Rating: 
Summary: an excellent companion to course work in psychology
Review: As a professor of psychology (both grad and undergrad) I have long sought out texts that reflect and expand upon the major trends in psychological literature. OSB does this beautifully. It manages to tell the tale of experimental psychology in a way that's accurate and compelling. I just wish Lauren Slater would next write an actual textbook; what a blessing that would be.
Rating:
Summary: A personal touch regarding the soft underbelly of science
Review: Lauren Slater manages to describe what she terms "the greatest psychological experiments of the twentieth century" with a lot of humor, wackiness, and insight into the personalities of the researchers. If you're expecting detailed impartial reviews, stick to psych journals. If, on the other hand, you want to take a roller-coaster adventure and learn something about the nature of psychological experimentation buy this book.One of the mantras one finds in psychology is that researchers who challenge long-accepted notions-mainstream work-with creative work are often shot down in flames, even though their work might be accepted as insightful, or even brilliant. Another common perception about such researchers is that they are eccentric, weird, driven, or harsh taskmasters/mistresses. Slater separates the myths from the realities as she describes Elizabeth Loftus' Lost in the Mall experiment-which has to do with false memories-a woman totally driven by the appalling false accusations of sons, daughters, and unreliable witnesses to crime, to B.F. Skinner, who turns out to be a very compassionate parent, not the monster man usually depicted. Dr. Slater also turns out to be quite a risk taker herself, repeating Rosahan's false patient psychiatric symptoms experiment, just to see if anything has changed since the 1970s, and indulging in potential drug addiction while testing Alexander's theories predicated on social environments. (Slater's description of Alexander's Rat Park is delightful; I wonder how much her husband contributes to the author's equivalent.) One major criticism of all these experiments is that it's hard to generalize the results, and make predictions. True. Yet one can't help but feel from Slater's interviews with subjects and experimenters and their families that this kind of work does deserve an important place in not only the psychologist's repertoire, but with all of us. And Slater does that admirably, in my opinion, by focusing on the personal side.
Rating: 
Summary: Readable and Interesting
Review: As a person with an advanced degree in psychology, I expected this to be more technical and difficult to read - especially since my degree was in the 70's. The book is actually written in a very narrative style, and I finished it in two evenings. Held me from the first pace to the last - which is my "book requirement"
I had forgotten many of these experiments and was very interesting to review them and their impact on society as well as the background of the experimenters - which are primarily behavorists. Some of the more recent and obscure were also of great interest. I hold little regard for the field of psychology as a science, despite my degree. I realized that is largely because of the era of my degree and that I was in my 20s and pretty unworldly at the time. Kinsey is not one of my favorites, so I was happy he was not included. Most of the research is focused on reactions and learning techniques. I have now given the book to my husband to read - a man who is delightfully not in touch with his feminity! - and he was very very interested. I could have enjoyed it just as well without so much of the author's personal life injected, but she is a product of the "science" of psychology, so from my perspective it worked well to see how someone who might actually take this stuff seriously is drawm - through their own neurosis - to the study of psychology. But it's her study of the experiments AND the experimenters that is the great twist here - and the essential element that makes this a must-read.
Rating:
Summary: A colorful look at what makes us human
Review: In these ten New Yorker-style essays, psychologist Slater revisits some of the milestone psychological experiments of the twentieth century. Her choices, as she says in her introduction, "raise the boldest questions in some of the boldest ways. Who are we? What makes us human? Are we truly the authors of our own lives? What does it mean to be moral? What does it mean to be free?" She also looks for the man (and one woman) behind the work; their intentions, aspirations, quirks.
In each essay, Slater explains the experiment and its results, and then branches out, interviewing detractors, sympathizers and, sometimes, subjects. There's a lot of passionate, or at least, vehement argument. She talks to family members and colleagues and weighs her own thinking in the balance. Occasionally there is a touch of gonzo journalism, as when Slater attempts to test experiments by getting herself committed, or addicting herself to drugs.
Most of these are familiar stories - Skinner's boxes, Milgram's lethal shocks, monkeys with wire mothers, planting "repressed" memories, the popular lobotomy - but Slater explodes a few myths along the way.
B.F. Skinner, now often derided as an autocratic automaton who reduced the whole of human existence to behavioral reactions, did not confine his daughter, Deborah, to a box and drive her to suicide. The "box" was an environmentally benevolent playpen designed to turn her into a "confident swashbuckler," and Deborah is alive and well. But not willing to be interviewed. Slater does, however, visit the second daughter who is passionately devoted to her father's memory and describes a warm and loving man. Slater muses on the disparity between myth and man, and how personality and cultural bias contribute, backing personal reflections (and a small experiment on her own baby) with interviews with behaviorists and their opposition.
The 1961 Milgram experiments, in which 65 percent of normal, ordinary people from various walks of life were induced to deliver lethal electric shocks to poor spellers, are the most chilling. Slater, who is quite certain she would have complied, explores the aftermath, not just the furor (Milgram lost his tenure at Yale) and the follow-up personality tests (inconclusive), but the consequences for the subjects. She interviews two: one defiant, one compliant. It's the complier who is the most interesting. He's grateful to Milgram. The experiments changed his life. "I felt my own moral weakness and I was appalled, so I went to the ethical gym, if you see what I mean." Letters from other subjects echoed this epiphany. One said the experiment caused him to become a conscientious objector.
Another experiment in 1964, inspired by the Kitty Genovese case, in which a young woman was murdered over the course of half an hour while numerous witnesses did nothing, measured group responsibility with similarly disturbing results, especially, thinks Slater, as relates to terrorism. But then she dug up a heartening follow-up study which showed that people educated in the pitfalls of group-think were able to overcome it and were twice as likely to lend a helping hand or report a crime.
In 1972 David Rosenham called up some friends and asked them to fake their way into a mental hospital. He thought psychiatrists probably didn't have the skills to match their power and he was right. He had his friends say they heard a voice saying "thud." They were to fake no other symptoms and were to revert to total normality once admitted. All were admitted. Once on the ward, only the other mental patients detected their sanity. Slater decided to repeat the experiment. And once again it was successful though with a different wrinkle. Admission is not so easy to come by these days, so instead she was prescribed antidepressants and antipsychotics.
All of the experiments she discusses still engender a lot of controversy, but none comes close to the vitriol directed at Elizabeth Loftus who disputes the validity of "repressed memory" and has shown that false memories can easily be implanted. Loftus herself comes across as a bit strange, but no stranger than any of the others really. The difference is Slater spends a lot of time up close and personal with Loftus.
Slater's writing is lively, humorous and colorful and she is uninhibited about involving herself and her family in the narrative. These are all experiments, as she points out, that examine free will, conformity, perception and ethics - philosophy as much as psychology. Yet psychology is moving more towards concrete biological explanations through chemicals and surgery. It's a book that raises thorny issues, examines the people behind the science and stirs the reader to reflection.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating book highlights some of psychology's finest
Review: Lauren Slater has done an excellent job of selecting some of psychology's most incredible experiments and making them eminently readable for those from all walks of life. I'm a psychologist, and all of the most famous cases which first got me interested in the subject are included here, from Milgram's controversial studies of obedience to the horrific case of Kitty Genovese to remarkable theory of cognitive dissonance. These names and terms might be unfamiliar to you, but if you have an interest in the way the human mind works, you are likely to find this book as fascinating as I did.
A psychologist herself, Slater has a casual, irreverent style, and she has no fear about casting aspirations on some of the field's most revered members, such as B.F. Skinner. Using colloquial and accessible language, she provides clear, concise overviews of each experiment, emphasizing only the most relevant and engaging facts. She then infuses an even more informal voice into the narratives by doing extensive interviews with individuals who had a personal relationship with each scientist, including family members, former students, and fellow researchers. Finally, Slater inserts herself directly into her work by taking steps to replicate some of the experiments.
An intriguing, compelling work which allows you to draw your own conclusions; highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Journey Into the Human Mind
Review: I think many of the negative reviews here reflect the inherent tensions in the "science" of psychology. There are those who wish to emphasize the mind as purely matter, an intricate neurochemical network (reflected in this book by Kandel's work on the minds of sea slugs). Slater is not in this camp-- she invests psychology with a more emotional and human perspective, which of course veers closer to literature and the humanities. As Slater notes, this inherent tension in psychology has existed since Freud.
That said, the book is a fascinating recounting of the most revolutionary psychological experiments in the past century. I took few psychology classes in college, but the only things I took away were the "rats on cocaine" experiments, endlessly pushing a lever to trigger "fixes" while they starved to death. As a layman reader, this book truly fleshed out my understanding of the dramatic experiments of the past, and also brought me up to speed on some of the present controversies in the field.
While Skinner's behaviorist studies and Milgram's obedience experiment have been around for a long time, many people (like my wife) refuse to accept their disturbing central findings. The experiments show that the psychological is always political/philosophical, and reflect the tension between free will v. social construction. Slater doesn't try to artifically structure the history of psychology for consistency, but actively courts these tensions.
For example, Slater covers recent studies that are extremely controversial. The "Rat Park" experiment challenges the "rats on cocaine" experiments and the inevitability of physical addiction-- this can't help but be controversial, as it challenges the central tenets of many recovery programs. Loftus' experiments also challenge the notion of adulthood recovery of repressed childhood memories, which I'm sure would infuriate most survivors of abuse.
Slater is passionate in courting these controversies and pushing buttons, but this all helps to create a living, breathing history of psychology and its players. The controversies are still there, even for the older "classic" experiments of Milgram et al., and I personally would rather have these controversies explored than ignored or supressed. (For those of a more scientist (reductionist?) bent, I would recommend "The Blank Slate" by Pinker.)
Rating:
Summary: an excellent companion to course work in psychology
Review: This is a remarkable book not only for its content, but for the way it is written. What Lauren Slater does extremely well is (1) provide a context for the experiments and personalize them; (2) insinuate herself into the narrative in meaningful ways; and (3) write the kind of prose that is vivid and psychologically engaging. She has the gift of the novelist, and she is not satisfied with the conventional surface of things. But there is an edge to Slater's prose. She dwells on the horrific: the lobotomies, the monkeys being abused for the experimenter's purposes, the living rats with their brains exposed... She does/doesn't believe that the means of animal experimentation justifies the ends of neurological knowledge. This dialectic that she holds in her mind, now favoring the value of experimental psychology, now questioning it, may leave the reader dissatisfied and confused. Where DOES Lauren Slater stand? She says she stands "with this book" for which there is no conclusion, even though she writes a concluding chapter with that title. So it is not so strange that among these "great psychological experiments" she finds nothing like solid ground. Instead she waffles between experimenter and experiment, between one interpretation and another. And while she addresses the experiments themselves and the controversies they raised, more significantly she addresses the experimenters themselves, challenges them with sharp and sometimes impertinent questions; and when the experimenters are not available, she finds relatives or friends and fires loaded questions at them. Slater wants to find the truth, if possible, and to be fair; but often what she finds is that she doesn't know what the truth is, and that life is oh, so complex. This is refreshing and of course disconcerting. She began with an attitude of deep distrust, for example, toward B. F. Skinner, the man who had put his daughter in a box, the man who apparently cared more for experiment and establishing behaviorism than he did for human beings, a man whose conclusions could pave the way to a new and more horrible fascist state. But Slater plunges in and finds that his daughters loved him and that the one who supposedly committed suicide is alive and well. Slater even realizes, after being confronted by Julia Skinner Vargas, one of the daughters she interviewed by telephone, that she, Slater, hadn't read Skinner's magnum opus, Beyond Freedom and Dignity--had instead, like most of us, myself included, known it only by reputation, bad reputation. So Slater reads the book and when she is through she compares Skinner to a "green" Al Gore and speculates that "maybe" Skinner "was the first feminist psychologist." Quite a turnaround. But this is characteristic of Slater's approach. Become engaged. Keep an open and flexible mind. Dare to believe what others are afraid to believe. Turn on a dime. And this is right for this book since many of the experimenters did exactly that: they sought to show where the conventional wisdom was wrong; and they sought to turn psychology on its head. The first piece I read (opening the book at random) was "On Being Sane in Insane Places." This is about how in the early 1970s, Stanford psychologist David Rosenhan and eight collaborators showed up at nine different mental hospital around the country and told the shrinks they were hearing voices. The voices said one word: "Thud." They were committed even though otherwise they acted normally. Their stay was from fifty-two to seven days each. This experiment created a sensation and a scandal in the psychiatric community and caused a complete overall in the DSM II (we have DSM IV today). The diagnostic language was rewritten so that the definitions became measurable, and the volume grew by two hundred pages. Slater decided to replicate the experiment. She went to mental hospitals and said she heard a voice that said, "Thud." What she got were prescriptions for antipsychotics and antidepressants. There are ten chapters and a conclusion. "Obscura," the second chapter deals with Stanley Milgram's infamous electric shock experiment which showed that ordinary people would, guided by the authority of the experimenter, administer what they thought were possibly lethal shocks to fellow human beings. Another chapter looks at Leon Festinger's experiment with infiltrating a doom's day cult and seeing what happens when doom does not arrive at the appointed hour. What happens is "cognitive dissonance"--which I would call "elaborate rationalization." Still another chapter is devoted to the famous "Lost in the Mall" repressed memory experiment by Elizabeth Loftus which demonstrated how subject to suggestion are our memories. Loftus who, along with Katherine Ketcham, wrote The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse (1994), showed how a false memory of being lost in the mall as child could be suggested to people and how they would not only come to believe it, but would confabulate all sorts of "remembered" detail around an event that never happened. This is a book that may make some practicing psychologists uneasy. (And they may write nasty reviews.) Certainly Slater does not play to their feelings. Quite the opposite. Toward the end she asks: "At what point does experimental psychology and clinical psychology meet? Apparently at no point. I interviewed twelve licensed practicing psychologists...and none of them even knew most of these experiments, never mind used them in their work." (p. 253) And Slater is not enchanted with the new psychopharmacology. She argues that Prozac, Zoloft, and other psychoactive drugs may have long term effects worse than lobotomies. In fact the point of Chapter 10: "Chipped" is to tell the story of a man who benefitted from a cingulotomy (the modern, streamlined lobotomy) after electroshock therapy and after "more than twenty-three...psychiatric medications" had failed him. The walnuts pictured on the cover come from this statement about the brain on page 249: "there is still something holy about that three-pound wrinkled walnut with a sheen."
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review:
In the first chapter of the book Slater recounts her visit with one of B.F. Skinner's daughters, Julie. It turns out Skinner's study - where he keeled over into a coma before dying more than a decade earlier - has been ghoulishly preserved intact by his family down to the now stale piece of chocolate he was eating at the time. When left alone briefly in this hallowed sanctuary what does Slater do? She picks up the chocolate and takes a bite! This could be a metaphor for the irreverent manner in which Slater proceeds to violate the sanctity and decorum of modern psychology with her ensuing discussion of psychological experimentation in the 20th century. Jumping through topics such as the heinous liberties taken by experimenters, repressed memories, drug addiction, and lobotomies Slater morphs fluidly between reporter, guinea pig and devils' advocate to show us that as much as we want to be able to explain our psychological processes in neat, categorical terms; right vs. wrong, black or white - the study of our gray matter is alas, just that - gray, and the field of Psychology is not as much of a "science" as the stuffy academics would have us believe. And as if her commentary itself might not ruffle enough feathers in academia, she deep-sixes the clinical and objective writing style one might consider appropriate for such a topic, and instead brings the subject matter to life with a humorous and whimsical style - mixing factual reporting with cultural commentary and personal musings about why we humans behave the way we do. Overall, an entertaining, well-written and thought provoking look at experimental psychology in the last century. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Occasionally interesting, but mostly annoying, even cruel.
Review: This type of book needed to be done, but this foray into the "real" people and ideas behind the most influential psychological experiments is entirely disappointing. I am a professor who teaches psychology and hoped to gain insight for my classes. Instead, I found a disturbing account by a author who couldn't get past her own self-absorption. It may have been entertaining to read a subjective account of an author's experiences with these famed individuals, if Slater's own troubled personality hadn't been so evident.
Anyone going through a psychology program has been taught about the history of psychology, which includes an evaluation of different approches, such as behaviorism, and also includes the ethical issues of earlier experiments like Milgram's. We also know that prominent psychologists are very "human" and often very flawed individuals. However, Slater's portrayals of the people she interviewed for this book are unsympathetic to the point of being cruel. For example, Skinner's aging and mourning daughter is "a little too passionate about dear old dad."
The use of an electric defibrilator to attempt to revive Stanley Milgram during a heart attack was compared to his "shock" experiments, while his body is described as "flailing like a fish's."
Harry Harlow's wife died of breast cancer, and is described as "turning a saffron yellow, her mouth pulled back in a masked grimace, her teeth peculiarly sharp looking, monkey teeth, mad." This was evidently, to bring in a "monkey" image to his wife's illness and premature death.
Sometimes, Slater is merely annoying, as when she says she "hoped" that Harry Harlow held his wife's hand in the doctor's office, or says she "imagines" that Rosenhan was "smug" while trying to get himself committed to a mental hospital.
Other times she's just weird, as when she confesses to taking a bite of a 10 year-old piece of chocolate, left half-eaten by Skinner.
There are a few interesting pieces, such as when Slater attempts to replicate Rosenhan's study. She went to mental health centers/hospitals saying she heard "thud." She was treated well, diagnosed as mildly psychotic or depressed, and given a prescription. That would seem to be a good description of current practice and is an interesting update on Rosenhan's work.
She also found some individuals who participated in the Milgram studies, and describes the trauma some continue to experience.
But, getting this interesting material means reading through an annoying and personalized writing style. Slater is at least as flawed and unpleasant as the "big" names (and their families and colleagues) she delights in skewering.
Rating:
Summary: Revealing Look at Psychology
Review: Lauren Slater is one of the best writers on psychology in America today. This is fitting as Slater herself has experienced her share of psychological trauma. Her latest book, Opening Skinner's Box, is an investigation into 10 of the most infamous psychological experiments in American history. Slater is an excellent popularizer of information generated by academic research. Slater is also judgmental of psychologists who mess things up such as Elizabeth Loftus of the widely discredited False Memory Syndrome. This book is an honest and revealing look at the world of psychology as it really is.
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