Scientists placed 5 monkeys in a cage with a ladder to bananas at the top. Any monkey climbing the ladder would cause all monkeys to be sprayed with cold water. Over time, the monkeys learned that climbing the ladder resulted in being beaten by the others. When monkeys were substituted, the new monkeys quickly learned not to climb the ladder to avoid being beaten, even though they did not know why. This showed how a group can continue a paradigm of punishing certain behaviors without understanding the original reasoning for it.