• analogy
• applied research
• basic research
• biopsychology
• ethology
• homology
• Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees
• invasive procedures
• learning theory
• situational similarity
Prior to the general acceptance of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory in
the late nineteenth century, animals were considered to be soulless machines
with no thoughts or emotions. Humans, on the other hand, were assumed
to be qualitatively different from other animals because of their abilities
to speak, reason, and exercise free will. This assumption made it
unreasonable to try to learn about the mind by studying animals.
After Darwin, however, people began to see that, even though each species
is unique, the chain of life is continuous, and there are similarities as
well as differences among species. As animal brains and human brains are
made of the same kinds of cells and have similar structures and connections,
it was reasoned, the mental processes of animals must be similar to the mental
processes of humans. This new insight led to the introduction of animals
as psychological research subjects around the year 1900. Since then, animal
experimentation has taught much about the brain and the mind, especially
in the fields of learning, memory, motivation, and sensation.
Psychologists who study animals can be roughly categorized into three
groups. Biopsychologists, or physiological psychologists, study the genetic,
neural, and hormonal controls of behavior, for example, eating behavior,
sleep, sexual behavior, perception, emotion, memory, and the effects of
drugs. Learning theorists study the learned and environmental controls of
behavior, for example, stress, stimulus-response patterns, motivation, and
the effects of reward and punishment. Ethologists and sociobiologists concentrate
on animal behavior in nature, for example, predator-prey interac
tions, mating and parenting, migration, communication, aggression, and
territoriality.
tions, mating and parenting, migration, communication, aggression, and
territoriality.
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