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Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
A 1999 National Magazine Award nominee, Lauren Slater has a masters degree in psychology from Harvard University and a doctorate from Boston University. Her work was chosen for the Best American Essays/Most Notable Essays volumes of 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999. Her previous book, Lying, was chosen by Entertainment Weekly as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2000. Slater lives with her family in Massachusetts.
In Opening Skinner's Box , psychiatrist and writer Lauren Slater sets out to investigate the twentieth century through a series of fascinating, witty and sometimes shocking accounts of its key psychological experiments. Beginning with the behaviourist B. F. Skinner, she describes his work with animals in the 1930s, in which he demonstrated the power of rewards and reinforcements to shape behaviour, and probes the truth behind the legend of the child raised in a box. From deep empathy with participants in Stanley Milgram's controversial 1950s experiment designed to explain obedience to authority to a post-Holocaust world, she moves to David Rosenhan's disturbing 1970s experiment that questioned the validity of psychiatric diagnosis itself. With her we observe cognitive dissonance among cult members whose apocalypse fails to arrive, and see the groundwork being laid for a pill that promises to rescue the failing memory. Previously buried in academic journals and textbooks, these often daring experiments concerned with free will, authoritarianism, violence, conformity, and morality are now seen now seen in their full context and told as stories, rich in plot, wit and character.
I've been riveted by her witty explorations of everything from lying to Prozac. -- David Sedaris - Entertainment Weekly Worth reading for the provocative questions it asks and for the way it lingers over the fragile, human side of psychology. -- Joy Press - Village Voice Astonishing stories full of quirky personalities, told with wit and warmth. -- Kirkus Reviews Slater creates for the reader a sense of intimacy with scientists and their subjects. -- Erik Strand - Psychology Today It is precisely [Slater's] intimate confessional approach that is able to reveal the poetry latent in the sterile laboratory...A powerful and even inspiring meditation on the strengths and weaknesses hidden in our nature.
