Furthermore, Suzuki effectively discusses the quality of life for the animals being tested, and the depressing and deprived realities that these helpless animals survive. Suzuki makes valid points throughout his article including his statement, “What gives us the right to exploit other living organisms as we see fit? How do we know that these other creatures do not feel pain or anguish just as we do?”(p.91). Suzuki utilizes pathos to strengthen his argument and attempts to shape the opinion of the public. Is it intelligence that determines the animal’s self-worth and right to live, or is it that animals may possess the same if not identical Neuroanatomy of humans?
6. Biological Psychology is the study of biological bases of psychological processes and behavior. Historical development of biological psychology, is explained by the fact that humans as well as animals can change according to environment, this is important in order to understand just how biology and psychology go together. This is an understanding that dates back to the ancient Greeks. Plato was the one that proposed that it was the brain that was indeed the organ of all reasoning.
Three theories constitute this category. The first one is B.F. Skinner’s behavioral analysis. Skinner studied animals and humans and based their personality off their behavior. He believed that only observable behavior could be studied and his approach was labeled radical behaviorism (Feist & Feist, 2009, p. 441). Next is the social cognitive theory, created by Albert Bandura.
This form of psychology is involved with the mind-body dispute and researchers how they affect one another. Biological psychology thrives to explain the brain and the nervous system and how they relate to human characteristics such as learning, thinking, feeling, and perception. The biopsychological approach includes an assumption that biological events can cause mental consequences and vise versa. The main assumption is that the mental process and biological events are directly linked together and work as one. The history of biological psychology dates all the way back to the Greeks.
The first of the theories involved in this approach is classical conditioning. This theory was developed by a Russian psychologist called Ivan Pavlov. He did an experiment with dogs to investigate their digestive systems. Classical conditioning theory involves learning a new behavior via the process of association. Two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a person or animal.
Most psychologists today agree that the concept of mind and body have merit. But, more important is to provide empirical evidence to confirm the relationship between mind and body (The History of Psychology, 2006). The Beginnings of Modern Psychology Rene Descartes (1596-1650), a French mathematician and philosopher, took up the viewpoint that introspection and reflection are investigatory methods superior to observation. Descartes revived the Platonic ideas of mind-body dualism and innate (versus acquired) knowledge. He said that what separates humans from animals is that humans have a non-material, spiritual mind and a material body.
Ethology refers to an animal’s behavior. Behavior is a result of a detectable change in the animal’s internal or external environment. These responses may be chemical or physical. The non-human primate is our closest relative, and to get a better understanding of our biological origins we study their behavior. Ethologist Niko Tinbergen, observed animals in their natural conditions and manipulated those conditions to learn how they respond.
It is a key mechanism of evolution. The term "natural selection" was popularized by Charles Darwin who intended it to be compared with artificial selection, what we now call selective breeding. Basically its means when an individual of a species has a good trait such as long legs and breeds
Foundations of Psychology Greg Ustel 01/12/2014 PSY/300 ANGELIQUE GRADY Behavioral Approach to Psychology Behaviorism is a concept of psychology that is centered on learning Ivan Pavlov was one of the first know scholars to establish behavior studies on animals. He claimed that behavior was the most valid source of information because mental events cannot be observed (Sullivan Ed. 2009). The three basic functions of behaviorism are reward, punishment, and reinforcement. This type of behavior has been used to study animals and humans alike.
Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer Leda Cosmides & John Tooby Introduction The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and understand the design of the human mind. Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It is not an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it. In this view, the mind is a set of information-processing machines that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors.