taught their dog to play hide-and-seek with them.
In the second chapter 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.
Chapter 3 discusses David Rosenhan’s test in which he and eight friends when to various mental institutions, got admitted by saying they heard a voice that said “thud” and then acted normal once in the ward. He discusses how the staff attributed all of his normal behaviors to his paranoid schizophrenic diagnosis. Slater then tells of how people reacted to Rosenhan’s article about the matter. She also discusses the still prominent questions in regards to psychiatry and how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders evolved as a result of Rosenhan’s study.
Chapter 4 discusses the bystander effect and the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility. It tells the story of Kitty Genovese and then explains the studies that followed by Darley and Latane.
In chapter 5 Slater discusses Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance. Slater describes some of Festinger’s experiments including his observation of those who believed a flood would come on December 21, 1954 and an experiment involving having people lie for either $1 or $20. A large portion of the chapter focuses on mother named Linda Santo whose daughter she claims to be a saint that God has chosen to be a victim soul that takes on the pain of others.
Chapter 6 is about Harry Harlow and the research he did with rhesus macaque monkeys to explore the psychology of attachment. Slater begins by telling of Harlow’s younger years and his lack of love growing up. Then Slater discusses the different studies he did.
Chapter 7 explores the work of Bruce Alexander and his studies on rats when researching the effect of one’s social, physical and psychological life on one’s addiction to drugs. After putting sixteen rats in a caged environment and sixteen rats in a “rat park,” Alexander exposed them both to morphine. What Alexander found was that the rats in the rat park chose drinking normal water over the morphine-laced water while the cramped, caged rats preferred the morphine-laced water.
Chapter 8 explores the false memory experiments done by Elizabeth Loftus. With her different studies she was able to implant false memories in her subjects and observe how memories could be changed over time or with some convincing.
Chapter 9 focuses on Eric Kandel’s research with memory. He discovered that the neurons grew stronger when an electrochemical signal reinforced the relationship. He also discovered CREB and the CREB repressor. CREB is a molecule in the brain that “switches on” the genes that produce the proteins that make memories.
The final chapter discusses psychosurgery and Antonio Egas Moniz, the father of psychosurgery. Slater discusses his early research and the results of some of the first surgeries in which he injected alcohol into the brain to destroy nerve tissue.
Discussion
This book was a very enjoyable read. I learned about many of these experiments in one of my psychology classes, but I enjoyed how in depth Slater went into the different experiments. For example, I’d never heard about the rumors regarding Skinner and his daughter being kept in a box or how Harlow actually had some of the cloth surrogate mothers stab the baby monkeys in his later studies.
One of my favorite chapters was chapter 3. It was very interesting to see how easy it was to get admitted to a mental institution back in the day and how easy it still is to get prescription drugs. I also like how in the final chapter, Slater ties this together by saying how doctors who prescribe Prozac are like Moniz because they don’t know exactly how it works but want to help people. I also liked chapter 8, which explored the idea of false memories.
Psychology is such an interesting field that has so much yet to be discovered and fully understood. This was an interesting book that I looked forward to reading each week.
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