What do psychologists do?

Ethical principles guide psychology research and practice

It may sure begin our understanding of what psychologists do by diving into animal research. While psychology is generally focused on humans, psychologists also study how animals think, behave, and live. For the most part, psychology researchers study animals when it would be unethical or very difficult to do the same thing with humans, and with the ultimate goal of better understanding human functioning. Animal behavior is also studied to support the well-being of the animals themselves. Animals also contribute to medical research – for example, when developing new medicines, they are often first tested in animals before humans. 

This type of animal-subject research has similarities but also differences from human-subject research. They are similar in how the research is conducted, and the fact that they both require a review and approval from a group that ensures the study is meeting ethical standards before it can commence. Animals have not always been given these protections, and unfortunately, there were many unethical studies done with animals in the past. Here you will read about one well-known, highly controversial study that took place in the 1960s before there were rules about how to treat animals humanely in experiments. After that, you will read about the Key Theme for this chapter and more about psychology history. Next, you will read a modern research example and then consider what an ethical student looks like.

Research Story: Elephants on Acid

Background and Research Question

In the early 1960’s, when psychedelic drugs were still being discovered and developed, a group of psychologists decided to give an elephant lysergic acid diethylamide, more commonly known as LSD. The background of this study is important to take into context; scientists were interested in the behavior of adult male elephants during their “musth” period. This occurs about once a year and for some elephants, only lasts a few days. But for others, it lasts a few months. The adult males become extremely violent and destructive during musth and even attack their own young. To better understand this “condition” that psychiatrists equated with being “mad” or “insane”, it needed to be induced, meaning putting an elephant into musth rather than wait for it to naturally occur. They knew that during musth, the elephant produces a fluid in a specific region of their brain, so they wondered if they could recreate it with a drug. The personality-disrupting effects of LSD in humans and other animals had recently been discovered, and these psychiatrists wanted to find out if an elephant-sized dose of LSD (297 mg) would put an elephant into musth.

The Study (What Did They Do?)

This study took two days and involved a single elephant named Tusko. On the first day, the researchers measured
baseline behavior by injecting Tusko with a placebo liquid. He had a startle response during the injection with a few minutes of restlessness before going back to his normal, resting state. That was considered Tusko’s baseline. The second day was the experimental day. The initial reaction of restlessness was the same, but things then got worse. Tusko lost coordination, fell over, and started to shake. Twenty minutes into this part of the experiment, the researchers injected another medication to try and help the still-seizing elephant, but it did not do much good. Unfortunately, Tusko died an hour and twenty minutes after being injected with LSD.

Results (What did they find? What did they learn?)

When they performed an autopsy on Tusko, the researchers learned how LSD affected the brain structure of this elephant. They concluded elephants are very sensitive to LSD, and both musth and LSD affect the same area in the elephant’s brain. They also learned that LSD does not produce the same liquid as a natural, meaning not-chemically induced, musth does.

The researchers then published and presented their results. This study remains a foundational one in psychology history, although not because of their findings. Tusko’s death was preventable, and the way this study was conducted contributed to the field’s discussion on the ethical treatment of animals in research. While this study did allow researchers to better understand animal psychology and neurology, the study with Tusko is considered one of the more unethical animal studies in the field of psychology. Further, we now know (through advances in science) musth occurs with an increase in particular hormones in the elephant’s brain, and that it indicates that they are healthy rather than “mad” or mentally ill.^[1]

 If you would like to read the original “Elephants on Acid” study,  you can do so through this link.

Commentary and Concepts

Experiments such as the one described above (Tusko the elephant) were pivotal in making strides toward stricter ethical guidelines for research. Why do we need formal guidelines? Why can’t people figure out what is right and wrong on their own? What do you think?

Have you ever pushed against a rule? Maybe you broke some rules growing up that didn’t make sense to you (like bedtime or wearing a coat when you did not feel cold), checked your cell phone in class, or rode your bike where the sign said “no bikes.” Let’s face it – people generally do no’t like being told what to do. While we like to know what is expected of us, we do not always like to follow “rules” just for the sake of it. Even if we know a rule will keep someone else (or us) safe, we might not believe it is important to follow. You can probably come up with several examples of everyday rule-breaking.

Often, our behavior is determined by our personal ethics, or moral code. This means that we use our values (what is good) and principles (what is right) to guide our behavior (what to do). The development of those values and principles is somewhat personal and influenced by our families and society. Sometimes our personal ethics align with the “law” and sometimes they do not. When we talk about ethics In a professional context, “rules” are often based on the values and principles of the discipline and guided by a basic respect for human dignity and safety. For example, medical doctors, lawyers, and even teachers have to take a test before they are allowed to practice their discipline. Almost all professions have to abide by a code of ethics – and if they fail to follow their code, they risk losing their licenses and/or jobs. Psychologists, too, follow ethical guidelines in their work. The next section describes different kinds of work in psychology and how they are guided by ethics.