You might think the reason I chose this title was to grab your attention but the truth is that several experiments* have
been conducted on animals with the purpose of discovering how the brain
works and how the results can be used to improve humans life – proving
once more that animals are a lot more than just Man’s best friend.
Many animals have similar systems to the ones we have, and by
applying the results of some of the experiments to human beings have
uncovered several methods of improving human life.
The monkeys that learned fear:
Monkeys that don’t fear snakes were introduced to some snakes while
being forced to listen to loud, scary noises. Some monkeys learned to
fear snakes as a result of this experiment but what’s more astonishing
is that when monkeys that didn’t fear snakes were allowed to see the
fear response of monkeys that fear snakes they learned how to fear
snakes too!!!
Conclusion: We learn to fear things when we
associate them with another event, for example a child might fear
darkness after associating it with the noisy sound that happened when
his mother slammed the door of a dark room.
Moreover, if a child watched an adult reacting with fear to a certain situation the child will develop fear too!!
The frog that died in the boiling water:
When a group of frogs were thrown in boiling water they jumped out of
the pot very quickly and managed to survive. However, when the same
frogs were put into cold water that was slowly heated, all of them
perished when the water came to a boil, because they didn’t have time to
react
Conclusion: We can feel sudden changes but when the change
happens over time we don’t feel it until it is too late. People don’t
develop bad habits over night nor do they experience severe behavior
changes in a short period of time but everything happens bit by bit.
The Rats that failed to swim:
A researcher brought some wild rats, ones that are known to be able
to swim for 80 hours continuously, then frightened them by making them
believe that they were stuck before throwing them in water.
Many of the wild rats died after a few minutes of swimming! The rats
didn’t drown due to lack of ability but at some point they just gave up
swimming and died!!
When the rats felt in control they were able to swim for many hours
but as soon as they felt that they were not in control they lost hope
and drowned.
Conclusion: When we feel in control we can reach our maximum
potential, while if we feel out of control we give up trying even if we
have the required skills.
The dogs that learned to be helpless:
Few dogs were placed in room that has a switch that can either turn
on electric current and shock the dogs or turn it off. When the dogs
were first shocked they kept jumping around until one dog pushed the
switch and discovered that the electric current stopped.
Later on whenever the electric shock was turned on the dogs rushed to
turn it off using the switch. These dogs were split into two groups
where the first group remained in the same room while the second one was
placed in a similar one that had a faulty switch.
When the second group was shocked the dogs tried to push the switch
but nothing happened. The second group of dogs were returned to the
first room then were shocked again but this time they never tried to
push the switch!!!
The dogs learned to become helpless as a result of feeling helpless after pushing the faulty switch!!
Conclusion: No one is born helpless but we learn how to become
helpless when we face certain situations that we fail to deal with.
Always try to do something about your problems because if you didn’t act
you might develop learned helplessness!!
*this article is not in any way an endorsement of animal testing
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