Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century

Rating:
Summary: A thoughtful and reliable account
Review: As a graduate student I have studied Lauren Slater's work in depth, and I am saddened to see, in the one star reviews below, the smear campaign that is clearly going on. Let me make a few points:
1. Opening Skinner's Box is a beautiful rendering of some great experiments. It has caused quite a controversy in psychological circles because it unmasks the discipline of psychology in some uncomfortable but highly insightful ways.
2.The information contained within the book is accurate. I find it interesting that the one star reviewers hysterically quip about massive errors, yet fail to point any out. That's because there are no substantial errors in the text.
3. This book preserves the great experiments and finally makes them available to a lay audience.
4. Anyone who has read Slater's prior book, a memoir called Lying, and comes away thinking the book is about literal lying, is an idiot.

Rating:
Summary: But is it True?
Review: Slater is a very talented writer, and she has produced a book that purports to allow non-technical readers in on the most important psychological experiments of the modern era. She has chosen well, and the experiments described are indeed very important ones. Unfortuately the book is filled with errors, distortions, misinterpretations and, probably plain lies. Slater is a self-confessed liar, who has written a memoir about her own pathological lying. Apparently she cannot stop.

Rating:
Summary: Thank God I didn't spend money on this.
Review: I don't know enough about the subject to make any kind of criticism based on the facts presented, and I don't think I could even if I did, because the writing in this book is so awful I couldn't read enough of it to find out much about her ideas. The prose is like something out some earnest and terrible romantic novel. I'm writing this review mainly because I was thinking of buying this book, but decided to vet it first by checking it out of the library, best money I ever saved; and I just felt I should let others know that it's a good idea to preview this before purchasing, and the other glowing reviews listed here are very misleading.

Rating:
Summary: Not to be confused with "Lying" or "Spasm" or whatever
Review: Lauren Slater writes so well that she makes people upset. She is willing to take expansive, maybe foolish risks with her prose and she pays for such risks with the occasional bad review (sometimes the reviews glow). Based on my read of the book, her endnotes, a reasonable degree of trust in her publisher, and my own check of literature related to the subjects she describes, as far as I can discern this is a truthful book; a tricky, truthful book. Slater is able to communicate paradox, well, not actually paradox, but the space between the truths of human life. The space between the truth is where redemptive psychology thrives (does Prozac change you or make you your real self?). Yes, she imaginatively fills in the gaps of a person's life but when she does she clearly signals that this is her right brain writing. Literarily, I see a similarity between her form here and Peter Kramer's form in "Should You Leave?" True, her book and his are very different. Yet, both use words to point to the unreachable beyond science without disrespecting reality. This book is, itself, a great psychologoical experiment.

Rating:
Summary: irresistable
Review: This book covers some of the great psychological experiments of this century. We learn about Harry Harlow's sadistic work with monkeys, David Rosenhan's grand hoax in mental hospitals, Alexander's addicted rats, Leon Festinger's cognitive dissonance, to name a few. Each experiment is told in the form of a story, so it's a great read while being informative at the same time. The scientists come to life, as does their work. By the time you have reached the end of the book you know a lot not only about psychology, but about some of the great themes of the 20th century. This book is compulsively readable; I finished it in two rapt sittings.

Rating:
Summary: I have two Ph.D's
Review: One in clinical psychology, one in sociology, so I'm fully qualified to say that "Opening Skinner's Box" is a sublime book. It brings the lay reader into the world of the experiments and the experimenters in a way no dessicated academic article could ever do. The information the book presents is right on; the lyrical writing transforms cold fact into powerful and provocative stories. This book should be read by every college psych. student in the country, as one of the reviewers on the book jacket has already said. I certainly plan to use this book in the courses I teach; I also plan on giving it as gifts to friends and family alike.

Rating:
Summary: best psychology book out there
Review: OPENING SKINNERS BOX provides a fascinating journey through 20th century psychology while also illuminating the conflicts and achievements particular to that century. From Eric Kandel's work on memory to Milgram's infamous shock machine, this book tells the tale of each experiment in gripping narrative form. As a psychologist myself I can speak to the accuracy of the text. If I have one complaint it's that Slater has left out of her book several novel experiments. Still, read this book if you want to learn about the core issues in the history of psychology, or just read it for the pleasure of its extraordinary stories.

Rating:
Summary: An unusually good book
Review: I have read "Opening Skinner's Box", and it is an outstanding book. The experiments within are fascinating, and the accounts provided by Slater are insightful and provocative. In those chapters where my studies happen to have lent me a fair degree of familiarity with the primary research, I can say without qualification that Slater's accounts are precise, dependable, and illustrative of unusually thorough scholarship. The aspect of this book that makes it so obviously different from standard textbook presentations is that the scientists who have generated these 'great experiments' are presented as human beings, with all the strengths and the weaknesses attendant to that species. By examining the intensely personal side of scientific exploration, while rigorously treating a set of experiments well chosen to expose what it means to be a person, this book achieves a depth of investigation that is enlightening and profoundly satisfying.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating stuff. Extremely well-written.
Review: This is one of those great non-fiction books that is as hard to put down as any thriller. I was familiar with many of the psychology experiments that Slater covers in the book, but she helped me think about the experiments and what they say about humanity in new and different ways. At first, I was a little taken aback at the way she injected herself into the narrative, but ultimately, I think it was a very effective device to further bring home the fact that these experiments and how we respond to them say so much about the human condition. This book should be an enjoyable and fascinating read for anyone with even the slightest interest in psychology. And for those who really know psychology there's all sorts of interesting details and interpretations that go far beyond what you ever learned in college. Great stuff!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointed and revolted
Review: I loved the subject of this book but, for the first time ever, found myself personally disliking an author. When she said she took a bite of Skinner's chocolate, I was incredulous at her disrespect. She kept inserting herself in non-scientific and unnecessary ways. I find it surprising that in the course of reading about Skinner's box I not only found out that the author is married, but that her husband was concerned about the military buildup in Iraq and the loss of civil liberties a mere week after 9-11. And of course full disclosure required her to reveal she is "an ex-mental patient" and some details about why. In addition to the why-are-you-telling-me-this reaction it caused in me, it also proved that one of the personal "experiments" she conducted was fatally flawed from the get go. Is she famous and I should care about the details of her famous life? Is science so boring that it needs imaginary details about what the sky might have looked like to the people volunteering for one of these experiments? I was so terribly disappointed by the book and so awed by the magnitude of the author's sense of self-importance.