The Five Monkeys Experiment & Its Lessons for Your Organization

A researcher puts five monkeys in a cage. 

There’s a bunch of bananas hanging from a string, with a ladder leading to the bananas. 

When the first monkey goes for the bananas, the researcher sprays all five monkeys with freezing water for five minutes. Some time later, when a second monkey inevitably tries to go for the bananas, the researcher once again sprays all five monkeys with the cold water for five minutes.

 The researcher then puts the hose away and never touches it again. But, when a third monkey tries to go for the bananas, the other four attack him to prevent him from climbing that ladder. They are afraid of the punishment that may come. 

 Then, the researcher replaces one of the monkeys with a new monkey who wasn’t part of the original experiment and was never sprayed with water. And, as soon as he touches the ladder to go for the bananas, the other four monkeys attack him to keep him from doing so.  If he tries again, they attack him again. Thus, the new monkey learns not to go after the bananas because he’ll get attacked if he does. 

 The researcher replaces a second monkey with another new monkey. When this monkey goes for the bananas, the other four attack him, including the new monkey who was never sprayed with water. The researcher then continues to replace all the monkeys one at a time, until all five of the original monkeys are removed from the cage. 

Each time the newcomer goes for the bananas, the others attack, even when they, as new monkeys, have never received punishment for going after the bananas. And thus, the new monkeys, who have never been sprayed with cold water, learn not to go after the temptation of the bananas.  

The researchers hypothesize that, if they were to ask the monkeys why they don’t go for the bananas, they’d answer “because that’s the way it’s always been done”.

What can the Five Monkeys Experiment Teach Us?

There’s controversy over whether the five monkeys experiment even happened, but as business owners and CEOs, there’s a lot to learn from this, even if it’s only viewed as an analogy. The five monkeys experiment says a lot about the pervasiveness of traditions within an organization.

Traditions are a part of every organization, especially if the majority of the workforce has been around for some time. But, those traditions can be detrimental to progress within your workplace, especially when new employees are stopped from pursuing new ideas. By focusing on doing something the way it’s always been done because it’s tradition to do it that way, organizations are often rendered blind to new ways that they can get the “banana” (the prize they’re going after).

The five monkeys experiment, therefore, teaches us that we need to be constantly challenging ourselves to look at things from a new light, to question things that don’t always feel right, and to avoid using the excuse of “we’ve always done it this way” to avoid trying new things and branching out in new directions. In other words, if we want that “banana”, there are times that we’re going to need to get creative, or let those new employees try new things.