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Has this ever been replicated? Were detailed enough records kept that we be sure this happened more or less as described or is it one of the famous experiments

Has this ever been replicated? Were detailed enough records kept that we be sure this happened more or less as described or is it one of the famous experiments that were at best described in a completely misleading way, like the Zimnbardo Stanford prison experiment, or wildly and willfully misinterpreted, like the murder of Kitty Genovese?

dredmorbius 4y ago
Very good question. The Behavioural Sink Wikipedia page doesn't list any independent replications, though Calhoun studied the phenomenon from 1947--1995, a period of 52 years. I'm going to emphasize independent replication as having the same principle investigator study a question doesn't meet that bar. The failure to replicate (or of Wikipedia to note any replication which might exist) is curious given the notoriety and significance of the Rat Utopia studies.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  Surprising given that the cost to maintain such an experiment would be fairly low.
gwern 4y ago
As it happens, there were some (now very obscure) attempts to replicate it. They failed. I cover (and jailbreak) them in my criticism of Mouse Utopia: https://www.gwern.net/Mouse-Utopia https://www.gwern.net/Mouse-Utopia OP is a bad writeup. He should be ashamed to write such an uncritical piece which says nothing you wouldn't find in either the Down The Rabbithole YouTube video (which seems to be patient zero for the resurrection of the Mouse Utopia myth) or the Wikipedia entry. The problem with Mouse Utopia is not that it has been interpreted in different ways by later pundits, but that it's probably bullshit to begin with. (How thoughtless do you have to be to note that it was the 25th experiment in a very long series of them before/after the behavioral sink experiment, and then not immediately wonder WTF happened in the >24 other experiments and then wonder why you can't find any information about any of them?)
bnralt 4y ago
You can add the Robber's Cave experiment and The Third Wave (which seems to be mostly fictional) to that list as well. After WWII, there seems to have been a certain desire among some people to show that the average human (or rodent, here) could quickly be turned evil given the right circumstances, and a number of charlatans popped up who were more than happy to manipulate things in order to feed this desire.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Very good question. The Behavioural Sink Wikipedia page doesn't list any independent replications, though Calhoun studied the phenomenon from 1947--1995, a period of 52 years. I'm going to emphasize independent replication as having the same principle investigator study a question doesn't meet that bar. The failure to replicate (or of Wikipedia to note any replication which might exist) is curious given the notoriety and significance of the Rat Utopia studies.

throwaway4aday 4y ago
Surprising given that the cost to maintain such an experiment would be fairly low.

gwern 4y ago

As it happens, there were some (now very obscure) attempts to replicate it. They failed. I cover (and jailbreak) them in my criticism of Mouse Utopia: https://www.gwern.net/Mouse-Utopia https://www.gwern.net/Mouse-Utopia OP is a bad writeup. He should be ashamed to write such an uncritical piece which says nothing you wouldn't find in either the Down The Rabbithole YouTube video (which seems to be patient zero for the resurrection of the Mouse Utopia myth) or the Wikipedia entry. The problem with Mouse Utopia is not that it has been interpreted in different ways by later pundits, but that it's probably bullshit to begin with. (How thoughtless do you have to be to note that it was the 25th experiment in a very long series of them before/after the behavioral sink experiment, and then not immediately wonder WTF happened in the >24 other experiments and then wonder why you can't find any information about any of them?)

bnralt 4y ago

You can add the Robber's Cave experiment and The Third Wave (which seems to be mostly fictional) to that list as well. After WWII, there seems to have been a certain desire among some people to show that the average human (or rodent, here) could quickly be turned evil given the right circumstances, and a number of charlatans popped up who were more than happy to manipulate things in order to feed this desire.