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2-7 Why do psychologists study animals, and what ethical guidelines safeguard human and animal research participants? How do human values influence psychology?

We have reflected on how a scientific approach can restrain biases. We have seen how case studies, naturalistic observations, and surveys help us describe behavior. We have established how correlational studies assess the association between two factors, which indicates how well one thing predicts another. We have examined the logic that underlies experiments, which use control conditions and random assignment of participants to isolate the effects of an independent variable on a dependent variable.

Yet, even knowing this much, you may still be approaching psychology with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. So before we plunge in, let’s entertain some common questions about psychology’s ethics and values.

STUDYING AND PROTECTING ANIMALS Many psychologists study nonhuman animals because they find them fascinating. They want to understand how different species learn, think, and behave. Psychologists also study animals to learn about people. We humans are not like animals; we are animals, sharing a common biology. Animal experiments have therefore led to treatments for human diseases—insulin for diabetes, vaccines to prevent polio and rabies, transplants to replace defective organs.

Humans are more complex, but the same processes by which we learn are present in rats, monkeys, and even sea slugs. The simplicity of the sea slug’s nervous system is precisely what makes it so revealing of the neural mechanisms of learning. Sharing such similarities, should we respect rather than experiment on our animal relatives? The animal protection movement protests the use of animals in psychological, biological, and medical research.

Out of this heated debate, two issues emerge. The basic one is whether it is right to place the well-being of humans above that of other animals. In experiments on stress and cancer, is it right that mice get tumors in the hope that people might not? Should some monkeys be exposed to an HIV-like virus in the search for an AIDS vaccine? Is our use and consumption of other animals as natural as the behavior of carnivorous hawks, cats, and whales? (Humans raise and slaughter 56 billion animals a year [Worldwatch Institute, 2013].) Or not?

Second, if we do give human life first priority, what safeguards should protect the well-being of animals in research? In one survey of animal researchers, 98 percent supported government regulations protecting primates, dogs, and cats, and 74 percent supported regulations providing for the humane care of rats and mice (Plous & Herzog, 2000). Many professional associations and funding agencies already have such guidelines. Most universities screen research proposals, often through an animal care ethics committee, and laboratories are regulated and inspected. British Psychological Society (BPS) guidelines call for housing animals under reasonably natural living conditions, with companions for social animals (Lea, 2000). American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines state that researchers must ensure the “comfort, health, and humane treatment” of animals and minimize “infection, illness, and pain” (APA, 2002).

Animals have themselves benefited from animal research. One Ohio team of research psychologists measured stress hormone levels in samples of millions of dogs brought each year to animal shelters. They devised handling and stroking methods to reduce stress and ease the dogs’ transition to adoptive homes (Tuber et al., 1999). Other studies have helped improve care and management in animals’ natural habitats. By revealing our behavioral kinship with animals and the remarkable intelligence of chimpanzees, gorillas, and other animals, experiments have also led to increased empathy and protection for them. At its best, a psychology concerned for humans and sensitive to animals serves the welfare of both.

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STUDYING AND PROTECTING HUMANS What about human participants? Does the image of white-coated scientists seeming to deliver electric shocks trouble you? Actually, most psychological studies are free of such stress. With people, blinking lights, flashing words, and pleasant social interactions are more common. Moreover, psychology’s experiments are mild compared with the stress and humiliation often inflicted in the modern “experiments” of reality television. In one episode of The Bachelor, a man dumped his new fiancée—on camera, at the producers’ request—for the woman who earlier had finished second (Collins, 2009).

Occasionally, researchers do temporarily stress or deceive people, but only when they believe it is essential to a justifiable end, such as understanding and controlling violent behavior or studying mood swings. Some experiments won’t work if participants know everything beforehand. (Wanting to be helpful, the participants might try to confirm the researcher’s predictions.)

The ethics codes of the APA and the BPS urge researchers to (1) obtain human participants’ informed consent before the experiment, (2) protect participants from greater-than-usual harm and discomfort, (3) keep information about individual participants confidential, and (4) fully debrief people (explain the research afterward). Moreover, university ethics committees screen research proposals and safeguard participants’ well-being.

Values affect what we study, how we study it, and how we interpret results. Researchers’ values influence their choice of topics. Should we study worker productivity or worker morale? Sex discrimination or gender differences? Conformity or independence? Values can also color “the facts.” As we noted earlier, our preconceptions can bias our observations and interpretations; sometimes we see what we want or expect to see (FIGURE 2.5).

In psychology and in everyday speech, labels describe and labels evaluate: One person’s rigidity is another’s consistency. One person’s faith is another’s fanaticism. One country’s enhanced interrogation techniques become torture when practiced by its enemies. Our labeling someone as firm or stubborn, careful or picky, discreet or secretive reveals our own attitudes.

Popular applications of psychology also contain hidden values. If you defer to “professional” guidance about how to live—how to raise children, how to achieve self-fulfillment, how to respond to sexual feelings, how to get ahead at work—you are accepting value-laden advice. A science of behavior and mental processes can help us reach our goals. But it cannot decide what those goals should be.

Knowledge transforms us. Learning about the solar system and the germ theory of disease alters the way people think and act. Learning about psychology’s findings also changes people: They less often judge psychological disorders as moral failings, treatable by punishment and ostracism. They less often regard and treat women as men’s mental inferiors. They less often view and raise children as ignorant, willful beasts in need of taming. “In each case,” noted Morton Hunt (1990, p. 206), “knowledge has modified attitudes, and, through them, behavior.” Once aware of psychology’s well-researched ideas—about how body and mind connect, how a child’s mind grows, how we construct our perceptions, how we remember (and misremember) our experiences, how people across the world differ (and are alike)—your mind may never again be quite the same.

But bear in mind psychology’s limits. Don’t expect it to answer the ultimate questions, such as those posed by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1904): “Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death that awaits me does not undo and destroy?”

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Although many of life’s significant questions are beyond psychology, some very important ones are illuminated by even a first psychology course. Through painstaking research, psychologists have gained insights into brain and mind, dreams and memories, depression and joy. Even the unanswered questions can renew our sense of mystery about “things too wonderful” for us yet to understand. Moreover, your study of psychology can help teach you how to ask and answer important questions—how to think critically as you evaluate competing ideas and claims.

If some people see psychology as merely common sense, others have a different concern—that it is becoming dangerously powerful. Is it an accident that astronomy is the oldest science and psychology the youngest? To some, exploring the external universe seems far safer than exploring our own inner universe. Might psychology, they ask, be used to manipulate people?

Knowledge, like all power, can be used for good or evil. Nuclear power has been used to light up cities—and to demolish them. Persuasive power has been used to educate people—and to deceive them. Although psychology does have the power to deceive, its purpose is to enlighten. Every day, psychologists explore ways to enhance learning, creativity, and compassion. Psychology speaks to many of our world’s great problems—war, overpopulation, prejudice, family crises, crime—all of which involve attitudes and behaviors. Psychology also speaks to our deepest longings—for nourishment, for love, for happiness. Psychology cannot address all of life’s great questions, but it speaks to some mighty important ones.