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Should humans use animals for psychological research? Give examples from this week’s assigned readings or other sources to defend your position.

Animals have played a significate role in psychological research. I do consider the use of animals for psychological research. If it is beneficial to improving human lives and the conditions that we face. I disagree with animals being used for any abuse on misused for unnecessary purposes. Psychology is concerned with understanding and controlling psychopathology, such as depression, phobias, psychosomatic disorders, learning disabilities, obesity and addiction.

Many of these problems cannot be studied satisfactorily in human patients because of the difficulty determining causal relationship between variables, and which leaves us only with correlations (Eaton, Hutton, Leete, Lieb, Robeson, & Vonk, 2018).

“The Guidelines for Ethical Conduct in the Care and Use of Animals (APA Committee on Animal Research and Ethics [CARE], 2012; http://www.apa.org/science/leadership/care/guidelines.aspx) state that psychologists conducting research with animals must be knowledgeable about the normal and species-specific behavior characteristics of their animal subjects and unusual behaviors that could forewarn of health problems” (Fisher, 2017).

Many individuals and animal right groups question the clinical and ethical propriety. According to Plous (1996) a mail survey was sent to 5,000 randomly selected American Psychology Association members. 3,982 responded with the results that a) majority support for animal studies involving observation or confinement, but disapproval of studies involving pain or death; (b) majority support for mandatory pain assessments and the federal protection of rats, mice, pigeons, and reptiles; and (c) majority support for the use of animals in teaching, but opposition to an animal laboratory requirement for the psychology major.

Plous, S. (1996). Attitudes toward the use of animals in psychological research and education: Results from a national survey of psychologists. American Psychologist, 51(11), 1167-1180. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.51.11.1167 

Fisher, B. (2017) Decoding the Ethics Code: A Practical Guide for Psychologists. 4th Ed. Sage Publications Inc.http://gcumedia.com/digital-resources/sage/2016/decoding-the-ethics-code_a-practical-guide-for-psychologists_ebook_4e.php

Eaton, T., Hutton, R., Leete, J., Lieb, J., Robeson, A., & Vonk, J. (2018). Bottoms-up! Rejecting Top-down Human-centered Approaches in Comparative Psychology. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 31. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11t5q9wt

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Re: Topic 2 DQ1

Hello 

Thank you for your post!

You wrote , “Many of these problems cannot be studied satisfactorily in human patients because of the difficulty determining causal relationship between variables, and which leaves us only with correlations”.  

Can you please provide an example? What have been some of the benefits for the field of psychology by the use of animals in research?

Also, have there been any recent surveys of psychologists’ views on research with animals since Plous, 1996? Please consider current research to support your viewpoints (e.g., published within the past 5-7 years).

Thanks for considering these additional ideas!