...The Study of Animal Behavior through Comparative Psychology I have found that the use of comparative psychology to study animal behavior has been a most crucial part in the development of todays’ society in humans alike. Comparative psychology is a branch of psychology popularly focused on comparing animal behavior to human behavior. Essentially comparative psychology focuses on animal psychology and the implications that science may have on our understanding of human psychology. Comparative psychology, which involves the study of mental processes and behavior in other animals, is also known as ethology or behavioral biology. Comparative researchers have a wide variety of jobs from studying animals in cages and controlled environments to traveling to distant places in far off countries to study animals in their natural environments. Many of the jobs people prefer tend to include working in laboratories, zoos or aquariums. The psychologists study animals and their behaviors in the wild to compare and contrast their findings. Most times comparative researchers spend their time teaching others about what they have either observed or learned from others experienced in the field of study. The study of animal behavior is enormously diverse, largely because behavior is focused to so many aspects of an animal's biology. Virtually any kind of behavior performed by an animal may be the subject of study. Some questions that have attracted considerable interest include...
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...Interaction: Animals Behavior and Mankind Have you ever gone to the zoo and wondered, “What is that animal thinking about? What really is goes on when we are aren’t here staring at them for hours?” The perception people have of modern day zoos is that they are there to save species, protect them from the real world, and just think they are happy as ever. Well if one were to sit down and do some research they would see that they have some much more ethical questions to ask themselves next time they walked into a zoo. But one thing one may not notice is that animals can react differently in their exhibit depending on who is outside the glass watching them. Males or females, old or young, animal’s behavior can be observed as different and the question becomes why? In many human-animal interactions, men and woman interact with animals similar. But when it comes to the protection, involvement, and overall care for the animal’s well being, woman have a greater impact than men. Gender differences can be deemed large in the animal’s behavior according to psychologist, Harold Herzog. This then raises an interesting question: When in captivity, are we compromising the animal’s welfare by not confronting the behavioral and psychological changes based on gender differences? Animal rights are the idea that animals essentially have the same rights as humans. They should be able to live free of suffrage, just like any human and with the same moral status as well. In 1966 the Animal Welfare...
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...Charles Darwin’s Work in the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals Kyubin Kim Texas A&M University-Commerce Charles Darwin’s Work in the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals There are major works done by Charles Darwin such as The Origin of Species or Decent of Man. Among them, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is also one of the major works of Charles Darwin. This book was published in 1872 and was an astonishing bestseller. After more than 100 years, a new edition of Darwin’s masterpiece is published edited by Paul Ekman who is one of the world’s leading authorities on facial expressions. The third edition contains the changes Darwin had wanted at that time, but it doesn’t cover much of it. While reading the book, it is easy to understand why Expression causes such an impression nowadays. Darwin in his book mentioned the things of our everyday life such as anger, joy, love, guilt, disgust, horror, modesty, and sulkiness. In addition, he also gives a scientific renovation to this. Darwin argued that human emotions are universal, and these emotions are derived and evolves from those animals. When the book was published, it was forgotten and ignored for a long time because its’ subject matter came to be at the center of not only scientific, but also of controversy and political. Back in time, various theories of world existed and the facts of human emotions were shaped by our experiences or by our biology theory were never going to be...
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...Animal Training at Sea World OPERANT CONDITIONING 1. Operant conditioning is the basis of animal training. It is a type of learning in which an animal learns (or, is conditioned) from its behaviors as it acts (operates) on the environment. In operant conditioning, the likelihood of a behavior is increased or decreased by the consequences that follow. That is, a behavior will happen either more often or less often, depending on its results. When an animal performs a particular behavior that produces a favorable consequence, the animal is likely to repeat that behavior. 2. Animals learn by the principles of operant conditioning every day. For example, woodpeckers find insects to eat by pecking holes in trees with their beaks. One day, a woodpecker finds a particular tree that offers an especially abundant supply of the bird's favorite bugs. The woodpecker is likely to return to that tree again and again. 3. Humans learn by the same principles. For example, consider the behavior of a child doing chores. Suppose a child voluntarily performs a chore, like cleaning the garage or washing the car. If the behavior is reinforced by positive attention such as praise, money, or some other reward, the child is likely to do additional chores on his own. If no positive attention were to follow, repeating that behavior would be less likely. 4. Animal trainers apply the principles of operant conditioning. If an animal performs a behavior that the trainer wants to see performed again, the...
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...Running Head: EMPATHY AND SOCIAL LEARNING Developing Empathy: Nurturing Through Social Learning Abstract This paper explores the Social Learning Theory and how prosocial behavior, specifically empathy, is cultured through observation, modeling and imitation. Empathy is defined through a review of Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment, Jeremy Sloan’s article on developing empathy and the impact it has on animals in our world, and an assessment of empathy in future criminal justice professionals. All provide evidence and data to support the finding that adults have lasting influence on children and how ones behavior is formed. Empathy is a vital trait and it’s a primary requisite for successfully managing daily experiences. Key words: Empathy, Modeling, Social Learning, and Development Introduction The development of empathy allows us the innate ability to relate to another’s experiences, motives and feelings. It is the foundation of compassion and caring, and is monumental in many of life’s challenges and successes. It is what allows us to learn from others and become responsible, caring adults. Many significant professions require empathy: medical care, fire rescue, education, criminal justice, and most importantly parenting. Tragic events such as slavery and the Holocaust illuminate the significance of empathy, it’s part in humankind’s wellbeing, and how requisite it is to encourage healthy development of the trait (Sajo, 2011). It is therefore of utmost...
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...Use of Animals 1. Ethics in Psychological Research Paper Lillie Johnson Psych/540 March 3, 2013 Cindy Fouhy Use of Animals 2. Introduction Through the study of animals in different forms of research, psychologists have introduced to us a understanding that is better of human issues in which solving a problem have been easily found. Issues in human like aging, drug addition, side effects, and anxiety have been built through the use of animals. In psychological research, the rules of ethics is a important idea. The rules supply an outline in which researchers are obligated to supply information concerning the motive of the research, deception in research, the use of animals in studies of research, and human care. My paper will focus on the use of animals as an issue of classical ethics in...
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...there are increasing numbers of humans starting to pay more attention to animal’s right. More and more people try to establish an ethic for animals and construct a moral standard for how animals should be treated. They claimed that treating animals well and giving animals respect is the fundamental moral behavior for human beings. According to Kantian account, the moral principle is that people who treat animals in some ways, afterward, they would treat human beings in the same ways. It means that people will mistreat their friends, families or others after they were used to mistreat animals. We can imagine that if we get used to hurt animals in order to find excitement or release angry, as time passes, we will acquire a habit to get excitement or let off our indignant and dissatisfaction from making others suffering. I think it is a very horrible conduct, people will have a serious psychological problem, and it can lead humans to kill people to find higher excitement. Treating animals well means treating human beings’ well. Apart from the principle of treating animals, people also concern about how animals may be treated involved the ideas of cruelty. All of us have duty to protect animals, to prevent them from being treated cruelly. Animals are people’s close friends, they give us lots of help. For example, dogs help police to find out murders and help blind people to walk, some other animals were used in experiments by human beings to do study, and some...
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...Regulatory Behavior Paper PSY/340 2/9/2015 Tiffany Tibbs Regulatory Behavior Paper Temperature is very important in many ways and more than one and is very vital to human and animal lives. As humans we don’t hibernate but, animals do and it is amazing how smart they are that they literally will tuck away for spring and some for winter. Researchers tend to think it’s because certain animals are mating but, in actuality it’s just too cold for them. Even as I look out my window and see the smaller birds who I feed throughout the year, peaking above my ledge right outside my window peeking for food, they do not want to come out at all. The research team hypothesized that there was a minimum weight threshold below which the birds have been limited yet are needed to test the validity of this interesting hypothesis. For example, and in stark contrast to behavioral studies. Hypothesis on what defines the cognitive rift between humans and animals. He identifies four key differences in human thought that make it unique. Animals, for example, have "laser beam" intelligence, in which a specific solution is used to solve a specific problem. But these solutions cannot be applied to new situations or to solve different kinds of problem. In contrast, humans have "floodlight" cognition, allowing us to use thought processes in new ways and to apply the solution of one problem to another situation Their behavior is almost survival and unlike ducks and larger bird like wild turkey they...
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...Catherine Williams August 30, 2015 SOP 4005 – 1M Assignment Week 1 A Differentiate between social behavior and culture. Provide an example. To me there isn’t a big difference in social behavior and culture. Social behavior is behavior directed towards society, or taking place between members of the same species. An example of social behavior would be not cursing in public. Culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. One example of culture is All Souls’ Day where festivities are celebrated on November 1st and 2nd in Mexico. It is also celebrated in other countries but mostly Mexico. Although they are very similar they are not the same. How does culture influence human behavior? How does nature influence human behavior? Provide an example of each. Culture is prominent role in how we interact with people. The place where we’ve grown up is influencing our approach to others. Nonverbal communication aids in the influence of culture to human behavior. According to the culture we belong to, gestures, space distance from you to other people, and physical contact may vary a lot. One example are individuals from independent cultures, such as the United States, tend to value autonomy, uniqueness, freedom, and right to self-expression; whereas individuals from interdependent cultures, such...
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...information that comes in to the person (stimuli) and how this treatment leads to responses. In other words, they are interested in the variables that mediate between stimulus/input and response/output. The main areas of study in cognitive psychology are: perception, attention, memory and language. The essence of the behavioral approach is the statement that all behavior is learned and that when we are born we are like a blank slate. Experience and interactions with the environment make us what we are. We become what we become as a result of forming stimulus-response units of behavior in reaction to the environment. This perspective has been called environmental determinism because it suggests that the environments in which we exist determine us. The second statement is that all behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning theory: stimulus and response (S-R) links that build up to produce more complex behaviors. In essence, conditioning refers to changing behavior in the absence of conscious thought, as in saying “I am conditioned to behave in that way”. The third main statement is that we need look no further than the behaviors we can observe in order to understand and explain how...
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...objectively testing it. The next objective of the article is to evaluate the concept of intuition as it relates to the science of behavior. Beach concerns himself with the problem that behaviorists often just name or label instincts and he cautions what will happen when this phenomenon assumes that no learning is involved in this process. Beach states that from the beginning, instinct has been defined and discussed in terms of its relation to reason and the human soul. During the fourth century B.C. the Greek philosopher Heraclitus stated that there are two types of creation. Men and gods were the products of rational creation, and irrational beings were in a separate category of living creatures. Heraclitus observed that only gods and men possess souls. This close relation between rational powers and the possession of a soul would be reaffirmed again during the next 2500 years. Heraclitus in all actuality laid the groundwork for the development and concept of instinct. Philosophers of the first century A.D. held that men and gods belong to one community since they are rational beings. All animals were excluded since they are not creatures of reason and their most complex behavior takes place without reflection, as stated by Seneca. Neither Heraclitus nor the Stoics based these conclusions upon objective evidence. They assumed that animals lack a rational soul. Aristotle placed man above the Indian elephant, with superior intellectual powers, but none distinct from...
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...Men have always believed that humans ascended from lower species of animals, Mark Twain argued that claim and believed the Charles Darwin theory was false and set out to prove his theory wrong. Mark Twain conducted experiment on the disposition and traits of lower animals and compared the finding to the disposition and traits of humans. His experiment were conducted at the London Zoological Garden. Through his experiments he found evidence that the human species were avarice, destructive and cruel and did not find the same trait and disposition in other animals. In Mark Twain’s essay, The Damned Human Race” he prove his claim through experiments that the descent of men are from higher animals. By comparing animals and human Mark Twain can prove that human traits are cruel and human behaviors are cold hearted which is worse than animals. The experiment will also prove that animal only kill for what they need to survive. In Mark Twain first experiment, he observes an English nobleman killing a heard of buffaloes, only to eat one and the rest of the buffaloes lay to rot. Twain conducted an experiment with an anaconda in the cage with several calves. The anaconda killed and ate one of the calves, but did not harm the...
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...application of the principles of biology (in particular neurobiology), to the study of physiological, genetic, and developmental mechanisms of behavior in humans and non-human animals. It typically investigates at the level of neurons, neurotransmitters, brain circuitry and the basic biological processes that underlie normal and abnormal behavior. Often, experiments in behavioral neuroscience involve non-human animal models (such as rats and mice, and non-human primates) which have implications for better understanding of human pathology and therefore contribute to evidence-based practice. II. Application: To apply this branch of psychology, we should have knowledge on these three biological perspective and consider them to understand the behavior of a person, animal or of an organism. The biological perspective which is relevant to the study of psychology in three ways: 1. Comparative method: different species of animal can be studied and compared. This can help in the search to understand human behavior. 2. Physiology: how the nervous system and hormones work, how the brain functions, how changes in structure and/or function can affect behavior. For example, we could ask how prescribed drugs to treat depression affect behavior through their interaction with the nervous system. 3. Investigation of inheritance: what an animal inherits from its parents, mechanisms of inheritance (genetics). For example, we might want to know whether high intelligence is inherited from...
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...and this point of view is called eclectic. This term refers to the claim that no one perspective has all the answers to the variety of human thought and behavior. Psychologists tend to use various perspectives in their work depending on which point of view fits best with the explanation. |Approach & Its Influential Period |Principle Contributors |Subject Matter |Basic Premise | | |Carl Rogers-Person-centered therapy|Unique aspects of human |Belief that we choose most of our behaviors and | |Humanistic |and unconditional positive regard |experience |these choices are guided by physiological, | |(1950s-Present) |Abraham Maslow-Hierarchy of Needs | |emotional or spiritual needs. Humans are free, | | |and Self-Actualization | |rational beings with the potential for personal | | | | |growth, and they are fundamentally different from | | | | |animals. | | |Sigmund Freud-Personality and |Unconscious determinants...
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...perspectives on psychology I've selected are behavioral, humanistic, and evolutionary. Behaviorism is the study of behaviors that can be seen or measured. It is a how psychologist can measure the relationship between consequences and behavior itself. In the example used an animal was used to measure the change in behavior depending on if it was a reward or punishment. In humanistic, which is the focus on the positive and growth aspects of human nature. It is know for having lack of control that people have over their own lives. Last of all is evolutionary, this is how humans adapt traits and characteristic that have evolved through natural selection. This theory was also based off of the Charles Darwin theory of evolution and it's principles of natural selection. The goals of psychology are applicable in life because goal one is used to help researchers or psychologist describe what I'd being observed. This can be used to conduct more assessments later on and can be used in any publications to describe what went on through the observation. Goal two is used to explain, which is to organize and understand observations of behaviors. In the example listed the psychologist noticed a change in the miners. So, in order to figure out what caused the change the psychologist devolved an explanation for their findings. Predict is the third goal which is to predict behaviors or outcomes. Psychologist can use this goal to make predictions about what will happen in the future. In the example...
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