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In 1965, the psychologist Martin Seligman conducted the Learned Helplessness Experiment. It all started when Martin and his colleagues were researching about classical conditioning, the process by which an animal or human associates one thing with another. The experiment consisted on Seligman ringing a bell and a dog, wearing an electrified harness, getting a shock. First, Seligman would ring a bell and the dog, which the experiment was focused on, would get a light shock. After several times of ringing the bell and getting the shock, the dog reacted to the shock before it happened, when he heard the bell started to ring. It seemed as he had already been shocked.
Seligman then moved to phase 2 in his experiment. He would put the dog in a big cage that was divided in two by a small fence. One side of the cage had an electrified floor and the other didn’t. The purpose of this was to see if the dog would jump to the other side of the fence so he wouldn’t get electrified. Seligman placed the dog on the electrified side and sent a light shock. The dog which they tried phase 1 on didn’t jump as expected to. Instead, the dog laid down and
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They inflicted painful testing on dogs. The American Psychological Association has guidelines for the ethical treatment of people in psychological experiments. In the ethical treatment guidelines, test subjects have the right to be protected from harm or discomfort, inform consent and have the right to refuse participation. The dogs weren’t able to verbally refuse or to give out their consent. They showed signs of pain and discomfort by whimpering and reacting to the shock and still the experiment continued. They couldn’t stop the procedure like a human can. This is why the experiment is so unethical and it’s a relief to know that APA has created guidelines for the ethical treatment of animals to prevent studies like this one happening ever
In 1974, Milgram set up an experiment at Yale University to test how much pain a person might inflict on another person simply because they were ordered to do so. The basic design of the experiment called for volunteers to take part in a psychology lab experiment to study learning and memory.... ... middle of paper ... ...
A former Yale psychologist, Stanley Milgram, administered an experiment to test the obedience of "ordinary" people as explained in his article, "The Perils of Obedience". An unexpected outcome came from this experiment by watching the teacher administer shocks to the learner for not remembering sets of words. By executing greater shocks for every wrong answer created tremendous stress and a low comfort levels within the "teacher", the one being observed unknowingly, uncomfortable and feel the need to stop. However, with Milgram having the experimenter insisting that they must continue for the experiments purpose, many continued to shock the learner with much higher voltages.The participants were unaware of many objects of the experiment until
Then, he gathered forty random males between the ages of 20 and 50 that lived in the local area. He then told them that this experiment was to see how people learned through pain or punishment rather than without. The teacher volunteer would see the other volunteer or victim put on electronic straps and would not be able to see the person being shocked but could hear them. This setup was fake and the person being shocked had pre-recorded answers and reactions to the ascending row of buttons. The teacher volunteer would ask questions through a headset to the victim volunteer, and whenever a question was answered incorrectly, the teacher would increase the level of voltage administered to the victim.
There is a moral blind spot in the treatment of animals that enable us to justify the cruelties for the perceived benefits of humans. Animals are living things. They have lungs which breathe, hearts which beat, and blood that flows. In fact, animals sense of smell, sight, and sound is much more acute than our own. Therefore, we can assume that their sensitivity to pain is at least equal to ours. According to Hippocrates, “The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.” This can go with the Duty Theory that states that every individual gets treated the same. The intentions of animal testing is not to harm the animals, but that is exactly what it does.
The real focus of the experiment is the teacher. He will be in charge of a shock generator. The teacher does not know that the learner, supposedly the victim, is actually an actor who receives no shock whatsoever. Again this experiment is to see if the teacher proceeds with the shocks that are ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim.
In the following essay I will be looking into the study conducted by Watson and Rayner (1920) on a small child known as ‘Little Albert’. The experiment was an adaptation of earlier studies on classical conditioning of stimulus response, one most common by Ivan Pavlov, depicting the conditioning of stimulus response in dogs. Watson and Rayner aimed to teach Albert to become fearful of a placid white rat, via the use of stimulus associations, testing Pavlov’s earlier theory of classical conditioning.
Imagine the pain the animals go through every day. According to the Humane Society International in 2010 The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that “97,123 animals suffered pain during experiments while being given no anesthesia for relief. The testing involved 5,996 rabbits, 33,652 guinea pigs, 48,015 hamsters etc...” (HSI). . It is horrifying how many animals are tested every year. As normal humans who have feelings, the people in the lavatories who are testing the animals should have some remorse and use the alternatives to animal testing. People shouldn’t be allowed to do anything to the poor defenseless animals that they wouldn’t do to
Every year about 100 million animals suffer through being poisoned, shocked, and burned for unsuccessful medical research. Some may believe that animal testing is a crucial part to medical research and should be used more frequently. Others believe the pain and suffering inflicted upon the animals is morally wrong and should not be done, no matter what benefits come from it.
Martin Seligman and Steven Maier performed a study in 1967 that proved Learned Helplessness. “Seligman found that dogs exposed to inescapable and unavoidable electric shocks in one situation later failed to learn to escape shock in a different situation where escape was possible” (Maier, 1967 ). Dogs were placed in an area where shocks could be avoided and dogs showed that they eventually learned how to escape the shocks every time. He placed dogs during his experiment in the line of shocks that were random and unable to avoid. The dogs showed Learned Helplessness when the last shocks were avoidable, but didn’t make any move to escape or avoid it. In a sense, the dogs gave up after believing in the beginning the shock was unavoidable.
In 1961, Stanley Milgram, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University wanted to study and observe how people would react to authority if asked to continue on a task even if it meant hurting another human being. The experiment first began at night in a small shadowy room. For the experiment, it required three people, there was first the volunteer which was a random person from the street who was considered the teacher in the experiment. Then their was the two actors who Milgram had payed them to be in the experiment, one of the two actors was the leaner who was strapped to the electric
The Little Albert experiment has become a widely known case study that is continuously discussed by a large number of psychology professionals. In 1920, behaviorist John Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner began to conduct one of the first experiments done with a child. Stability played a major factor in choosing Albert for this case study, as Watson wanted to ensure that they would do as little harm as possible during the experiment. Watson’s method of choice for this experiment was to use principles of classic conditioning to create a stimulus in children that would result in fear. Since Watson wanted to condition Albert, a variety of objects were used that would otherwise not scare him. These objects included a white rat, blocks, a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat, wool, and a Santa Claus mask. Albert’s conditioning began with a series of emotional tests that became part of a routine in which Watson and Rayner were determining whether other stimuli’s could cause fear.
After a number of repeated this procedures, Pavlov tried to ring his bell by its own... ... middle of paper ... ... classical conditioning, and conditioned emotional responses, 2014. http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/pavlov.html 8. Strengths and weakness, 2014.
Clark, R. E. (2004). The Classical Origins of Pavlov's Conditioning. Integrative Physiological & Behavioral Science, 39(4), 279-294.
Animal experimentation is not reliable form of experimenting because humans and animals have completely different immune systems. Items that humans use for pain suppressants could prove to be very harmful to small animals. For example, several small mice at an unknown non government funded facility were given aspirin although in theory it is said that mice and rats have an immune system similar to that of a human being, the rats used for the testing were unable to handle the level of toxins in the aspirin tablet that a human can handle fairly easily, several of these rats and mice died. The torture of these innocent creatures is another example of corporate greed which has gotten to the point that harming innocent creatures is considered the best possible and “cheapest” ...
Ivan Pavlov: Pavlov is famous for his work which he described as ‘conditional reflex’. He demonstrated this through his experiments with dogs. He drilled holes through the cheeks of dogs where he inserted a probe to detect salivation. He then conditioned them by ringing a bell when they were presented with food. Eventually, he discovered that just by the ringing of a bell the dogs would begin to salivate in anticipation of fo...