Opening Skinner's Box

This book detailed ten of the more famous psychological experiments conducted in the 1900s. Each chapter is devoted to one such experiment, and each one had a profound effect on future research and our lives today (even if we don't realize it). The opening chapter is about B.F. Skinner and his mouse boxes, wherein he used positive reinforcement to train mice to push levers (that's Skinner in the first picture). The author, Lauren Slater, did her best to get background information on each of the experimenters, sometimes going after family members and old research partners. It is this extra information that makes the book so enjoyable. I actually think that Slater is a bit crazy, but her personal insight brings character and feeling to what I would normally view as dispassionate scientific research. In some cases, such as with Bruce Alexander's Rat Park, Slater even attempted to carry out her own related research. In this case, she did a bunch of drugs to try and get herself addicted... which didn't work out for her (luckily).

Lauren Slater doing something with her hands on stage

The one thing that I found strange about this book was the fact that each chapter moves through a cyclical loop of introspection and explanation. She starts with musings and opinions, moves to facts, and then returns to musings. It's almost as if Slater trails off with her own thoughts about the experiments and forgets that she is relating them to the reader. Each of the ten experiments even related to CHI in some way! It's important to consider the psychological effects of computing instead of just the technical ones.

Anyway, it's a great book! It reads like a fictional story instead of a look at experiments.