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Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
Beginning with B. F. Skinner and the legend of a child raised in a box, Slater takes us from a deep empathy with Stanley Milgram's obedience subjects to a funny and disturbing re-creation of an experiment questioning the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. Previously described only in academic journals and textbooks, these often daring experiments have never before been narrated as stories, chock-full of plot, wit, personality, and theme.
274 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
301 people are currently reading
4766 people want to read
About the author
Lauren Slater
21 books208 followersLauren Slater (born March 21, 1963) is an American psychotherapist and writer.
She is the author of numerous books, including Welcome to My Country, Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir, Opening Skinner’s Box, and Blue Beyond Blue, a collection of short stories. Slater’s most recent book is The $60,000 Dog: My Life with Animals.
Slater has been the recipient of numerous awards, among them a 2004 National Endowments for the Arts Award, and multiple inclusions in Best American Volumes, and A Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology. Slater is also a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, and Elle, among others. She has been nominated several times for National Magazine Awards in both the Essay and the Profile category.
Slater was a practicing psychotherapist for 11 years before embarking on a full-time writing career. She served as the Clinical and then the Executive Director of AfterCare Services, and under her watch the company grew from a small inner city office to a vibrant outpatient clinic servicing some of Boston’s most socioeconomically stressed population.
After the birth of her daughter, Slater wrote her memoir Love Works Like This to chronicle the agonizing decisions she made relating to her psychiatric illness and her pregnancy. In a 2003 BBC Woman’s Hour radio interview, and a 2005 article in Child Magazine, Slater provides information on depression during pregnancy and the risks to the woman and her baby.
She lives and writes in Harvard, Massachusetts.
She is the author of numerous books, including Welcome to My Country, Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir, Opening Skinner’s Box, and Blue Beyond Blue, a collection of short stories. Slater’s most recent book is The $60,000 Dog: My Life with Animals.
Slater has been the recipient of numerous awards, among them a 2004 National Endowments for the Arts Award, and multiple inclusions in Best American Volumes, and A Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology. Slater is also a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, and Elle, among others. She has been nominated several times for National Magazine Awards in both the Essay and the Profile category.
Slater was a practicing psychotherapist for 11 years before embarking on a full-time writing career. She served as the Clinical and then the Executive Director of AfterCare Services, and under her watch the company grew from a small inner city office to a vibrant outpatient clinic servicing some of Boston’s most socioeconomically stressed population.
After the birth of her daughter, Slater wrote her memoir Love Works Like This to chronicle the agonizing decisions she made relating to her psychiatric illness and her pregnancy. In a 2003 BBC Woman’s Hour radio interview, and a 2005 article in Child Magazine, Slater provides information on depression during pregnancy and the risks to the woman and her baby.
She lives and writes in Harvard, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 354 reviews
January 11, 2010
This is a fascinating, monumentally flawed, book. Its central conceit? Slater, a psychologist, "revisits" ten of the most (in)famous historical experiments conducted in psychology, work which has played a key role in establishing the prevailing dogma about human behavior. Each experiment gets its own chapter in the book.
Obviously, the success of this kind of gimmick depends critically on (a) the particular set of experiments chosen for inclusion, (b) the author's insight - her ability to interpret the experimental results correctly and to situate them within the broader context, and (c) (assuming that the previous step has been accomplished), her ability to communicate the message effectively to a non-specialist reader. Can she spark readers' curiosity and hold their attention? Can she chart a course between the Charybdis of breezy superficiality and the Scylla of excessive detail to write clearly, at a level that is appropriate for a general audience?
Slater scores highly on the first criterion. The experiments she has included were thought-provoking when they were first published, and they remain fascinating. Many of them achieved canonical status precisely because the results were so counterintuitive, confounding expectations and forcing investigators to reexamine prior beliefs. This tends to be true in any discipline - often it's the experiment that yields anomalous results that turns out to be important. Among the ten experiments that Slater discusses are:
B.F. Skinner's work on operant conditioning, Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments, Harry Harlow's experiments demonstrating that a (monkey) baby's need to be held and cuddled is more primal than the need to be fed, studies that showed the importance of "social cuing" and the bystander effect in determining people's response to an emergency or a request for help, and Elizabeth Loftus's work which essentially debunked the whole "recovered memory" trend that had become popular in the 1980s.
What does Slater have to tell us about these experiments? The good news is that she is quite capable of providing a lucid description of the various experimental protocols, results, and explaining their significance in the broader scheme of things. This despite the fact that, at some fundamental level, the woman is borderline unhinged. This is someone who, as part of the "research" conducted for the book, tries to see if she can personally duplicate results of one of the earlier experiments (in which nine healthy subjects presented themselves at the admission units of different mental hospitals, claiming to hear voices in their heads saying "thud", to see what would happen - answer, 8 diagnoses of schizophrenia, with hospital stays ranging from 7 to 52 days, despite behaving completely normally and never repeating the initial complaint). I should note that Slater does this not just once, but nine times: "It's a little fun, going into ERs and playing this game, so over the next 8 days, I do it 8 more times" (each time she receives a diagnosis of psychotic depression and a fistful of pills).
Of course, long before reaching this episode, the reader will have figured out that Slater has a pathological need to make herself the center of attention. Almost every chapter contains a perfectly lucid account of the research and the issues, which is marred by whole swaths of extraneous irrelevant stuff about Slater's own life. This material is easily recognized, as the prose switches into a mode best described as "histrionic", but it gets very old very fast.
Unfortunately, there are other, more disturbing issues as well. As the book progresses, it becomes evident that Slater's view of what constitutes truth in reporting is more flexible than one might wish in a science reporter. See, for example, these links:
Deborah Skinner's rebuttal
NT Times article
To me, the most distasteful aspect of the book, other than Slater's persistent self-aggrandization, is her habit of adding superfluous negative editorial comments when describing people who have agreed to speak with her (she has a related tendency to engage in uncharitable speculation about the thoughts and motivation of people who are dead, and thus unable to defend themselves). And what kind of person seeks out one of the participants of the Milgram study and forces them to spend an afternoon resurrecting what are obviously extremely disturbing memories of their behavior during the study? Well, the same kind of person who evidently has no qualms about tracking down a Stage 4 cancer patient to browbeat them, not just once, but several times about what she perceives as "dissonance" between the patient's faith and her medical prognosis. It is a testament to Slater's monstrous self-absorption that she ends the chapter in question by reassuring us that she herself is at peace. It's as if the skinhead with the baseball bat came over to reassure you that he's OK, really, he'll be fine. Just a little blood on his boots, nothing that can't be cleaned up. And that he's never felt so invigorated.
But, as we know, loathsome people sometimes write books that are worthwhile. "Opening Skinner's Box" is a case in point.
Obviously, the success of this kind of gimmick depends critically on (a) the particular set of experiments chosen for inclusion, (b) the author's insight - her ability to interpret the experimental results correctly and to situate them within the broader context, and (c) (assuming that the previous step has been accomplished), her ability to communicate the message effectively to a non-specialist reader. Can she spark readers' curiosity and hold their attention? Can she chart a course between the Charybdis of breezy superficiality and the Scylla of excessive detail to write clearly, at a level that is appropriate for a general audience?
Slater scores highly on the first criterion. The experiments she has included were thought-provoking when they were first published, and they remain fascinating. Many of them achieved canonical status precisely because the results were so counterintuitive, confounding expectations and forcing investigators to reexamine prior beliefs. This tends to be true in any discipline - often it's the experiment that yields anomalous results that turns out to be important. Among the ten experiments that Slater discusses are:
B.F. Skinner's work on operant conditioning, Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments, Harry Harlow's experiments demonstrating that a (monkey) baby's need to be held and cuddled is more primal than the need to be fed, studies that showed the importance of "social cuing" and the bystander effect in determining people's response to an emergency or a request for help, and Elizabeth Loftus's work which essentially debunked the whole "recovered memory" trend that had become popular in the 1980s.
What does Slater have to tell us about these experiments? The good news is that she is quite capable of providing a lucid description of the various experimental protocols, results, and explaining their significance in the broader scheme of things. This despite the fact that, at some fundamental level, the woman is borderline unhinged. This is someone who, as part of the "research" conducted for the book, tries to see if she can personally duplicate results of one of the earlier experiments (in which nine healthy subjects presented themselves at the admission units of different mental hospitals, claiming to hear voices in their heads saying "thud", to see what would happen - answer, 8 diagnoses of schizophrenia, with hospital stays ranging from 7 to 52 days, despite behaving completely normally and never repeating the initial complaint). I should note that Slater does this not just once, but nine times: "It's a little fun, going into ERs and playing this game, so over the next 8 days, I do it 8 more times" (each time she receives a diagnosis of psychotic depression and a fistful of pills).
Of course, long before reaching this episode, the reader will have figured out that Slater has a pathological need to make herself the center of attention. Almost every chapter contains a perfectly lucid account of the research and the issues, which is marred by whole swaths of extraneous irrelevant stuff about Slater's own life. This material is easily recognized, as the prose switches into a mode best described as "histrionic", but it gets very old very fast.
Unfortunately, there are other, more disturbing issues as well. As the book progresses, it becomes evident that Slater's view of what constitutes truth in reporting is more flexible than one might wish in a science reporter. See, for example, these links:
Deborah Skinner's rebuttal
NT Times article
To me, the most distasteful aspect of the book, other than Slater's persistent self-aggrandization, is her habit of adding superfluous negative editorial comments when describing people who have agreed to speak with her (she has a related tendency to engage in uncharitable speculation about the thoughts and motivation of people who are dead, and thus unable to defend themselves). And what kind of person seeks out one of the participants of the Milgram study and forces them to spend an afternoon resurrecting what are obviously extremely disturbing memories of their behavior during the study? Well, the same kind of person who evidently has no qualms about tracking down a Stage 4 cancer patient to browbeat them, not just once, but several times about what she perceives as "dissonance" between the patient's faith and her medical prognosis. It is a testament to Slater's monstrous self-absorption that she ends the chapter in question by reassuring us that she herself is at peace. It's as if the skinhead with the baseball bat came over to reassure you that he's OK, really, he'll be fine. Just a little blood on his boots, nothing that can't be cleaned up. And that he's never felt so invigorated.
But, as we know, loathsome people sometimes write books that are worthwhile. "Opening Skinner's Box" is a case in point.
November 24, 2011
The raw material of this book deserves 5 stars. The ten experiments that Slater has selected tell stories of the human condition as effectively as any art. But the experience of reading the book is like being guided through the most fascinating museum by someone who laughs like hyena, bursts into tears at random intervals and occasionally pisses on the exhibits.
May 15, 2009
The full title here is Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century. Author Lauren Slater reviews 10 famous experiments from the various niches of psychology and attempts to understand them and their participants in new ways. It's really not very good.
And that's too bad, because these psychological experiments and the scientists involved with them are gold mines of fascinating stories --they're famous for a reason. Examples include getting average Joes to shock other people to death, imprisoning babies in boxes constructed to shape their psyches, turning rhesus monkeys into antisocial lunatics, faking your way into a psychiatric hospital on flimsy pretenses, crowds of people watching impassively as their neighbor is stabbed to death, and inserting false memories into the minds of people who should know better.
This is crazy, fascinating, outrageous stuff! Slater devotes a chapter to each set of experiments and attempts to delve deeper into the concepts that each one left in the landscape of psychology. She usually does this by writing about the people underneath the lab coats, including their personalities, their drives, their flaws, and their humanity. Unfortunately when she's short on information Slater had an annoying habit of just making details up, along the lines of "I imagined him blah blah blah" or "Did he look at this spectacle and blah blah blah?" Its an entirely ineffective literary technique that really only serves to yank you out of whatever flow you might have gotten into to be reminded that we're resorting to conjecture in an attempt at spicing things up a bit and to live up to the dust jacket's doubtful premise that there are great mysteries here to be revealed through personal research and fact checking.
In fact, this brings me to my major problem with the book: the author's writing style. The prose is so purple, sloppy, and florid, so full of itself and laden with pointless metaphores and descriptors that it strains credibility for something claiming to be non-fiction. She also has a flair for the dramatic, as when she breathlessly drew parallels between Stanley Milgram's subjects administering painful shock and his own doctors trying to revive him with defibrillators.
It's just not well done. It's great source material (or at least I think so), but Slater just can't hold a candle to better science writers like Bill Bryson or Mary Roach.
And that's too bad, because these psychological experiments and the scientists involved with them are gold mines of fascinating stories --they're famous for a reason. Examples include getting average Joes to shock other people to death, imprisoning babies in boxes constructed to shape their psyches, turning rhesus monkeys into antisocial lunatics, faking your way into a psychiatric hospital on flimsy pretenses, crowds of people watching impassively as their neighbor is stabbed to death, and inserting false memories into the minds of people who should know better.
This is crazy, fascinating, outrageous stuff! Slater devotes a chapter to each set of experiments and attempts to delve deeper into the concepts that each one left in the landscape of psychology. She usually does this by writing about the people underneath the lab coats, including their personalities, their drives, their flaws, and their humanity. Unfortunately when she's short on information Slater had an annoying habit of just making details up, along the lines of "I imagined him blah blah blah" or "Did he look at this spectacle and blah blah blah?" Its an entirely ineffective literary technique that really only serves to yank you out of whatever flow you might have gotten into to be reminded that we're resorting to conjecture in an attempt at spicing things up a bit and to live up to the dust jacket's doubtful premise that there are great mysteries here to be revealed through personal research and fact checking.
In fact, this brings me to my major problem with the book: the author's writing style. The prose is so purple, sloppy, and florid, so full of itself and laden with pointless metaphores and descriptors that it strains credibility for something claiming to be non-fiction. She also has a flair for the dramatic, as when she breathlessly drew parallels between Stanley Milgram's subjects administering painful shock and his own doctors trying to revive him with defibrillators.
It's just not well done. It's great source material (or at least I think so), but Slater just can't hold a candle to better science writers like Bill Bryson or Mary Roach.
January 21, 2024
Uitasem cât de interesantă poate fi psihologia, dacă scoți romantismul din ea!
,,Apatia publică este o manifestare a agresivității." (Karl Menninger)
,,Cu cât aștepți mai mult, cu atât devii mai incapabil să acționezi."
,,cel mai bun mod prin care poți să înțelegi inima este s-o frângi."
,,Majoritatea vieților nu pot fi definite de anumite răsturnări de situație. Cele mai multe vieți se construiesc treptat, fiind o serie de sedimentări, care în timp iau o formă pe care o putem vedea abia la sfârșit."
,,Până la urmă, amintirile sunt niște lucruri zgomotoase care ne țin prinși în trecut sau ne fac să ne îngrijorăm în privința viitorului. Suntem atât de ocupați să ne amintim lucrurile retrospectiv sau proiectându-le în viitor (iar gândul la viitor e un fel de memorie, deoarece așteptările pe care le proiectăm se bazează pe ce am învățat), încât rareori ne aflăm în prezent. Probabil nu știm prea multe despre cum e să trăim prezentul pur, nepătat de simțul timpului."
,,Apatia publică este o manifestare a agresivității." (Karl Menninger)
,,Cu cât aștepți mai mult, cu atât devii mai incapabil să acționezi."
,,cel mai bun mod prin care poți să înțelegi inima este s-o frângi."
,,Majoritatea vieților nu pot fi definite de anumite răsturnări de situație. Cele mai multe vieți se construiesc treptat, fiind o serie de sedimentări, care în timp iau o formă pe care o putem vedea abia la sfârșit."
,,Până la urmă, amintirile sunt niște lucruri zgomotoase care ne țin prinși în trecut sau ne fac să ne îngrijorăm în privința viitorului. Suntem atât de ocupați să ne amintim lucrurile retrospectiv sau proiectându-le în viitor (iar gândul la viitor e un fel de memorie, deoarece așteptările pe care le proiectăm se bazează pe ce am învățat), încât rareori ne aflăm în prezent. Probabil nu știm prea multe despre cum e să trăim prezentul pur, nepătat de simțul timpului."
July 18, 2012
This book is so bad in so many ways, where do I start?
p49 she interviews "Joshua Chaffin", in the endnotes I see this is a pseudonym to protect his privacy, Please, he was proud of what he did, he didn't want privacy,
that's why he responded, that is, if he really exists.
My opinion, 90% chance the interview is 100% fiction.
Chapter 3, she claims to go to 9 emergency rooms claiming she heard voices.
She says she gave a fake name,
Please....... Everyone in the medical world wants photo ID
to make sure you're not ripping off an insurance company or something else.
My Opinion, 100% chance she's lying.
Through out the book the writing is turgid with clumsy stupid metaphors.
And she often jumps from an idea to a silly comparison/conclusion.
p 102 after relating an experiment where someone has a fake seizure,
"So, if you are on a plane when it is hijacked,
and you do not act within the first 180 seconds,
you are unlikely to act at all."
My opinion: Stupid conclusion.
p 177 she claims to take some of her husbands hydromorphone tablets.
This is one of the most popular of the opiates with drug abusers,
most doctors refuse to write prescriptions for it,
I think it unlikely her husband had them,
and if he did, he wouldn't want her playing with them.
My opinion: More lies.
consider these examples of her writing:
p225 "Little is know of his mother or the circumstances of his birth,
but we can imagine he came out head first,
the midwife placing her hands on either side of his still-soft skull
and pulling him like a rooted vegetable from the red earth."
p232 "Afterward, several scarred and barren places on the brain,
like land looks as it is seen from an airplane following a forest fire."
p 245 "The cingulate gyrus looms large and grainy as a planet beamed back to Earth"
What crap!!!
p49 she interviews "Joshua Chaffin", in the endnotes I see this is a pseudonym to protect his privacy, Please, he was proud of what he did, he didn't want privacy,
that's why he responded, that is, if he really exists.
My opinion, 90% chance the interview is 100% fiction.
Chapter 3, she claims to go to 9 emergency rooms claiming she heard voices.
She says she gave a fake name,
Please....... Everyone in the medical world wants photo ID
to make sure you're not ripping off an insurance company or something else.
My Opinion, 100% chance she's lying.
Through out the book the writing is turgid with clumsy stupid metaphors.
And she often jumps from an idea to a silly comparison/conclusion.
p 102 after relating an experiment where someone has a fake seizure,
"So, if you are on a plane when it is hijacked,
and you do not act within the first 180 seconds,
you are unlikely to act at all."
My opinion: Stupid conclusion.
p 177 she claims to take some of her husbands hydromorphone tablets.
This is one of the most popular of the opiates with drug abusers,
most doctors refuse to write prescriptions for it,
I think it unlikely her husband had them,
and if he did, he wouldn't want her playing with them.
My opinion: More lies.
consider these examples of her writing:
p225 "Little is know of his mother or the circumstances of his birth,
but we can imagine he came out head first,
the midwife placing her hands on either side of his still-soft skull
and pulling him like a rooted vegetable from the red earth."
p232 "Afterward, several scarred and barren places on the brain,
like land looks as it is seen from an airplane following a forest fire."
p 245 "The cingulate gyrus looms large and grainy as a planet beamed back to Earth"
What crap!!!
July 30, 2021
Lipseste experimentul inchisorii din Stanford condus de Philip Zimbardo.
June 25, 2017
The book is a very good introduction to psychological aspects of the modern world. It takes the reader through 10 defining moments in psychology and presents them in a way that can basically direct you where you want to go.
The writing style is excellent and had me latched on to the book for as long as I had it. Highly recommend for psychology enthusiasts.
The writing style is excellent and had me latched on to the book for as long as I had it. Highly recommend for psychology enthusiasts.
October 30, 2017
Ήμουν μεταξύ 3 και 4 αστεριών, αλλά τελικά επικράτησε η τσατίλα μου κι άφησα τα 3. Το βιβλίο και μόνο λόγω του αντικειμένου με το οποίο καταπιάνεται είναι πολύ αξιόλογο και πλούσιο σε υλικό και χαίρομαι πάρα πολύ που το απέκτησα.
Η έκδοση θα μπορούσε να είναι εξαιρετική, είναι μεγά��ο βιβλίο κι αυτό σημαίνει ότι δε μοιάζει με τούβλο σαν το συνηθισμένο πολτό. Το χαρτί είναι πολύ καλής ποιότητας και κάτι μικρές λεπτομέρειες - όπως πχ δίπλα στην αρίθμηση των σελίδων κάτι μικρά ρομβάκια (ή τριγωνάκια, το έχω ήδη δανείσει και δεν το έχω μπροστά μου να σας πω) δίνουν συν στην αισθητική του. Η εικόνα του εξωφύλλου υπάρχει και στην έναρξη κάθε κεφαλαίου - ακόμα ένα συν.
Όμως, ρε παίδες εσείς εκεί των ΟΞΥ, λίγο σεβασμό στον αναγνώστη και στην τελική στη δουλειά σας την ίδια. Το βιβλίο είναι τίγκα στα λάθη απροσεξίας, υπάρχουν λέξεις που τους λείπει ένα γράμμα, πολλά mistypes, λάθη ακόμα και στον τρόπο που κόβεται μια λέξη και συνεχίζει στην επόμενη γραμμή (πχ παιδι-ού).
Ενώ εκπροσωπούν στη χώρα μας πάρα πολύ καλά βιβλία, χρειάζονται πολλή δουλειά.
Η μετάφραση νομίζω πως είναι καλή, δεν έχω ανοίξει το πρωτότυπο να συγκρίνω και να πω την αλήθεια φοβάμαι να το κάνω μη σιφιλιαστώ. Αυτό που εισέπραξα στην ανάγνωση είναι πως η συγγραφέας έχει ντεμί αφηγηματικές ικανότητες και οκ, δεν το έχουν όλοι. Το Narrative NonFiction είναι ιδιαίτερη κατηγορία - και γι αυτό πήρα το ένα αστέρι που ίσως να ήταν μισό. Το υπόλοιπο λόγω του εκδότη.
Δεν ήθελα να το πω αλλά θα το πω: Το να χάνει ένα βιβλίο εξαιτίας του εκδότη που το εκπροσωπεί σε μια άλλη χώρα - όπου στην τελική ο συγγραφέας και ο εκδότης ΤΟΥ δεν μπορεί να γνωρίζουν πραγματικά το πόσο καλή δουλειά είναι ικανοί να κάνουν αυτοί που το αγοράζουν αφού δε μιλούν και δε διαβάζουν τη γλώσσα, είναι πολύ πολύ σοβαρό.
Αυτό το λέω γενικεύοντας γιατί έχω δει μεταφρασμένα βιβλία να τα πετάς στον τοίχο.
Παρόλα αυτά, είναι ένα βιβλίο που αξίζει να έχει κανείς (και η τιμή του είναι καλή σε σχέση με άλλα Non fiction απλησίαστα που καραδοκώ να τα πετύχω σε προσφορά).
Η έκδοση θα μπορούσε να είναι εξαιρετική, είναι μεγά��ο βιβλίο κι αυτό σημαίνει ότι δε μοιάζει με τούβλο σαν το συνηθισμένο πολτό. Το χαρτί είναι πολύ καλής ποιότητας και κάτι μικρές λεπτομέρειες - όπως πχ δίπλα στην αρίθμηση των σελίδων κάτι μικρά ρομβάκια (ή τριγωνάκια, το έχω ήδη δανείσει και δεν το έχω μπροστά μου να σας πω) δίνουν συν στην αισθητική του. Η εικόνα του εξωφύλλου υπάρχει και στην έναρξη κάθε κεφαλαίου - ακόμα ένα συν.
Όμως, ρε παίδες εσείς εκεί των ΟΞΥ, λίγο σεβασμό στον αναγνώστη και στην τελική στη δουλειά σας την ίδια. Το βιβλίο είναι τίγκα στα λάθη απροσεξίας, υπάρχουν λέξεις που τους λείπει ένα γράμμα, πολλά mistypes, λάθη ακόμα και στον τρόπο που κόβεται μια λέξη και συνεχίζει στην επόμενη γραμμή (πχ παιδι-ού).
Ενώ εκπροσωπούν στη χώρα μας πάρα πολύ καλά βιβλία, χρειάζονται πολλή δουλειά.
Η μετάφραση νομίζω πως είναι καλή, δεν έχω ανοίξει το πρωτότυπο να συγκρίνω και να πω την αλήθεια φοβάμαι να το κάνω μη σιφιλιαστώ. Αυτό που εισέπραξα στην ανάγνωση είναι πως η συγγραφέας έχει ντεμί αφηγηματικές ικανότητες και οκ, δεν το έχουν όλοι. Το Narrative NonFiction είναι ιδιαίτερη κατηγορία - και γι αυτό πήρα το ένα αστέρι που ίσως να ήταν μισό. Το υπόλοιπο λόγω του εκδότη.
Δεν ήθελα να το πω αλλά θα το πω: Το να χάνει ένα βιβλίο εξαιτίας του εκδότη που το εκπροσωπεί σε μια άλλη χώρα - όπου στην τελική ο συγγραφέας και ο εκδότης ΤΟΥ δεν μπορεί να γνωρίζουν πραγματικά το πόσο καλή δουλειά είναι ικανοί να κάνουν αυτοί που το αγοράζουν αφού δε μιλούν και δε διαβάζουν τη γλώσσα, είναι πολύ πολύ σοβαρό.
Αυτό το λέω γενικεύοντας γιατί έχω δει μεταφρασμένα βιβλία να τα πετάς στον τοίχο.
Παρόλα αυτά, είναι ένα βιβλίο που αξίζει να έχει κανείς (και η τιμή του είναι καλή σε σχέση με άλλα Non fiction απλησίαστα που καραδοκώ να τα πετύχω σε προσφορά).
February 22, 2022
Poate fi citită de oricine din afara domeniului. Iar pentru cineva familiarizat cu acele experimente cartea poate reprezenta o poartă către poveștile fascinante din spatele unor date seci cu care, din păcate, ne-am obișnuit în psihologie (care ține foarte tare la statutul de știință).
Scrisă într-o manieră literară și cu adăugiri ficționale pe ici, pe colo (dar care nu denaturează vreun fel rezultatele științifice), fac ca lectura să fie extrem de plăcută, cu sclipiri amuzante, deși uneori subiectele luate în discuție sunt teribile. Slater are un mare punct pentru că (la fel ca în Ochi holbați și păr vâlvoi, experimente din medicină) firea curioasă și cercetătoare o îndeamnă să experimenteze ea însăși ce se poate din clasicele descoperiri - altfel cum să te convingi de adevărul lor, nu?. Numai o mică promisiune din prefață nu și-a respectat-o, anume aceea de a discuta implicațiile contemporane ale acelor descoperiri. În rest, excelent textul pe toate părțile.
Scrisă într-o manieră literară și cu adăugiri ficționale pe ici, pe colo (dar care nu denaturează vreun fel rezultatele științifice), fac ca lectura să fie extrem de plăcută, cu sclipiri amuzante, deși uneori subiectele luate în discuție sunt teribile. Slater are un mare punct pentru că (la fel ca în Ochi holbați și păr vâlvoi, experimente din medicină) firea curioasă și cercetătoare o îndeamnă să experimenteze ea însăși ce se poate din clasicele descoperiri - altfel cum să te convingi de adevărul lor, nu?. Numai o mică promisiune din prefață nu și-a respectat-o, anume aceea de a discuta implicațiile contemporane ale acelor descoperiri. În rest, excelent textul pe toate părțile.
August 28, 2020
The narrative description of Milgram’s experiment comes awfully close to fictionalising the whole thing. I appreciate her desire to make this dry subject more interesting but am not sure to what extend you can take these liberties. Same is the case with the first chapter on Skinner.
Its a well written book and a good insight on the history of some major breakthroughs in the study of human psychology, but her narrative inevitably raises some questions at to the authenticity and veracity of their explanation.
Its a well written book and a good insight on the history of some major breakthroughs in the study of human psychology, but her narrative inevitably raises some questions at to the authenticity and veracity of their explanation.
October 14, 2017
Many years ago, I wanted to be an educational psychologist. For various reasons, I didn't (and I'm now happy that I did what I did and became what I am), but it's experiments like this that drew me to the subject.
This describes great psychological experiments of the 20th century, told in a chatty, narrative style. Lots of fascinating food for thought, but the literary pretensions and irrelevant imaginings are an irritating distraction.
This describes great psychological experiments of the 20th century, told in a chatty, narrative style. Lots of fascinating food for thought, but the literary pretensions and irrelevant imaginings are an irritating distraction.
April 20, 2025
Things I learned from reading this book...
1) We're all classically conditioned in so many ways that we don't and probably never realize.
2) As long as someone is in some sort of uniform, almost anyone will listen to them and obey their instructions, no matter how horrible said person in uniform's instructions are.
3) Pretty much anyone can fake a mental illness and it's up to psychiatrists to call them out on their bs.
4) The bystander effect is real & I truly believe it shows peoples true personality & either they're a good person or not.
5) All religions play a huge role in cognitive dissonance because people will believe nearly anything they want to.
6) All types of love, ESPECIALLY healthy physical love is extremely important to everyone even some animals, because it allows our minds and bodies especially nervous system, to grow and become healthy.
7) Environments play an important role in drug addiction apparently, which honestly makes sense because in cleaner more beautiful places=less likely people with drug addictions, vice versa.
8) Repressed memories from trauma take a lot of work to become unrepressed, and sometimes people can be convinced something that never happened, actually happened.
9) If the hippocampus is removed from the human brain, new memories cannot be made and stored in prefrontal cortex ever.
10) I know for a fact my ancestors would've been a fan on prozac and lexapro because I can't believe they were just raw doggin it out here.
Also about the author, she's definitely a yapper.
1) We're all classically conditioned in so many ways that we don't and probably never realize.
2) As long as someone is in some sort of uniform, almost anyone will listen to them and obey their instructions, no matter how horrible said person in uniform's instructions are.
3) Pretty much anyone can fake a mental illness and it's up to psychiatrists to call them out on their bs.
4) The bystander effect is real & I truly believe it shows peoples true personality & either they're a good person or not.
5) All religions play a huge role in cognitive dissonance because people will believe nearly anything they want to.
6) All types of love, ESPECIALLY healthy physical love is extremely important to everyone even some animals, because it allows our minds and bodies especially nervous system, to grow and become healthy.
7) Environments play an important role in drug addiction apparently, which honestly makes sense because in cleaner more beautiful places=less likely people with drug addictions, vice versa.
8) Repressed memories from trauma take a lot of work to become unrepressed, and sometimes people can be convinced something that never happened, actually happened.
9) If the hippocampus is removed from the human brain, new memories cannot be made and stored in prefrontal cortex ever.
10) I know for a fact my ancestors would've been a fan on prozac and lexapro because I can't believe they were just raw doggin it out here.
Also about the author, she's definitely a yapper.
November 28, 2018
Likes: I took a psychology class in high school and absolutely hated it. The lectures were mostly tedious, and the teacher was arrogant. However, the class did make me curious about psychological experiments. It led me to Leon Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails and all of the follow-up studies that say Festinger’s conclusions are crap. I also read about Stanley Milgram and a few other well-known psychology pioneers. I guess my high school teacher inadvertently caused me to read the book I’m reviewing now. I blame him for everything I’m about to say.
If you don’t have a background in science, psychology experiments can be difficult to understand. I remember doing a lot of Googling while I read When Prophecy Fails and the follow-ups. Opening Skinner’s Box does a brilliant job of making the experiments accessible to non-doctors. The author describes the experiments, interprets the results, and explains why they’re important. The science in these essays is (usually) easy to understand. No Googling is required. I very much appreciated that.
Dislikes: I struggled with the writing style. When the author writes about science, this book is really good. I liked learning about the experiments, the scientists, and how they’re relevant to the modern world. Unfortunately, between the experiments, we’re forced to take turgid, overwritten excursions to the author’s imagination. She tells us how she “imagines” people and places look. She makes (mean) judgments about people’s thoughts and motivations. The flowery writing style was a constant distraction for me. I was cringing at over-the-top metaphors instead of paying attention to the author’s message.
Too much of the book is about the author. She gives her biased opinions on everything. She gets off-topic at times and talks about apple picking with her daughter or whatever. I eventually started skimming the author’s self-centered tangents.
The Bottom Line: The experiments are fascinating, but the purple prose and authorial intrusions distract readers from the science.
Do you like opinions, giveaways, and bookish nonsense? I have a blog for that.
If you don’t have a background in science, psychology experiments can be difficult to understand. I remember doing a lot of Googling while I read When Prophecy Fails and the follow-ups. Opening Skinner’s Box does a brilliant job of making the experiments accessible to non-doctors. The author describes the experiments, interprets the results, and explains why they’re important. The science in these essays is (usually) easy to understand. No Googling is required. I very much appreciated that.
Dislikes: I struggled with the writing style. When the author writes about science, this book is really good. I liked learning about the experiments, the scientists, and how they’re relevant to the modern world. Unfortunately, between the experiments, we’re forced to take turgid, overwritten excursions to the author’s imagination. She tells us how she “imagines” people and places look. She makes (mean) judgments about people’s thoughts and motivations. The flowery writing style was a constant distraction for me. I was cringing at over-the-top metaphors instead of paying attention to the author’s message.
Too much of the book is about the author. She gives her biased opinions on everything. She gets off-topic at times and talks about apple picking with her daughter or whatever. I eventually started skimming the author’s self-centered tangents.
The Bottom Line: The experiments are fascinating, but the purple prose and authorial intrusions distract readers from the science.
Do you like opinions, giveaways, and bookish nonsense? I have a blog for that.
April 25, 2019
I see that the reviews on this book are very mixed, so I will add my own input to help any potential readers.
This book is written in 10 chapters, one per experiment. Slater's writing doesn't follow a single pattern and seems almost whimsical, with most chapters having different formats. This may annoy the structured reader, but to me it just kept things more interesting, as I would have gotten bored otherwise.
As for her prose, it can get a bit cheesy sometimes, as she makes some rather questionable artistic choices, so to speak. But it's not all dubious, you can spot the occasional good metaphor. One element I quite disliked, however, was her conclusions. Mainly the ones to each chapter, sometimes those to individual paragraphs too, they could get downright awful at times. However, since it's only the last sentence(s), it wasn't unbearable.
Slater sometimes diverts from the explanations on the studies to herself, but this was to be expected since the blurb claims to give a personal and social context to these experiments. When executed properly, these contexts were actually welcome, but they did get a little old by the end of the book.
What I think matters most is the choice of experiments and how they are explained. Slater gives information on the societal context of each study, on the researcher(s) responsible for each study, on the execution of the studies themselves, on their effect on the field of psychology, on what the studies entail, and on the opposing views and findings (so we don't only see one side of the coin). This, in my opinion, was all done very well, which explains the three star rating.
Some might find it odd of me to overlook her personal additions as much as I do, but my focus on the scientific content made me value the parts about psychology much more, enough to enjoy this collection despite its weaker points.
However, I do understand why this might bother some, and, consequently, why this book isn't for everyone.
Note: Some people might bring into question Slater's fictionalisation of some of what she reports. This is a valid concern in certain chapters, mostly the third one, where she claims to have attempted to reproduce the results of Rosenhan's experiment, and some details scattered throughout.
However, some might try to bring up the fact that Skinner's daughter Deborah has written a rebuttal of this book in which she criticises Slater for perpetuating the rumours surrounding her relationship with her father. In reality, Slater explicitly states that the stories floating around Deborah Skinner are only rumours and that none of them are true (second pages of the first chapter, page 7 in my edition). She even goes on later in the chapter describing Deborah's actual treatment from her father, which aligns perfectly with Deborah's "rebuttal". Upon some basic research, it seems that The Observer published an article which misquoted Slater, and Deborah took it for fact and wrote her own rebuttal in consequence.
This book is written in 10 chapters, one per experiment. Slater's writing doesn't follow a single pattern and seems almost whimsical, with most chapters having different formats. This may annoy the structured reader, but to me it just kept things more interesting, as I would have gotten bored otherwise.
As for her prose, it can get a bit cheesy sometimes, as she makes some rather questionable artistic choices, so to speak. But it's not all dubious, you can spot the occasional good metaphor. One element I quite disliked, however, was her conclusions. Mainly the ones to each chapter, sometimes those to individual paragraphs too, they could get downright awful at times. However, since it's only the last sentence(s), it wasn't unbearable.
Slater sometimes diverts from the explanations on the studies to herself, but this was to be expected since the blurb claims to give a personal and social context to these experiments. When executed properly, these contexts were actually welcome, but they did get a little old by the end of the book.
What I think matters most is the choice of experiments and how they are explained. Slater gives information on the societal context of each study, on the researcher(s) responsible for each study, on the execution of the studies themselves, on their effect on the field of psychology, on what the studies entail, and on the opposing views and findings (so we don't only see one side of the coin). This, in my opinion, was all done very well, which explains the three star rating.
Some might find it odd of me to overlook her personal additions as much as I do, but my focus on the scientific content made me value the parts about psychology much more, enough to enjoy this collection despite its weaker points.
However, I do understand why this might bother some, and, consequently, why this book isn't for everyone.
Note: Some people might bring into question Slater's fictionalisation of some of what she reports. This is a valid concern in certain chapters, mostly the third one, where she claims to have attempted to reproduce the results of Rosenhan's experiment, and some details scattered throughout.
However, some might try to bring up the fact that Skinner's daughter Deborah has written a rebuttal of this book in which she criticises Slater for perpetuating the rumours surrounding her relationship with her father. In reality, Slater explicitly states that the stories floating around Deborah Skinner are only rumours and that none of them are true (second pages of the first chapter, page 7 in my edition). She even goes on later in the chapter describing Deborah's actual treatment from her father, which aligns perfectly with Deborah's "rebuttal". Upon some basic research, it seems that The Observer published an article which misquoted Slater, and Deborah took it for fact and wrote her own rebuttal in consequence.
June 25, 2015
Opening Skinner’s Box
”The experiments described in this book, and many others, deserve to be not only reported on as research but also celebrated as story, which is what I have here tried to do.” p. 3
I found this to be an interesting read. I had read an essay by Slater in The Best American Essays 2008 and decided I wanted to read more of her writing.
I had a slight infatuation with B. F. Skinner when I was in high school. His novel, Walden Two seemed to hold the answers to many of my questions. In the intervening forty years, I have realized that life is never so easy. Humans are messy creatures that do not fit into neat little boxes.
However, I was glad to meet Skinner again and to make the acquaintance of other psychologists. I now understand more about Harlow’s monkeys, false memories and several other famous experiments. I believe that Slater did what she set out to do – tell fascinating stories about research that has impacted the way we see ourselves.
If you like essays, if you are interesting in scientists as well as their research or you just like learning new things, I recommend this book. Slater combines her life and her own research in ways that make a compelling story.
”The experiments described in this book, and many others, deserve to be not only reported on as research but also celebrated as story, which is what I have here tried to do.” p. 3
I found this to be an interesting read. I had read an essay by Slater in The Best American Essays 2008 and decided I wanted to read more of her writing.
I had a slight infatuation with B. F. Skinner when I was in high school. His novel, Walden Two seemed to hold the answers to many of my questions. In the intervening forty years, I have realized that life is never so easy. Humans are messy creatures that do not fit into neat little boxes.
However, I was glad to meet Skinner again and to make the acquaintance of other psychologists. I now understand more about Harlow’s monkeys, false memories and several other famous experiments. I believe that Slater did what she set out to do – tell fascinating stories about research that has impacted the way we see ourselves.
If you like essays, if you are interesting in scientists as well as their research or you just like learning new things, I recommend this book. Slater combines her life and her own research in ways that make a compelling story.
December 31, 2018
I read this book for one of my Psychology classes. I liked how the situations flow, and I learned a lot. Even though I do still have the questions about a few experiments, I loved how this book turned me on.
December 20, 2024
2.5 Stars, rounded up.
My husband and his coworkers were reading this for a book club, so I was curious and decided to read it, too. The subject matter was really interesting. I had heard of most of these psychological experiments from a high school psychology class, but I didn’t know the full details presented in this book.
The author tried to make the book more readable by incorporating witty dialogue; however, this frequently resulted in irrelevant digressions and awkward remarks. While some of her quips worked, many fell flat. Her attempts at poetic expression often came off as uncomfortable and straight-up weird. The book would have been much better if she had concentrated on detailing the scientific experiments without personal reflections or opinions intruding.
So, I’d give the subject matter four stars and the writing two stars, for an average of three stars.
My husband and his coworkers were reading this for a book club, so I was curious and decided to read it, too. The subject matter was really interesting. I had heard of most of these psychological experiments from a high school psychology class, but I didn’t know the full details presented in this book.
The author tried to make the book more readable by incorporating witty dialogue; however, this frequently resulted in irrelevant digressions and awkward remarks. While some of her quips worked, many fell flat. Her attempts at poetic expression often came off as uncomfortable and straight-up weird. The book would have been much better if she had concentrated on detailing the scientific experiments without personal reflections or opinions intruding.
So, I’d give the subject matter four stars and the writing two stars, for an average of three stars.
January 15, 2024
This is a good "quick" read about some famous psychological experiments. If you are interested in psychology it provides information on some of the famous psychological experiements of the twentieth century. I wish there was more in detail in the explanations about the experiments and less author commentary. Overall a decent read.
March 7, 2021
Plenty of interesting informations in the book, plenty of new stuff I wouldn't have guessed, but I constantly felt the need to take everything with a (huge) pinch of salt... The author's tone felt quite annoying to me and somehow made me not trust the info in the book.
April 21, 2025
Εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρον περιεχόμενο και πολύ καλή έρευνα για τους πρωταγωνιστές, που ομως αδικούνται από φλύαρες και άχαρες προσπάθειες μιας λογοτεχνικής πινελιάς, οι οποίες καθιστούν τελικά το βιβλίο κάπως "δυσκοίλιο".
September 21, 2015
I recently finished a collection of horror stories masquerading as psychology experiments, "Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the 20th Century", by Lauren Slater. Here's what I thought.
First of all, the title is lame. It implies that the book is about Skinner, when in fact only the first chapter is. Each chapter is an essay on a different psychologist, telling us where they came from (literally and figuratively), what their Big Idea/Experiment was, and who was offended by it.
And many of them have plenty to offend. Skinner bragged about keeping his daughter in a box. On closer inspection it turns out to have been more of a grandiose crib, and Skinner comes off as using intentional controversy to try to make himself sound more daring and original than he was.
More interesting, to me, was Milgram. His most famous experiment gave rise to the idea of "six degrees of separation", but his best and most disturbing one found that, if ordered to by a figure of authority, well over half the general population will continue to follow orders (in this case, increasing the voltage applied to another human being well past the marked safety levels), even if it means killing someone (after the experiment was over, they would discover it had been staged, the apparent victim an actor). Remember this, next time you are in a large crowd: most of these people would kill you, if ordered to by the right kind of authority figure, in the right circumstance.
In some cases Slater inserts herself into the narrative. Rosenhan's experiment in the 1970's discovered that pyschiatrists at eight out of eight institutions could not tell that a bogus patient with a single fictitious symptom (saying that they heard a voice saying, "thud"), was sane. They were all checked in, in some cases medicated (they were given previous training on how to palm and discard the pills), and in a few cases had to escape when they could not convince their "doctors" to release them. Slater decided to repeat the experiment, herself, to see if anything had changed. Her discoveries? They treat you nicer than they did in the 70's, and they don't check you in. But they still believed the same story, and all gave her prescription antidepressants and/or antipsychotics. Every hospital dealing in physical illness has to learn how to detect "narc seekers" or "Munchausens" who fake illness. Apparently their mental illness counterparts have not learned to yet.
Nearly every chapter has some disturbing topic: cognitive dissonance (why people can believe more strenuously in ideas, the less evidence there is for them), drug addiction, the history of lobotomies, how to implant a false memory. By the time I had finished the book, I had come to a new hypothesis to explain Rosenhan's (and Slater's) results.
It's not that diagnosing mental illness is impossible. It's that so few people are mentally well, that a minimum standard of rationality would be far too high to set the bar. People remember what they're told to remember by others. They suspend judgment on moral matters if somebody else is there to judge for them. They perceive reality in the way that gives least conflict with their beliefs, rather than altering beliefs to conflict least with reality.
There are some optimistic spots. Alexander found that, while rats restrained in a small, bare cage will self-administer heroin rather than eat, until they starve to death, this is more a reflection of the cage than the drug. Put a thoroughly addicted rat into a large pen, brightly lit, with other rats, fresh cedar chips every day, and small alcoves where pregnant females can bear their young, and you get a different result. Rats prefer water, to heroin. Does this mean addiction is a sign of an impoverished environment rather than the power of addiction? Or just more evidence that rats are different than people, mentally? (or at least, we hope so)
Occasionally Slater's opinions get in the way. In a chapter on Elizabeth Loftus, the only female pyschologist profiled, Slater comes off as a bit catty, perhaps better able to tolerate (or admire) eccentricity in a male researcher than a female. But by and large, she uses her writing talent to turn a potentially dry topic (psychological research) into the sort of short story that leaves a tightness in your chest afterwards, and disturbs your sleep. More thrilling than horror stories, because the dark underbelly of the ("sane", or at least typical) human psyche is all around you. Read it, if you dare.
First of all, the title is lame. It implies that the book is about Skinner, when in fact only the first chapter is. Each chapter is an essay on a different psychologist, telling us where they came from (literally and figuratively), what their Big Idea/Experiment was, and who was offended by it.
And many of them have plenty to offend. Skinner bragged about keeping his daughter in a box. On closer inspection it turns out to have been more of a grandiose crib, and Skinner comes off as using intentional controversy to try to make himself sound more daring and original than he was.
More interesting, to me, was Milgram. His most famous experiment gave rise to the idea of "six degrees of separation", but his best and most disturbing one found that, if ordered to by a figure of authority, well over half the general population will continue to follow orders (in this case, increasing the voltage applied to another human being well past the marked safety levels), even if it means killing someone (after the experiment was over, they would discover it had been staged, the apparent victim an actor). Remember this, next time you are in a large crowd: most of these people would kill you, if ordered to by the right kind of authority figure, in the right circumstance.
In some cases Slater inserts herself into the narrative. Rosenhan's experiment in the 1970's discovered that pyschiatrists at eight out of eight institutions could not tell that a bogus patient with a single fictitious symptom (saying that they heard a voice saying, "thud"), was sane. They were all checked in, in some cases medicated (they were given previous training on how to palm and discard the pills), and in a few cases had to escape when they could not convince their "doctors" to release them. Slater decided to repeat the experiment, herself, to see if anything had changed. Her discoveries? They treat you nicer than they did in the 70's, and they don't check you in. But they still believed the same story, and all gave her prescription antidepressants and/or antipsychotics. Every hospital dealing in physical illness has to learn how to detect "narc seekers" or "Munchausens" who fake illness. Apparently their mental illness counterparts have not learned to yet.
Nearly every chapter has some disturbing topic: cognitive dissonance (why people can believe more strenuously in ideas, the less evidence there is for them), drug addiction, the history of lobotomies, how to implant a false memory. By the time I had finished the book, I had come to a new hypothesis to explain Rosenhan's (and Slater's) results.
It's not that diagnosing mental illness is impossible. It's that so few people are mentally well, that a minimum standard of rationality would be far too high to set the bar. People remember what they're told to remember by others. They suspend judgment on moral matters if somebody else is there to judge for them. They perceive reality in the way that gives least conflict with their beliefs, rather than altering beliefs to conflict least with reality.
There are some optimistic spots. Alexander found that, while rats restrained in a small, bare cage will self-administer heroin rather than eat, until they starve to death, this is more a reflection of the cage than the drug. Put a thoroughly addicted rat into a large pen, brightly lit, with other rats, fresh cedar chips every day, and small alcoves where pregnant females can bear their young, and you get a different result. Rats prefer water, to heroin. Does this mean addiction is a sign of an impoverished environment rather than the power of addiction? Or just more evidence that rats are different than people, mentally? (or at least, we hope so)
Occasionally Slater's opinions get in the way. In a chapter on Elizabeth Loftus, the only female pyschologist profiled, Slater comes off as a bit catty, perhaps better able to tolerate (or admire) eccentricity in a male researcher than a female. But by and large, she uses her writing talent to turn a potentially dry topic (psychological research) into the sort of short story that leaves a tightness in your chest afterwards, and disturbs your sleep. More thrilling than horror stories, because the dark underbelly of the ("sane", or at least typical) human psyche is all around you. Read it, if you dare.
September 23, 2022
A fun read, but very subjectively written. Slater does not shy away from uttering her own opinions on the topics which she covers - maybe leaving the reader partial to her stance. Overall entertaining. Psychology really is a mental field ;P
September 3, 2020
This is an unusual, quite personal, idiosyncratic take on some of the great psychological experiments of the 20th century. Some, such as Milgram's shock experiment and Skinner's conditioning are well known, but there are a number of less famous but no less fascinating inclusions present too.
One interesting element is that the author immerses herself into the story, for example she attempts to get herself admitted to a mental hospital as part of the chapter on Rosenhan's experiment. In places this takes on a bit of an uncomfortable hue, most notably in the chapter on Festinger and cognitive dissonance where the author challenges the dying mother of a disabled child why she hasn't used her supposed saintly powers to heal her.
All in all however, this is a most thought provoking book and one I'd recommend for readers regardless of their familiarity with psychology.
One interesting element is that the author immerses herself into the story, for example she attempts to get herself admitted to a mental hospital as part of the chapter on Rosenhan's experiment. In places this takes on a bit of an uncomfortable hue, most notably in the chapter on Festinger and cognitive dissonance where the author challenges the dying mother of a disabled child why she hasn't used her supposed saintly powers to heal her.
All in all however, this is a most thought provoking book and one I'd recommend for readers regardless of their familiarity with psychology.
June 5, 2017
I can understand why this book gets such mixed reviews. I need to say I got hooked on it from the first page. This is how popularization of science should look like. I, for example, would not want to know all the details of the experiments, because most of them are quite disturbing. But I appreciated the insight into the experimenters' background and the historical context. I consider Slater a great storyteller and combined with facts, this book gave me some crazy dreams!
And it provided plenty of references to authors and resource material, which I want to look at later.
And it provided plenty of references to authors and resource material, which I want to look at later.
Read
October 16, 2019tänker säga att den är färdigläst för a) är klar med kursen den användes i och b) kommer aldrig läsa de få återstående kapitlena jag inte hann läsa innan mina kursare redovisade dem :-) by no means en dålig bok, fascinerande och intressant, men har bara inte lust att läsa kapitel jag redan har koll på u get me? lägger inte heller till den i min 2019 read list pga tycker inte den räknas, mest för att jag liksom. inte läste klart den haha
February 9, 2022
"Our lives, after all, are not data points and means and modes; they are stories- absorbed, reconfigured and rewritten."
This took ages to read but once I got into a chapter, I almost always finished it in one sitting.
Some of the detail was impressive and the lengths at which the author went to prove her points were admirable.
Overall I loved this book and its ability to show the complexity of psychology as both a science and a philosophy.
April 16, 2021
3,5*
Velmi zajímavá a důkladná práce – kromě popisu samotných experimentů i popis kontextu, rozhovory s účastníky nebo blízkými, snaha o jejich replikaci, zahrnutí názorových odpůrců. Určitě jednoznačně doporučuji všem zájemcům o psychologii. Mohla by být jen o trošičku čtivější a autorka o trošku méně sebejistá.
Velmi zajímavá a důkladná práce – kromě popisu samotných experimentů i popis kontextu, rozhovory s účastníky nebo blízkými, snaha o jejich replikaci, zahrnutí názorových odpůrců. Určitě jednoznačně doporučuji všem zájemcům o psychologii. Mohla by být jen o trošičku čtivější a autorka o trošku méně sebejistá.
September 16, 2017
This book was actually a lot better than I expected it to be! The experiments in here were fascinating, and I learned a lot. I read this book for my AP Psychology class, and I think it gave me a great introduction to the subject of psychology. I definitely wouldn't recommend this book as a fun, casual read, but it it is a great read for anyone interested in learning about why we do what we do :)
April 21, 2020
You have to be interested enough in psychology to stay engaged, but not so interested that you expect too much. I enjoyed a lot of this. No regrets - except maybe wishing that it had been a (free) library book.
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