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The Story of ‘Monkey See, Monkey Do’
By Life-Musings.com | December 22, 2008
I once came across this story about monkeys. Well, I cannot remember exactly if it was monkeys, chimpanzees, gorillas, or what, so I’ll just stick to monkeys for simplicity’s sake.
This is apparently a true story of a research project which was carried out by scientists. I cannot recall the exact details, but will reproduce it as best as I can.
5 monkeys were put in a cage. A ladder was placed in the middle of the cage, which a bunch of bananas located at the top of it.
After some time, one of the monkeys would attempt to climb the ladder to get to the bananas. After all, it’s free food!
However, once this happens, the other 4 monkeys were sprayed with cold water. Basically, each time a monkey climbed up the ladder, the other four were sprayed with cold water.
After some time, when one of the monkeys attempted to ascend the ladder, the other 4 monkeys would give him a good bashing to prevent him from climbing it. Why? Well, they wanted to avoid being sprayed with the cold water, presumably!
And this phenomenon went on even after the spraying of cold water was no longer continued.
Now, one of the 5 monkeys was removed from the cage, and replaced with a new one, one who had never witnessed the cold water spraying. He saw the bananas and, just as what any sane monkey would do, he attempted to climb the ladder to get to them.
Unfortunately, the other 4 monkeys gave him a right ol’ bashing, preventing him from getting to the bananas. He tried again, but got attacked once more, and after a few attempts, he wised up and gave up on trying to get hold of the bananas.
Another one of the remaining 4 monkeys from the original group of 5 was removed from the cage, and again replaced with a new one, one who had never seen the cold water spraying. The pattern repeated, with the new monkey attempting to climb the ladder, and the other monkeys giving him a beating. After a while, this 2nd new monkey, too, gave up.
Interestingly, the 1st new monkey, although himself never having been sprayed with cold water, also took part in the attack with enthusiasm!
The pattern was repeated once again - 3rd monkey removed, and replaced with 3rd new monkey; 4th monkey removed, and replaced with 4th new monkey; final monkey removed, and replaced with 5th new monkey. And the same phenomenon continued to take place.
By the time all 5 of the original group of monkeys had been replaced, none of the 5 monkeys which were in the cage had been sprayed with cold water. Yet, when the newest monkey attempted to climb the ladder, the other 4 would still proceed to batter him. Therefore, a kind of “equilibrium situation” was reached, whereby no monkey ever dared to ascend the ladder and get the bananas, even if the cold water had been put away and never used again.
Why would the monkeys do that? None of them had ever even been sprayed with cold water!
It seems that this little experiment has gone a long way in showing the power of social conditioning, and the mentality of following things “the way they have always been done”. Even if nobody really knows why the procedures or processes were ever introduced in the first place.
As they say, monkey see, monkey do.
And if you think human beings are much smarter than monkeys in this regard, think again. We do the exact same things, and put up the exact same kinds of resistance to changing the status quo.
Scary, isn’t it?
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Topics: All Life Musings, Everyday Life, Facts of Life, Man and Animals, People, The Human Psyche |
November 19th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Do you know the source of the story? Or the origin of the “experiment”. Fact? or Fable??
November 30th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Hi The-Journey-Of-Life.com - and Heyup fellow monkey learners one n’all great info just what I needed to read right now - I found my way here because I’ve just plugged back into my virtual world as I’ve just this minute came home from an Ed Dale Fun-dah-mentals Seminar Production and as they say, monkey see, monkey do thank you what a great (”Got That!) read of a story about monkeys
All my best and thanks again “tjol.com” for sharing these really great Google tips I’ve also seen a couple of other interesting links I’m going to look at
Phillip Skinner
PcBeebies - “Fun” and learning through games for children aged 0 - 6. … Grown-ups information, Encourages fun with exploration and discovery.
PS:~ Urban Dictionary: “Da”
dah - 16 definitions - from russian ‘yes’, used with the well-known “retard *intonation”, means “yes, what else?” meaning the answer is so obvious
ppc:~ “Mentals” - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mental can refer to: Mind, the collective aspects of intellect and “Mental” is a slang term used within youth culture, meaning “awesomeness” - it can be used in many contexts, similar to that of the word “cool”
pps:~ *Intonation (linguistics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In linguistics, *intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. (Compare tone.) Intonation and stress are
May 12th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
@PJ:
The story is in fact a fable. The experiment was never conducted. More info here: http://blog.stsaint.com/philosophy/?p=1491/
However, it still effectively symbolizes how people (and monkeys) will quickly change their behavior to fit what society calls for.