Describe and Evaluate the Use of Animals in Laboratory Studies When Researching Into Drugs

  • Animals are used in laboratory studies in health psychology to investigate the effects of drugs
  • Mice, rats, pigeons
  • Genetically similar to humans
  • Good when we cannot use people
  • Controlled lab experiments – IV, DV, hypothesis
  • Can find cause and effect
  • Can study an animal from birth – develop and reproduce quicker
  • Can control all environmental variables
  • Know you are only looking at the effect of the drug
  • Scientific equipment used to measure the effect of drugs

Examples regarding drugs:

  • Levels of addictiveness
  • Short and long term consequences
  • Effectiveness of some types of therapy

Examples regarding aversion therapy:

  • Rats made to feel sick when consuming sweetened water later avoided sweetened water
  • Demonstrated learning by association and provided evidence for aversion therapy to treat alcoholics

Schramm-Sapyta

  • Adolescent male rats placed in cages for 16 hours a day for 3 days
  • Only liquid on offer was alcohol
  • Rats were then given a choice between water and alcohol
  • Rats given alcohol as adolescents consumed more frequently than rats not given such early exposure

Strengths of using animals

  • Relatively small and easy to handle
  • Short gestation periods and reproductive cycles – generations can be studied more easily
  • Quicker development
  • Similar genetic make-up and brain structure to humans
  • Can control them from birth and remove environmental variables – findings are more objective
  • More ethical than using humans
  • Speciesism – should look after our own species
  • Animals can sometimes benefit from findings
  • Incredibly strong guidelines – have to make sure the benefits would outweigh stress, cost, etc.

Weaknesses of using animals

  • Animal brains are different to human brains
  • Have different genetics
  • Human behaviour is so complex – isolating one variable may not give valid data
  • Shouldn’t be causing animals stress
  • Animals feel pain
  • Speciesism – shouldn’t always test on the same animal
  • Humans are animals so shouldn’t do things to other animals that we wouldn’t want doing to ourselves