Pink Pack 4

Question 1

What is your key question for biological psychology?

Answer 1

Can the use of animals in psychological research be justified?

Question 2

In the Biological Approach you will have studied a key issue of relevance to today’s society.
Describe the key issue you studied. (4)

Answer 2

• My key question was Can the use of animals in psychological research be justified?
• This is a question relevant to today’s society because society wants its scientists to be ethical.
• On the one hand, using animals provide a more ethical way to conduct vital research into neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. On the other hand, it can also be argued that the use of animals is unethical as they are often harmed and do not consent. Ethical considerations of using animals are important to society as people care a great deal about animal welfare.
• Furthermore the credibility of psychological science is also at stake.
• Another reason why this question is important to debate is because there are High costs to the animals - a great amount of animals are used and killed for the research. These costs need to be compared to the benefits of treatments that may be developed e.g. for neurological disorders.

Question 3

BRIEFLY give two arguments for in your key question for biological psychology

Answer 3

• Human being and animals have enough similarities in their physiology and evolutionary past in common to justify conclusions drawn from animal being generalised to humans.
• The use of animals allows better science.

Question 4

BRIEFLY give two arguments against in your key question for biological psychology

Answer 4

• The Physiology and behaviour of animals may be similar to humans but they are not the same
• It has been argued that the environment and the stress animals endure in the labs can affect their behaviour.

Answer 5

POINT: One justification for the use of animals in psychological
research is that they allow for a level of control in experiments that
would not be possible with humans for ethical reasons.
ELABORATION: Animals can be isolated, given drugs, fed a certain
diet and manipulated in a way that would be unacceptable with
human participants. This gives researchers using animals the
advantage of having control of extraneous variables so that cause
and effect links can be established, increasing the scientific
credibility of the research.
EXAMPLE: An example of this advantage can be seen in Van Den
Over’s study 2008 of heroin addiction and relapse. The fact that
he used rats enabled him to isolate the rats in a skinner box and
expose them to exactly the same lights and sounds whilst giving
them carefully controlled measures of heroin.