World as Laboratory: Experiments with Mice, Mazes, and Men

Lemov, a historian and anthropologist, addresses nearly a century of study into "human engineering," the idea that behavior can be modified through manipulation of the surrounding environment. The social implications of such research are important, but equally worth pondering, she suggests, is what it tells us about "the impulse for scientific experimentation" and how far scientists will go to indulge it. Some of her most intriguing passages deal with individual researchers like fear specialist O. Hobart Mowrer and sociologist John Dollard and how their theories—their career paths, even—were shaped by their emotional conditions. But Lemov balances this personal approach with close consideration of the major institutions involved, tracking the effect of grants handed out by the Rockefeller Foundation and digging into the vast archives of Yale's anthropological database (all the more remarkable for being entirely on paper). She also reports on the government's interest in the field, including the CIA's encouragement of research designed both to combat and refine psychological torture. Lemov's final charge, that "many people continue to suffer from the use of these techniques" as deployed by consumer surveys and political polls, needs substantiation, but her historical argument is both eye-opening and persuasive. (Dec.)