(a)Outline The Reasons Why Psychologists Might Choose To Use Non-human Animals In Their Research. (b) Outline How Animals Have Been Used In Two Different Areas Of Research. (c) Assess The Problems Of Using Animals In Psychological Research. Essay, Research Paper
(a)Outline the reasons why psychologists might choose to use non-human animals in their research. (b) Outline how animals have been used in two different areas of research. (c) Assess the problems of using animals in psychological research.
Psychologists choose to use non-human animals in their research because they are fascinating to study in their own right, their development of ethology (the biological study of behaviour) has been based on such goals although some of the methods used are also open to ethical concerns. One of the most common ways of experimenting in the field of psychology with non-human animals is to apply electric shocks. But not everyone agrees with this form of study.
The essence of the practical argument into why animals shouldn?t be used is that animal experiments would not tell us anything of any value about human behaviour because of the dissimilarities between humans and non-humans. According to Cardwell the extreme ethical position may contend that pain or distress is never justifiable in animal research regardless of the benefits of human mankind. If they are used to tell us something about human behaviour then there should be no sufficient similarity between brains and behaviour. If not then the case for studying animals to gain insights into human behaviour would be very weak indeed. Critics will sugest that assumed similarities just do not exist. Under ethical considerations the question that must be asked about knowledge is investigators must consider whether the knowledge to be gained justifies the procedure if animals are constrained, harmed or stressed in any way. Whenever possible alternatives to animal experiments should be considered.
Peter Singer author of the article ?Animal Liberation? believes that in the case of the study performed by Harlow in 1965 the monkeys used suffered total maternal deprivation. During the experiment Harlow and Suomi reared the female monkeys in isolation, and then tried to make them pregnant. Unfortunately the females did not have normal sexual relations with the male monkey, so they had to be made pregnant by a technique that Harlow and Suomi refer to as a ?rape rack?. When the babies were born the experimenters observed the monkeys. They found that some simply ignored the infants, failing to cuddle the crying baby to the breast as normal monkeys do when they hear their baby cry. The other pattern of behaviour observed was different in which the mothers eventually killed the infants.
Martin Reite of the University of Colorado performed deprivation experiments on bonnet monkeys and pigtailed macaques. He decided to do study these non-human animals because despite Jane Goodall?s observations of orphaned wild chimpanzees describing ?profound behavioural disturbances with sadness or depressive affective changes as major components? there has been relatively little published similar experiment?s.
Bateson?s three criteria to use when deciding if human investigations are ethical are:
Quality of the research,
Animal suffering,
Certainty of benefit.
To decide whether the research project should proceed or not Bateson devised a decision cube. In analysis of Batesons three criteria Cardwell describes the models as a clear indication of when animal research may be tolerated and when it can not. The likelihood of animal research being considered acceptable is a great deal higher than when both the quality of the research and the certainty of benefit are high, than when these are both low. It is also obvious that certain levels of animal suffering cannot be tolerated regardless of the quality of the research which has no direct benefit yet was of high scientific quality and involved little animal suffering. The effectiveness of a model such as that proposed by Bateson depends on any evaluation of quality, benefit and suffering being accurate. Laboratory experiments are the main concern of harm in the testing of animals (See Washoe and Nim and Kanzi?s studies).
The ethical problems of field experiments (which account for 46% of research papers between 1986 and 1990) start as we initially believe that the study of animals in their natural environment is better than putting them in a laboratory. Other ethical problems with field experiments are the use of animals is normally focused on laboratory research with animals, discreet observations and non-interference with the animals being studied, how animals react to stress and suffering; their insights are therefore vital if animals are to be used in psychological research. Ethical research tends not to be of any direct benefit to human beings. Field experiments alter the natural environment of the animal this is tampering with nature in order to understand it. (See Garcia and Koelling 1966 study)
The manipulation of these animals environment can be performed very differently ethically:
Dummies- the presence of a stuffed dummy predator, can cause distress.
Non-trivial handling- repeated trappings in order for radio tagging procedures to take place, can lead to stress from capture.
Playback- playback of recorded signals, can cause distress.
Food addition- food provided to provoke territorial disputes or dominance encounters, risk of injury from aggression that this might cause.
Removal- temporary removal of an animal or the release of an animal elsewhere from its normal territory, this may impair the survival chances of the animal on release or may lead to an increased chance of starvation in the young that are left behind.
Broad manipulation- study of the optimum clutch size in different species of birds by looking at the effects increased mortality through starvation by interfering with the ecological conditions under which birds must survive.
Phenotype manipulation- altering the characteristics of certain animals to investigate the effects on reproductive success. Difficult to assess the possible stressful effects that such alterations might have on the animals concerned.
Debates over whether animals posse language have focused primarily on studies of apes. The discovery that ape language is deficient compared to human language is seen as a characteristic of the general behaviour of the species rather than a deficiency in the ability to learn and use some form of language. The early studies of Washoe and Nim using sign language have been criticised because of the possibility of methodological weaknesses in the testing procedures. Later research particularly with Kanzi has produced more convincing evidence that apes do in fact have the ability to both produce and understand some form of language.
Other examples of experiments involving animals in a laboratory are Pavlo?s dog, Thorndike?s puzzle box and Skinner box.
Animal rights activists and ethologists prefer experiments with animals in their natural environment like Garcia and Koelling (1966). Garcia and Koelling found that rats which were given a novel testing solution and made to feel sick up to 3 hours afterwards would still learn to associate the two events and avoid that solution on future occasions, even after only one such trial in some cases. It therefore seems likely that rats have evolved a highly sensitive learning capability between taste and sickness, especially since this sensitivity makes ?evolutionary sense?. This aids survival.
Other experiments in the animal?s natural environment are Lorenz (1935), Marler (1971) and Seyfarth et al (1980).
Opposition to the use of animals in research has grown over recent years as the public have become increasingly aware of what is considered to be a cruel abuse of power that one species has over another. This is reflected in a general concern for the welfare of animals in all areas in which they are used. The reaction to the scientific world to these concerns has been divided. There has been a long tradition of using animals in psychology. Knowledge derived from this research has been instrumental in the development of many psychological theories and practices. The objection to the use of animals in psychological research is either on practical grounds or on ethical grounds.