Chapter Summary Of Opening Skinner's Box

Opening Skinner's box by Lauren Slater as a psychologist herself covers 10 great psychological experiences of the twentieth century to bring them to life by understanding how they were thought up, how they were received by other psychologists and what effects they had on the participants.

For more then a century, psychologists have desperately sought to have their disciplines accepted. Psychology requires some degree of trickery in the experimental set-up. But how much insight do we then gain into how people will behave outside the laboratory? And if the experimental method we wish to use is sufficiently destructive to prevent us using it on humans, what do we learn from studying on animals? A description of psychology experiments has drawn many criticisms. These and other details where looked at in chapter 1, where Slater goes back in time and looks at B.F. Skinner famous experiment called "the rat race". Skinner performed an experiment on rats using food levers and other instruments to condition and shape their behavior, to see if we organisms are easily programmed to obedience or we are all at our free will. Skinner believed through his experiments that we would obey the rules like computers.

Slater came across as an eccentric person who had a great courage and passion for psychology to try and solve the most controversial
Darley and Latan's experiments were inspired by the gruesome murder and rape of Kitty Genovese, a crime that took place over a 35-minute period in the predawn hours of March 13, 1964, in a working-class section of Queens, New York. Thirty-eight people witnessed the murder and rape, and nobody called the police for help while it was occurring. Thirty-eight people, why were they all so