The Monkey Experiment

During today's lecture, while discussing how society makes rules and decides what is moral (even though it was brief), I was reminded of a story I read a while ago. You may have heard this story (it's sort of a joke) of monkeys and the spray bottle before.

Start with a cage containing five monkeys.

Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him.

After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been done round here.

And that, my friends, is how company policies are made.

This may show some insight on how we as humans have decided on various traditions, and maybe even morality. There could have been a direct effect long ago (such as spraying monkeys with cold water, or public shaming in the town square) that while we have no directly experienced, affects us all the time through the traditional values of society. In the monkeys' case, they never approach the banana again even though the reason for doing so is unknown to any of the monkeys. There are certain cultural practices or morals that we accept as human nature that have been socially conditioned in such a manner long ago. For example, why do some religion ban the eating of certain animals (like pigs in Judaism/Islam)? They may have been considered dirty animals back then, or maybe the people founding the religion didn't know how to BBQ properly. In any case, devout followers of religions still follow that rule even when others eat pork all the time and have no particular ill effects. It could be based on faith alone, but I believe it's mostly out of fear that they will be shunned by their social circle. (I'm not an expert on either religion so correct me if I am mistaken with the reasoning... and have my apologies)

By the way this was an actual experiment done in 1967...

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.

mentioned in: Galef, B. G., Jr. (1976). Social Transmission of Acquired Behavior: A Discussion of Tradition and Social Learning in Vertebrates. In: Rosenblatt, J.S., Hinde, R.A., Shaw, E. and Beer, C. (eds.), Advances in the study of behavior, Vol. 6, New York: Academic Press, pp. 87-88:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_the_monkey_banana_and_water_spray_experiment_ever_take_place

(Not sure where this particular iteration of the story originates, but I copied it from http://www.jokesunlimited.com/jokes/why_things_work_this_way.html)