Using animals in psychological research

Using animals in psychological research

BPS Guidelines (2007)

• Pain, discomfort and suffering should be minimised.
• Non-sentient animals should be used wherever possible. (This means animals that are not capable of feeling or have no consciousness because they have no (or a very simple) centralised nervous system eg. starfish, mollusks, sea urchins etc.)
• Animals should be caged in appropriate housing.
• The lowest possible number of animals should be used.
• The research should be of good quality and there should be certainty of benefit eg. a useful outcome with the benefit of the research outweighing the costs.

Should we use animals in research?

• For:
• More ethical than using humans / can use animals in research that humans could not be used for.
• There are BPS Guidelines in place to minimise suffering of animals and insure the research is beneficial enough to justify the potential suffering caused.
• Some animals, such as rats, have a similar biological structure to humans and we have a shared evolutionary history so our hormonal and nervous systems are similar.
• Against:
• Since the research is done on animals, the findings cannot be generalised to humans. There are some biological differences, for example even though all female mammals have a biological cycle that affects breeding capacity, not all have a menstrual cycle or are sexually active when they are not sexually receptive. Additionally human and animals brains are different - our cortex is much larger in relation to our size than other animals.
• Causes suffering and are often highly invasive, which is unethical.
• Ethical guidelines may hinder research since they restrict the ways in which animals can be used.