Book Reading #13: Opening Skinner's Box

Title:
Chapter 3: On Being Sane in Insane Places


Reference:
Slater, Lauren. Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century. W.W. Norton & Company: 2008.


Summary:
This chapter discussed an experiment conducted by David Rosenhan.  The experiment was to test the ability of psychiatrists to determine if a person is "sane" or "insane".  Rosenhan and 8 other people went to separate mental institutions and complained that they had a voice in their head, and it said "thud".  All 9 were admitted.  Then as the next step in the experiment, all acted normally, and if asked, said that their symptom was gone.  The time spent in the institutions ranged from 7 days to 52 days.


Discussion:
I thought that this was interesting.  The fact that they were admitted based on just a "thud" in their head, and then viewing the rest of their stories as based on their diagnosis.  I liked the fact that when one institution challenged Rosenhan to send more testers in a 3 month span, they turned 41 people away, but he had sent none.