Animal Experimentation in Psychological Research

Psychology
Biological Psychology
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Psychology
Part A: Animal Experimentation
Most of the researchers use animals for scientific research. The aim of using the animal subject
for scientific research is to gain insight into medical and behavioral concepts. The author uses
animals so as to maintain experiments which are necessary for research. The section reveals
reasons for using animals for scientific research with the support of two examples as outlined by
different authors in their research.
Reasons why the author uses animals in psychological research.
Researchers use animals to solve a research problem. Most of the psychologists are interested in
human behavior and that's why they prefer animals for a practical reason. For instance, we have
psychologist's researchers who do study an animal that has a shorter life span than a human
(Padulo,Oliva, Frizziero & Maffulli, 2016). This means that most of the experiments prefer
animals since there is strict control whereby the animals can be provided with adequate resources
such as food while in the laboratory units. In addition, the experiments using animals are able to
control genetics by breeding the animals in the laboratory. This shows that psychologists study
animals due to fewer ethical considerations whereby on use of human beings some variables
cannot be controlled. Different researchers argue that neuropsychologist can prefer to use
animals to handle brain surgery or hormone manipulation than using human beings. This shows
that researchers tend to avoid risks associated with using human when experimenting with vital
concepts.
For example
In developmental psychology, researchers can use animals such as dogs, chicken, and wildlife to
solve a certain problem. Dogs can be trained as watchdogs. Chicken on another hand can be

Psychology
trained on to stop fighting one another in their habitat and the wildlife can be trained on how to
control the population is a process known as applied research (Harriss, MacSween & Atkinson,
2017).
In addition, the other reason for describing the use of animals in research include the concept of
homology. Most of the animals are believed to have similar physical and behavioral features as
human beings. Psychologists prefer to carry research using this type of animals because they
have the same genetic blueprint. Reports indicate that those animals with similar behavior as
human beings are expensive to maintain thus not used when there are other alternatives during
the study (Evans,Pearce, Vitak & Treem,2016). Through the issue of homology, researchers tend
to get the concept of analogy thus referring animals in research than human beings. This shows
that some of the animals have similar lifestyles as a human subject.
For example
The use of monkeys and chimpanzees shows the concept of homology. Monkeys and
chimpanzees are believed to have similar hormones with human beings thus preferred when
psychologists want to test the effects of some drugs on human immunology.
In addition animals such as rats are preferred for analogy concepts where psychologists tend to
study their lifestyles with human beings. Rats are believed to be social animals as human beings.
In addition, rats are believed to have common eating habits as human beings and that's why they
do live around human habitats (Balding & Williams, 2016). The other animals used are the pigs
which are used to study the effects of stress in human subjects. Pigs are believed to experience
the same magnitude of stress as human beings.