Attitudes toward Animal Research among Psychology Students in Spain

Abstract

Animal research plays a central role in psychology, and its use, prevalence and quality depends on the attitudes of students who enter psychology in Spain. Attitudes among psychology students about the use of laboratory animals are not known, so the aim of this work was to analyze the attitudes of Spanish psychology students toward animal research. An attitude questionnaire of 15 items was given to 661 undergraduate students of the School of Psychology at the University of Málaga, Spain. Several results were found: (a) 65.7% of the respondents strongly agreed or agreed with animal research. General support for animal research was significantly higher by men than by women. (b) Support for animal research was higher for senior students, suggesting that the psychology curriculum or self-selection to remain in the program might influence students' attitudes. (c) Attitudes toward animal research were similar among students independent of the type of animal being used for research in biological or psychological studies. (d) 58% considered that laboratory animals never or almost never are inappropriately handled. (c) 55.6% indicated that research in psychology on animals could be generalized to humans. Overall, these results suggest that among Spanish psychology students animals research is considered important for the advancement of the science. Likewise, a majority of students displayed positive attitudes toward animal research.

Assessing undergraduate student and faculty views on animal research: What do they know, whom do they trust, and how much do they care?

“…Evaluations of demographic features of the responses allow us to refine our understanding of both student and faculty attitudes and their confidence in knowledge, and compare our respondent populations with those surveyed for other publications. A uniform finding in all studies that have looked at gender, including ours, is a greater prevalence of support among men for animal research [18–20,32,33,42–47]. We also observed that, among students, men found the issue of animal research less important than women, but, interestingly, this was not observed among faculty.…”

“…Thus, compared to the general public, our respondents had a higher average level of education. Higher education has been associated with greater support for animal research [32–34]. However, our university is comparable to many other doctoral universities at which a large fraction of all animal research is conducted, so our findings should be generalizable to other members of this group.…”

Public Attitudes toward Animal Research: A Review

“…Sex identity has been consistently found to relate to attitudes toward the treatment of research animals (and animals in general), with virtually all studies reporting that women are more likely to object to animal use [ 12 , 25 , 26 , 31 , 32 ]. A lower proportion of women accept the use of animals in research compared to men [ 27 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 ] and most studies of the animal protection movement have found that women activists outnumber men by a ratio of two or three to one [ 38 , 39 , 40 ]. The effects of sex identity on attitudes toward the use of animals in research are consistent across many studies, with differences between males and females extending to at least 15 different countries [ 14 ].…”

Individual Difference and Study-Specific Characteristics Influencing Attitudes about the Use of Animals in Medical Research

“…Th e evidence has consistently indicated that women are less supportive of animal research than are men (see Broida, Tingley, Kimball, & Miele, 1993;Navarro, Maldonado, Pedraza, & Cavas, 2001;Swami, Furnham, & Christopher, 2008). For example, Furnham and Pinder (1990) found women to be less supportive of animal research than men, as did Wells and Hepper (1997).…”