The Modern Fable of the Caged Monkeys

This is so true to life, it's scary. Anytime anyone says, "we've always done it this/that way show them this"

FIVE hungry monkeys were placed in a cage by a Pavlovian experimental psychologist, who then suspended a banana from the roof of the cage and placed a ladder directly below it. One of the monkeys soon approached the ladder in order to climb up to the suspended banana. Immediately the would-be climber touched the ladder, the psychologist sprayed all the monkeys in the cage with a torrent of ice water. Shortly, another monkey attempted the climb and once again the psychologist doused all the monkeys in the cage with ice water. He thereafter repeated this procedure whenever any of the monkeys touched the ladder. Eventually, in order to avoid further soakings, the monkeys began to cooperate so as to prevent any of their fellows from making further attempts to climb the ladder.

AT this stage, the psychologist turned off the ice water tap, removed one of the monkeys from the cage and replaced him with a naïve, equally hungry specimen who had not observed the preceding events. The new monkey, on catching sight of the banana, attempted to climb the ladder to reach it. To his amazement, he was unexpectedly and savagely attacked by the four remaining monkeys, who repeated their assaults on him whenever he approached the ladder, desisting only when he gave up further attempts.

THE psychologist then removed a second of the original monkeys from the cage and replaced him with yet another naïve, equally hungry specimen. The latest monkey introduced into the cage now also sought to climb the ladder to reach the banana, only to be assaulted like his predecessors. The previous newcomer was an enthusiastic participant in the attacks on the latest monkey introduced to the cage, until he too desisted from any further attempts to climb the ladder.

NEXT, the psychologist replaced a third monkey from the original group in the cage with yet another naïve, hungry specimen whose fate on approaching the ladder was identical to that of his predecessors. Soon the third replacement monkey also made no further attempts to obtain the banana. At this stage, two of the monkeys which attacked him had no idea why they were not permitted to climb the ladder, nor even why they were attacking the latest naïve monkey to be caged when he attempted to do so.

AFTER the psychologist serially replaced the fourth and fifth of the original occupants of the cage, none of the monkeys then remaining in the cage had been sprayed with ice water nor observed this happening to the original subjects. Nevertheless, none of the monkeys remaining in the cage at the conclusion of the experiment made any further attempts to climb the ladder to reach the suspended banana. So far as they knew, that was the way things had always been in their cage.

MORAL: Thus begin organisational policies.