- 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