This third chapter of Skinner’s Box is called “On Being Sane in Insane Places”, which is the perfect name to set up this section. The main scientist is David Rosenburg, who does an experiment that fits this part’s namesake, but there are many others involved, including Oskar Pfungst, R.Rosenthal, and L.Jackson. Each of these scientists have their own stories to tell of the experiments that they investigate, which all tie into the central themes of this chapter. Do doctors really know their way around diagnosing, and more importantly, do we really understand how the brain works in these weird and mysterious ways?
We start the chapter with Rosenburg, who while looking into his theory on physiatrists and their practices, did a test to see if physiatrics could tell healthy, fair-minded people apart from the insane (Slater 63). A team of eight different people from all different backgrounds admitted themselves into mental hospitals, all with the same problem. Each pretended to hear a noise in their head, more specifically a loud thud. After each one had been put in the hospital, they claimed that their symptoms had vanished, and they were all better. Still, they were taken in for an exam, and even though the results came back fine, most of the participants became diagnosed with some form of schizophrenia.
As long as they behaved, these patients …show more content…
In 1911, one such man named Oskar Pfungst came to Hans, deciding to observe him for many days and nights to come to a conclusion about how this horse could do such incredible feats. Unfortunately, the horse was all a hoax. The clever animal had learned to take subtle clues from observers, such as when they unconsciously raised their eyebrows or tilted their head in response to him answering correctly. It had nothing to do with math, but only with the small changes in the environment and the animal’s keen sense of change (Slater
We start the chapter with Rosenburg, who while looking into his theory on physiatrists and their practices, did a test to see if physiatrics could tell healthy, fair-minded people apart from the insane (Slater 63). A team of eight different people from all different backgrounds admitted themselves into mental hospitals, all with the same problem. Each pretended to hear a noise in their head, more specifically a loud thud. After each one had been put in the hospital, they claimed that their symptoms had vanished, and they were all better. Still, they were taken in for an exam, and even though the results came back fine, most of the participants became diagnosed with some form of schizophrenia.
As long as they behaved, these patients …show more content…
In 1911, one such man named Oskar Pfungst came to Hans, deciding to observe him for many days and nights to come to a conclusion about how this horse could do such incredible feats. Unfortunately, the horse was all a hoax. The clever animal had learned to take subtle clues from observers, such as when they unconsciously raised their eyebrows or tilted their head in response to him answering correctly. It had nothing to do with math, but only with the small changes in the environment and the animal’s keen sense of change (Slater