Animal Research and Human Empathy

So today's post is long it is a paper I needed to write for class. The long version is below, this is the nutshell version. Human's have empathy for other species. The further we get away from species that look like and act like us the less empathy we have for them. When writing we need to build on this empathy and recognize few readers are going to fall in love with a main character that looks like a cockroach. If you want more read below :)

While reading these articles the question that kept coming up was, why do we not want to do animal research? Festing and Wilkinson (2007) explain in their article “The ethics of animal research” that if animal research was done away with “it would have enormous and severe consequences for scientific research.” Overmier and Carroll (2001) recall the many benefits that science has provided for our societies and race. Further, they explain that many of the comforts that we have today are due to the scientific studies that have been conducted in the past, many of which included animal “models.”

            So, the question, why do we not want to do animal research, comes back to mind. Saucier and Cain (2006) also looked into this question and set up a study in which they examined the beliefs of individuals in why they would or would not want to do animal research. They came up with several reasons why people believed the way they believe. It seemed to me that the beliefs centered around knowledge of the individual about the procedures and necessity of the research conducted on the animal subject.

            Festing and Wilkinson (2007) discuss the importance of knowledge and how the public should be made more aware of the process in which animals are used to further research. In a past class the professor discussed the importance of educating the public on the projects that are being conducted. The example that was used was a facility that was going to be used to store toxic waste in Arizona. The project was part of a plan to work with several states in order to meet requirements of storing hazardous wastes including nuclear. Those in charge of the project did not educate the public on the project and so it was protested by those against the project using scare tactics that eventually ended the project. To date, nothing is being done with the wastes in the state. If the public had been made aware of the entire details then they would not have fought against the project because they would have realized that the most dangerous waste, nuclear, was going to a different state. This is how I think we, as researchers, get ourselves into trouble because we do not educate the public about what we are doing.

            Still, the question comes back, why do we not want to use animals in research? It may seem strange that I keep coming back to the same question but I think it has something to do with what the articles are talking about, education. I think about the general public and what they believe. They trust the internet more than the professional, the guy on Dr. Phil more than the psychologist they have been seeing for years and the late night radio host talking about aliens than what is right in front of them. This gets me to the point of why I think many people are against animal research.

            I have never been against animal research but, I found myself questioning this while reading the articles, and like I said earlier, the question why kept coming up. I realized, for me, that it was a matter of putting myself in the animals place. How would I feel if an advanced race, aliens, came, invaded the earth and decided that I would be a good “model” for their research. Images of movies flashed through my mind as I envisioned myself lying on a steel table unable to move. Yes, it is ridiculous, but it is also what I perceive as a great strength of the human race, empathy.

            As humans, we have the ability to empathize with not only others of our kind but also other species. The further we get away from a species that we can identify with, the less empathy we have for that species. Such as a cockroach, I can smash it without thinking twice. However, to smash a bunny, I don’t think I could do it. This ability for empathy of similar species is well known to writers. A writer needs to gain the audiences’ sympathy for the main character or the book will fail. In order to do this the main character must be similar to the reader in not only psychological characteristics but, also physical characteristics. A good example of this is Avatar, even though the alien race was not human they looked very human and we could identify with them.

            This takes me to the main point of what I am getting at. We identify with animals because of our fear and empathy. We can picture ourselves, our parents, and our kids in similar situations. For this reason it is so important that researchers educate the public on how and why the studies are being conducted. They need to help the public become more aware of the benefits of the research. However, more importantly, educate the public on the costs of not doing the research. I don’t think anyone would want to go back to the days that Overmier and Marilyn (2001) describe, “…infant and mother mortality rates were very high. Those children who did survive were battered by a variety of fatal or debilitating diseases (e.g., whooping cough, measles, rheumatic fever, and infantile paralysis).”

            Animal research, at this point in the history of man, is a necessary evil, but that does not mean that it cannot be done humanely. It is also important that we as future researchers understand the importance of educating the masses on what we are doing and more importantly why we want to do animal research.

Risky Decision Making

This next post is from a study done by Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). It is an amazing study that looked at why people make risky decisions. The found out that people make decisions based on losses and gains as opposed to the probability of those losses or gains. An example: 

"Imagine your country is preparing for the outbreak of a disease expected to kill 600 people. If program A is adopted, exactly 200 people will be saved. If program B is adopted there is a 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved and a 2/3 probability that no people will be saved." 

In this example more people chose option A (72%) because the example is presented in gains. The same example just presented in terms of loss: 

"Imagine your country is preparing for the outbreak of a disease expected to kill 600 people. If program A is adopted, exactly 400 people will die. If program B is adopted there is a 1/3 probability that no one will die and a 2/3 probability that 600 people will die."

Here more people chose option B (78%).

So from the examples we learn that people don't really care about the odds but are more concerned with how it is worded or in other words what are they going to lose.

When writing our stories we need to see how we are presenting ultimatums. Are we looking at them from the perspective of odds or from gains and losses. The character is more likely going to make the choice depending on how it is presented rather than the odds of success or failure.

Dreams

When we sleep we go through different stages. When we first fall asleep we are in stage 1 which is a light sleep and progressively we move into deeper and deeper sleep (stage 4). We then cycle down until we approach stage 1 in which we enter a different kind of sleep Rapid Eye Movement (REM). It is in this stage in which we begin to dream. We then go back and forth in between REM and NREM (when we don't dream).

Something interesting happens when we are in REM, our bodies become immobilized which is a protection from acting out our dreams. Also a study was conducted by Dement that showed that we need to dream and in fact if a person goes without dreaming the next night they will end up dreaming more than usual. Also in the study it showed that there was a slight increase of weight gain by not being allowed to dream.

As we write sleep into our characters lives we need to understand their sleep patterns and how they work. Are they getting deprivation of sleep and/or dreams? They should be having the "big" dreams in the morning when more people have dreams or is this what makes the dream unique because it happens immediately upon falling asleep.?. Dreams can be a great way to move our characters and to give insight into our story to our readers. It is also a great way to show foreshadowing.

How do the dreams affect our characters? Do they believe in the dreams they are having? Are they grouchy for the rest of the day? You know the days I'm talking about you wake up after dreaming about fighting with significant other and you are angry at them for the rest of the day.

Keep in mind the sleep patterns of your characters and how all that sleeping on hard ground is affecting them. How do you interpret your dreams?

Our Perceptions

So i'm reading my book about studies and came upon a cool part of human ability that I often leave out of my books. That is perception. Now I'm talking about physical perceptions no abstract perceptions. So, let me explain a little. So we have senses (hearing, feeling, smelling, seeing, tasting) that we are constantly taking in. Pause for a moment and try and think of something you are sensing at this moment from all five senses. Go ahead I'll wait.....Ok did you pick one out for each sense. It is amazing how much we sense and equally amazing how much our mind ignores. So our perceptual processes are doing three general things: 1) selecting the senses to pay attention to; 2) organizing these senses; 3) interpreting this organization and making sense of the world around us.

Our brain uses several tricks to make sense of this: 1) figure-ground (this is where we can focus in on one thing and ignore the other things. Think about the picture of the old and young women. Some see the young and some see the old but then they are able to switch it as well); 2) Perceptual Constancies (that is knowing and perceiving objects the same even though our senses are giving us new information about the object. For example as you walk around a chair the senses are telling you new things about it but you still see it as the same object);  3) Size Constancy (This is being able to tell that when you are 5 blocks away from a bus you know that it is not a toy).

The question is how much is learned and how much is innate, nature vs. nurture. This study talks about a man who has lived his entire life in a jungle and when he leaves he sees a mountain for the first time over a distance. He does not know how to comprehend it and can't tell if it is a mountain or a cloud. Later he sees a buffalo from a long way away and wonders what kind of insect it is. He has not learned how to perceive the size constancy outside of the jungle.

Okay so how does this apply to writing. First we need to understand the senses that are around us. As an exercise spend 5 minutes a day becoming aware of the sensations that your senses are telling you about then write them down. Remember all 5. Second when we write about our characters going into new environments and  places how are their perceptions reacting to those new places? Are they able to comprehend the things around them?

The Brain

So today I received a book called "Forty Studies that changed Psychology" by Roger R. Hock. The first study that he looks at is "One Brain or two" which was a study conducted in 1976 by Gazzaniga, M.S. In this study the researchers were wanting to better understand how the two halves of the brain worked. There are extreme cases of seizure in which a surgery is conducted in which the corpus callosum (this is the structure that connects the right and left hemisphere together) is cut to prevent or reduce seizures. So the researchers conducted tests on these patients to see how they would respond.

What they found is that the left hemisphere of the brain is superior to the right for speech while it seemed visual spatial abilities were more proficient with the left hand which means it was tied to the right hemisphere of the brain (you see as the nerves go from some parts of our body they cross over and so the left side is controlled by the right and vice verse).

So what does this all have to do with our characters and understanding them better? This is an extremely small taste of the research that has been conducted on the brain. I think the more that we as authors understand the brain and how it works we will better understand characteristics of our characters that are unique to them. In this study I could then look at a character who has a brain injury to a certain side and understand how it might affect that character. Or perhaps he gets clubbed in the back of the head and goes blind for a day or two (the rear part of our brains is where I sight is processed). By understanding the brain we can better understand how our characters act and respond to the environment.

So what interesting facts have the rest of you learned about the brain? How have you applied it to your writing?

Society vs The Individual

This is a big question in my mind lately. What is more important the society that a person resides in or the individual. Today in our ethics class we discussed a fictitious vignette about a study on cancer. The researchers were studying a hypothetical drug that was curing some kids but others were getting sicker and dying. All of the kids were terminally ill. The question is do we stop research because of the few terminally ill children that are dying sooner than expected even though the drug is beneficial and saving others. This is the whole idea of what is more important society or the individual.

When we are creating our characters we need to understand their viewpoint on this. We need to know what they would do in certain ethical dilemmas. Would they stop the study because of the harm being done to the few or would they continue because the benefit outweighs the cost of the few. This can greatly influence how they react in certain situations. Will they forget the world because their family is in dire trouble or will they say it is more important to save the world. We see this all the time in the different shows that we watch.

I suggest to truly get to know our main characters we should put them in hypothetical situations where they need to make ethical decisions. Make sure that they are not easy dilemmas to solve but that they make you really evaluate the values of your character.

What ethical dilemmas do you find your characters in?

What I have been doing?

Hello to all of you who have been wondering where I have been and to those who just may not care :) I apologize for my absence and want all to know that I am doing well. I plan on starting to post again and have missed the wonderful interactions that I have had with all of you. So today's post is a catch up of the past month.

First I proposed my thesis and passed. Yeah!! This is very exciting because now I can start working on the data that I have. My thesis is looking at juvenile drug courts and comparing those who graduate and those who do not graduate. This is going to be interesting because hopefully it will help selection teams to either look at who they are selecting and/or change their program to better fit those who are not graduating.

I am also working on another project that will be evaluating the studies that have been done over the years. Specifically I will be looking at how have they changed after the Institutional Review Board (IRB) came into existence. The IRB is the reviewing board for all studies that are conducted. They evaluate the ethics behind the studies to ensure that the cost/benefits are inline and more importantly that studies like the Milgram project and prison experiment do not happen again. I will be evaluating how studies are benefiting society now or if they have become to stifled because of IRB restrictions. This whole idea comes from my wonderings of what is more important the society or the individual. Is society hurting because of our emphasis on the individual? Have we gone far enough to protect the individual from society? So this is a big theme in my life and in fact a lot of my books look at this question.

School has started again and this semester has been overwhelming as you can tell by the lack of posts. However the exciting thing is that I am in practicum and so I am actually working in the schools once a week.

I also have queried my book to a couple of places and one of them even requested a full. This is very exciting because it means that they enjoyed the first three chapters enough to want to read more.

I went to League of Utah writers conference and it reinvigorated me to write again. I have been working on my WIP and I have developed the magic system and the technology. I have also been playing around with Dragon Age's portrait creator to make pictures of my main characters. This is a wonderful resource BTW.

So that is life in a nutshell. How are the rest of you doing? Any exciting and earth shattering news? Is there anything that you want to hear about? Have a wonderful day!