Experiments that had been conducted in the last century were often very cruel and had a negative impact on a life of a person or an animal. Harming of people must have stopped and ethics have become a very important element of every psychological study. Nowadays, every experimenter or psychologist, who wants to conduct an experiment must make sure that his/her experiment is ethical. By doing so, we are trying to avoid harming both humans and animals.
Even though conducting of unethical and cruel experiments such as the "Little Albert Experiment" was not a right thing to do, these studies did help to gain knowledge now often used in psychology. On one hand, it was very immoral from J. B. Watson to conduct an experiment on a little orphan who wasn't able to neither agree nor disagree with a participation. What made the whole experiment even more inhuman was that Albert's behavior had completely changed. After the experiment this little boy feared everything that was fluffy and white. On the other hand, Watson's experiment demonstrated the classical conditioning on humans, which was a big contribution to psychology since before classical conditioning was demonstrated just on animals in Pavlov's Dogs Experiment.
Other horrible experiments that have brought many questions were "Monkey Drug Trials." It is well known that the animal experimentation such as "Monkey Drug Trials" can be incredibly helpful in understanding humans and developing life saving drugs. Psychologists would never use real people for such a dangerous experiment so they decided to demonstrate the effects of drugs on defenseless animals. Monkeys in the experiment were trained to inject themselves with substances such as morphine, alcohol or cocaine. They were arguing that animals do not feel pain. On the contrary, there is a plenty of people who strongly disagree with animal experimentation which has created a controversial topic. People who are against using animals in experiments claim that if animals do not feel pain, then they are probably a lot different than humans. Therefore, it is pretty useless to conduct experiments on animals if they are not like us. Another important fact they often mention is that animals do feel pain and if someone decides to conduct an experiment like "Monkey Drug Trials" then they certainly hurt those animals.Sometimes we should rather ask ourselves if we should not if we can.
Even though conducting of unethical and cruel experiments such as the "Little Albert Experiment" was not a right thing to do, these studies did help to gain knowledge now often used in psychology. On one hand, it was very immoral from J. B. Watson to conduct an experiment on a little orphan who wasn't able to neither agree nor disagree with a participation. What made the whole experiment even more inhuman was that Albert's behavior had completely changed. After the experiment this little boy feared everything that was fluffy and white. On the other hand, Watson's experiment demonstrated the classical conditioning on humans, which was a big contribution to psychology since before classical conditioning was demonstrated just on animals in Pavlov's Dogs Experiment.
Other horrible experiments that have brought many questions were "Monkey Drug Trials." It is well known that the animal experimentation such as "Monkey Drug Trials" can be incredibly helpful in understanding humans and developing life saving drugs. Psychologists would never use real people for such a dangerous experiment so they decided to demonstrate the effects of drugs on defenseless animals. Monkeys in the experiment were trained to inject themselves with substances such as morphine, alcohol or cocaine. They were arguing that animals do not feel pain. On the contrary, there is a plenty of people who strongly disagree with animal experimentation which has created a controversial topic. People who are against using animals in experiments claim that if animals do not feel pain, then they are probably a lot different than humans. Therefore, it is pretty useless to conduct experiments on animals if they are not like us. Another important fact they often mention is that animals do feel pain and if someone decides to conduct an experiment like "Monkey Drug Trials" then they certainly hurt those animals.Sometimes we should rather ask ourselves if we should not if we can.
