Assignment 10: Chapters 3 & 4

Opening Skinner's Box by Lauren Slater

Chapter 3

        This chapter Talks about Dr. Rosenhan's experiment in the 1970's where he and some of his friends were admitted in to psychiatric wards under a false evaluation to see how long it would take the doctors to realize they were sane.  After their initial lie of hearing a voice say thud over and over, They acted completely normal.  Much of their normal behavior was evaluated to fit their false condition.  It took weeks and even over a month for a few to be let out of the wards.  The psychiatric field was in an uproar by this experiment, but it showed just how unscientific the evaluation of patients was.  over the years they have lost a lot of credibility and respect as scientists.  

        To test if the new and improved practices of psychiatric wards are better, the Dr. Slater went to a few and did the same experiment Dr. Rosenhan had done.  To her surprise she was almost always given a prescription for pills.  She was never once admitted as Dr. Rosenhan and his speudosubjects were.  I believe that it is very hard to diagnose a disorder when all of the symptoms are given by the patient.  Since there are no clear objective evidence for many mental disorders, it would be easy for anyone who can act out the symptoms to fool people.  It is the same for medical doctors prescribing pain medication to someone who says they have chronic back pain.

Chapter 4

        There have been many small experiments done to study how easy it is for people to ignore others in distress.  This chapter uses the extreme example of the murder of Kitty Genovese.  A woman was brutally murdered after three separate assaults by an attacker over a period of about 40 minutes.  There were 34 witnesses that heard her scream for help during each assault, but know one went to save her or even call the police until well after she had died.  Why were people so reluctant to help her?

        There are many theories that have been proposed and many experiment to try and shed more light on the subject.  My favored theory is the theory of group responsibility.  When people are in a group, they tend to not take personal responsibility for the actions or lack of action by the group.  People are less likely to take action in a situation where help is needed if they are in a group because they do not feel as responsible for what happens if others do not take action with them.  Everyone in the group always hope that someone else will take action so they do not have to and the more people in the group the less responsibility they feel because there are more inactive people.  If a person is alone in a situation that requires their help, they are more likely to take action because they are forced to take all responsibility for the situation.