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

In each chapter, Slater dispels long-held beliefs—a kind of mythology— that skew the way we interpret psychological experiments. Opening Skinner’s Box is partly a response to the premise that, in American culture, science is held in the highest esteem. We treat our scientists and scientific studies as hugely important. As such, our scientists take on a kind of mythology that disguises the “true legacy” of their work: “Myths. Legends. Stories. Tall tales. What is Skinner’s true legacy?” (8). In Chapter 3, Slater writes: “We once believed in psychiatry as a form of deities; those were the golden days, the 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s, when psychoanalysis came to dominate the discipline with answers for pretty much everything” (76). In Chapter 10, Slater questions the mythology around the lobotomy: “Why, then, have we persisted in narrating lobotomy as purely evil?” (235). This motif supports the theme of Slater setting aside traditional science, and instead exploring the philosophical questions of psychology. 

In each chapter, Slater profiles a detractor or naysayer to the experiment in question. For example, in Chapter 2, Slater interviews Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, a former professor at Harvard University who is “[o]ne of the most vocal Milgram detractors” (54).