Comments on: 5 Monkeys Experiment

By: abe3

abe3 — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:17:39 +0000

Any time a story promotes an idea that people want to hear, it will never die out. It is more of a parable as far as I can tell. Someone ought to try to duplicate this experiment with 5 or more and with other primates or controls. Then see if it is repeatable.

I am still looking for the proof of this experiment.

By: Carl

Carl — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:35:59 +0000

I have searched for this off and on since 2006. The “Five” monkey’s is likely a parable or story which is based on some real experiments. Most likely:
Stephenson, G. R. (1967). Cultural acquisition of a specific learned response among rhesus monkeys. In: Starek, D., Schneider, R., and Kuhn, H. J. (eds.), Progress in Primatology, Stuttgart: Fischer, pp. 279-288
“Unfortunately, training and testing were not carried out using a discrimination procedure so the nature of the transmitted information cannot be determined, but the data are of considerable interest.”

In the light of Stanley Milgrams and Martin Seligman’s work ethical standards would now make the “five monkey’s” experiment impossible to replicate. Certainly people in the 1960′s were conducting experiments like this, and it is believeable that non-human species could and would teach one another to avoid unpleasant consequences.

I concur that it did not happen as described, but disagree that it rises to the level of a hoax. Likely it is an embellished synthesis of research which is at it’s root has a yet to be disproven hypothesis, and was orginally created for the purpose of humor

By: Monkeys, bananas and corporate policies « Daly-Swartz PR Marcom Digest

Monkeys, bananas and corporate policies « Daly-Swartz PR Marcom Digest — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 07:45:53 +0000

[...] Dr Tuvia Melamed offers a more jaundiced view: [...]

By: joe blogs

joe blogs — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 21:28:19 +0000

Post featured in Tradition (part 2 in a short series of thoughts about god)