Pavlov and his dogs are probably one of the most iconic pairings in the history of psychology. When I think about it, they might genuinely be the most iconic couple in the field, closely pipping Freud and Jung to the top. Like all great love stories, there is a disturbing history and details that you find when you give a closer look at the relationship.
This story is not going to be an easy read, especially if you have a strong attachment to dogs and cats. We all love the idea of a dog salivating at the ring of a bell but Pavlov did a lot more than that, and a lot of it was quite disturbing. Please be prepared for that before proceeding.
Sham Feedings and Surgeries
Getting the worst out of the way, right away, let me make it clear that Pavlov did not actively kill his subject animals. He was a physiologist who was interested in learning the physiological mechanisms of the body and that usually required live subjects.
The problem was….well basically everything else.
Pavlov wanted to understand how canine digestion worked and to understand this, he needed his surgical skills. Being a brilliant surgeon, he managed to make pouches or airbags in the stomach/oesophagus of dogs which would be used to conduct sham feedings.
Remember when you were a child and wouldn’t eat food? Did your mother also threaten you by saying she will take you to the doctor and get him to put a zip on your stomach so food will directly be deposited in your stomach? No? Just me?
Well, this was that dreadful idea turned into reality.
The tubes and pouches were designed in such a way that the food would drop out of the dog’s oesophagus before reaching the belly. The dog would then eat and chew for hours without ever getting full.
This technique was used to understand the composition of a dog’s gastric digestive juices. The dogs were fed a fluid diet to keep them alive.
Not so bad right? Well, we are just getting started.
Making Animals Mentally Ill
Much like his contemporary Sigmund Freud, Pavlov wanted to understand the mechanisms that go behind mental illnesses. While Freud got involved (a bit too much) with his patients, Pavlov tried to induce mental illness in cats and dogs to see if external circumstances could affect internal psychology.
When a dog was about to eat its food, it would get an electric shock on the butt, making it scream in agony while salivating. Over time, the dog would salivate by being shocked even without any food present.
The next part of the experiment was to see if the dogs would respond similarly if shocked at another body part. They would. But these dogs were also scared out of their minds at the prospect of being experimented on.
Some of them even chewed through tubes connecting their room to the outside, just to keep the experimenters out, such was the fear.
Cats were not spared either. Pavlov and his team once did the same experiment on a cat eating a rat. The cat threw out the rat and screamed in agony for days. The mere sight of a rat would freak the cat out. This response to the sight of a rat lasted for weeks and sometimes months.
Next on the list was alcoholism!
Pavlov would neuter his dogs and fill them with booze to see how they behaved. He diagnosed one of his dogs as ‘a sensitive schizoid’ and another as a patient of ‘persecutory delusions’ typically found in alcoholics.
Pavlov thus concluded that neurosis could be induced with the right ‘treatment’.
Empirical evidence for the win!
The Costs of Science
Pavlov did not treat his animal subjects well. Even by the standards of his time, he would be considered quite an extreme researcher when it came to animals. If you got the chance to meet one of his dogs, you would not be approached by a fluffball with a wagging tail but by a meek, four-legged squealing animal that would take every step carefully.
At this moment, one must ask, is this not the cost of conducting psychological/physiological experiments?
Pavlov won the Nobel Prize for his work on conditioned reflexes in dogs.
He may have discovered a pre-cursory form of Learned Helplessness in his dogs who would stop resisting shocks after some time.
He even showed that reflexive adaptations could be passed down in generations with his experiments in mice.
He was a great scientist and this was the cost of being one. Would we be okay with paying such costs today?
Question of The Week
What costs would you be willing to pay for the advancement of science? Would you put a limit somewhere?
Let me know by replying to this email or in the comments!
And that is it for this week! This might have been one of the happiest weeks in my years of content creation. I crossed 3k followers on LinkedIn and got connected with so many talented and interesting people through the platform. I hope to keep growing and bringing more stories to you from the field of Psychology.
Thank you for all the support each one of you has shown me. I really appreciate it.
Yours,
Arjun
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