The Skinner Box: The Milgram Experiment

The Skinner box as well as the Milgram experiment have been questioned many times whether or not their practices have been unethical to humans. As today they would have been denied permission to experiment on humans the way they did. Skinner’s research scared many as he believed that everyone need to be “conditioned” to make a perfect society. He only experimented on birds and rodents in the lab. As he put them in what is now called a “Skinner box” to train them to do certain tasks for rewards. He did however use the practices in the lab on his daughter during the first few years of her life. As his daughter recalls “I was very happy, too, though I must report at this stage that I remember nothing of those first two and a half years. I am

told that I never once objected to being put back inside.”(Buzan 6) He did not treat this as an experiment but as a way to teach his child to be obedient through what he had learned in his experiments.
Milgram research was to show that people will obey authority figures “A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.”(Wayne 3) The experiment was to have one person giving out memory tasks for a confederate to memorize it. If the confederate did not memorize it correctly subjects had to shock him. Milgram found out that no matter what the situation was if the individuals was in another room, in the same room or even holding their hand, the lethal shock would be given. The research he collected did justify what was done in the experiment even though the individuals were lied to about the electric shock. The shocks were fake meaning no one was in real harm. If they had known it was fake and they were being tested Milgram would have collected invalid data.
Skinner’s research is still very widely used around the world today.

As schools give out rewards for positive behavior and work places give bonuses for those who put out good work. Today this research is used for autistic kids as a way of teaching them. If Skinner had been denied this experiment many autistic kids would not have the education they have now. So no matter how harsh his ideas were his research has helped progress the way we learn today. Milgram’s data showed that we forget our morals when it comes to obeying an authority figure. Meaning if the government wanted to control us many would follow just because it was an authority figure. His research showed that “an anonymous experimenter could successfully command adults to subdue a 50-year old man and force on him painful electric shocks against his protests.”(Wayne 3) Proving that people would blindly follow anyone if they are seen with power. If we had not known this data we may as well could have ended up like the Nazis. Now that we know this many oppose authority figures today and question their

actions.
Skinner’s experiment I think was a bit harsh but the information gathered outweighed the harm done to the animals. He could have just trained them like you would a dog but that could give data that was invalid. I believe Milgram’s experiment was the alternative way of finding out that type of data. As the Stanford Prison experiment could have gone the direction of Milgram’s experiment. Instead it went violent and harmed many individuals during the whole event. Unlike Milgram’s experiment where nobody was really harmed and they were able to collect sufficient data.
Psychologists are most intrigued when it comes to the human brain and how it affects our behavior.

Having the power to control that and use it for whatever purposes may be is a bit frightening. Such research should only be used for those who have diseases and need help to control themselves. That is the only reason I can see for mind control. Skinner says that humans don’t really think but I don’t think that’s true. I believe that each individual chooses what they want to believe t not because of the environment around them but because we have the ability to. That is something that should not controlled or messed with even in the name of

science.