Opening Skinner's Box

Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century

By: Lauren Slater

Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin

Beginning with B. F. Skinner and the legend of a child raised in a box, Lauren Slater takes us from a deep empathy with Stanley Milgram's obedience subjects to a funny and disturbing re-creation of an experiment questioning the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. Previously described only in academic journals and textbooks, these often daring experiments have never before been narrated as stories, chock-full of plot, wit, personality, and theme.

©2004 Lauren Slater (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

"As much urgent reassessment as historical re-creation...one of the most informative and readable recent books on psychology." ( Publishers Weekly)

Overall Very Good

A little too narrative for my taste. I think the author's expositing about her experience interviewing people and her personal feelings on the subject matter cast a lot of subjective fog over the information she's giving us. For instance, I am not personally very interested in Skinner's view of humanity or his perceived morality by the public. in some cases, knowing more about an experimentor's thiught process and goals can gove more insight into their research but a lot of it seemed superfluous l, especially the details of seemingly every participants childhood and medical history. I can see what the author was going for and I respect her attempts at transparency. It feels like an admittance that there is no way to write this kind of book objectively, so she lays her subjectivity bare for the maximum understanding. That is probably a good way to write this information for a general audience. Ultimately though, I like my psych books dry and informational, like a text book, so it's not for me. Elsewise the content of the book is fatastic and very interesting and has inspired me to try and understand "classic" research of any kind with more detail and scrutiny. Hearing about them in school with a teacher telling you why they were important is far different than actually examining the work and considering its implications.

Great alternative viewpoints & talking points !

From an AP Psych teacher, this very well supplements my curriculum and provides amazing talking points and topics for debate. As you'd expect, it's an honest, raw, but densely written account of some of our most famous psychological experiments. Highly recommend!

Fantastic Lesson in Psychology!

I loved listening to this audiobook! You could hear the author’s passion for psychology throughout the pages. She kept the reader engaged the whole time. I picked this novel as a summer reading for my AP Psych class based on many recommendations and I’m so happy I did. I have recommended to so many since listening and now reading independently. It’s a wonderful experience!

Informative but dragging

I had to read this book for a psychology class so I came at it with an attitude for abosorbing information about these people and facts. but what I really got was a lot of over dramatiscism and personal accounts, which is is fine if you're reading this book for fun and you just want to know more about the beginnings of psychology but the piece is very biased and personal so its not a good idea to use it as a reference or anything scholarly related-needless to say I got a perfect on my test about this book so I guess you can see that its easy to comprehend.
On top of all of that, the book kinda dragged in some places, and I think this comes from how unnecessarily dramatic slater tries to make it.

Other than that, 4 stars for a casual reading about psychology, but I will probably never read/listen to this book again unless I was paid a good amount of money. cheers.

Great book, robotic reader

This is a great book for anyone who is interested in psychology, however I found the reader difficult to listen to because of her robotic tendencies. Bearable, especially because I was able to get through more of the book listening to it while driving/doing things around the house that needed to get done than I would have been if I had to sit down and read it, but not the most enjoyable experience.