The saying that ‘psychology is the science of pulling habits out of rats’ is based on the extensive animal experimentation carried out by behaviorists. Except for Watson’s Little Albert experiment, behaviorist theories resulted from and have been tested by experiments on animals. Apart from the ubiquitous lab rat, psychologists have used cats and dogs, and Skinner laterally found pigeons ideal subjects to experiment upon.
Skinner, like most behaviorists, was against human experimentation. But his ethics were questioned when he invented a ‘baby tender’, a secure enclosure with a controlled environment to replace cots. It was mocked as a Skinner box for infants and called ‘the heir conditioners’. Skinner believed operant conditioning works in a similar way for all species, and observation of animals gives insights into human behavior. While many behavioral scientists would agree, others find animal experiments of limited value in studying human psychology.
