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Mon 20 Aug, 2007 03:04 am
i read something extremely interesting today, it was about an experiment with monkeys.
It involves a banana on top of some stairs. you have 5 monekeys in a cage. everytime a monkey tries to climb the stairs the others are sprayed with cold water.
Stop the water spraying.
take 1 monkey out and replace it with a new one. When he tries to climb the stairs he will try once then twice then realise he will be beaten if he climbs them. replace a different monkey and the new one will join in the punishment!
keep replacing the original monkeys and in the end you have a group of monkeys that beat others that try to climb the stairs without even knowing why.
This to me explains ALOT. But is this experiment real and reproduceable?
I would think that they monkeys wouldn't realise why they were getting sprayed.
Can you cite a source for that? It sounds reasonable, but I wonder who did it.
A similar experiment: when chimps in a lab are taught to do something, they are rewarded with something. For instance, they might be rewarded with a piece of cucumber. Now, suppose you let the chimp see another chimp doing the same task, but that chimp is being rewarded with raisons. Chimps prefer raisons. The first chimp will now refuse to do the task, and may even through the cucumber at the experimenter. Remember: the chimp was perfectly happy with the cucumber until he discovered that another chimp was getting "paid" more for the same "job."
Very human, and very reasonable. It's an adaptive way of looking at things.
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Edit [Moderator]: Link removed
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