Use of Animal Research When Used to Evaluate Explanations of Human Aggression

Use of animal research when used to evaluate explanations of human aggression

Organise the points below into 2 effective paragraphs that give a POINT, EXAMPLE and ELABORATION on the use of animal research as support for explanations of human aggression.

For example, Wagner et al (1979)found that if a male mouse is castrated, overall levels of aggression tend to reduce. If the castrated mouse receives testosterone, aggression levels increase.

However, it may be that we need to be cautious when generalising the results from animal studies of testosterone and aggression to explaining this behaviour in humans.

For example, Wagner’s research studied focussed solely on ‘hostile’ aggressive by mice; aggression that is easily observable. We know from examples of human aggression that we act aggressively in far more complex ways, such as pro-social aggression (e.g. a police shooting a terrorist to prevent greater harm) and are often psychologically or verbally aggressive.

This suggests that it is possible to generalise the results of nonhuman research to explaining human aggression as caused by biological mechanisms, thereby lending academic credibility to the theory that increased testosterone causes aggression.

A strength of the explanation that high levels of testosterone may cause increased aggression comes from research studies.

This suggests that we may not be able to use Wagner’s research into mice to explain all acts of human aggression and this therefore limits the support for the idea that increased testosterone is a valid explanation of human aggression.

Nonetheless, research with a focus on non-human aggression has suggestedthat there is a link between offensive aggression in laboratory rodents and human hostile or ‘angry’ aggression and that these studies can be applied to certain types of human aggression.

This research suggests that testosterone correlates with aggression in laboratory animals and is motivated by the expectation that the results of this study may be applicable to human aggression as well.

For example, Blanchard and Blanchard (2003) found that aggression aimed to seek resources (including status and territory) and compete can be generalised to humans. Although the responses of humans have been altered by human verbal, technological, and social advancements, there is evidence that humans target blows, similar to the pattern of offensive aggression in many nonhumans.Finally, for people as well as for animals, fear of defeat or punishment is a major factor inhibiting the expression of offensive aggression.

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