When empathy disappears in the face of laboratories’ objectives: interview with Kevin Vezirian

You have just obtained your PhD in Social Psychology. What does this mean in concrete terms?

A doctorate (or PhD) is a university diploma issued at the end of working on scientific research. In concrete terms, in my case, this means that I have led research work in social psychology, a scientific discipline aiming to understand and explain how individuals’ thoughts and behaviours are influenced by the presence of others. More specifically, my research work consisted of studying individual factors and contextual frameworks that facilitate and justify prejudices towards laboratory animals, through social psychology theories.

Throughout the thesis, you make a link between discrimination between groups of humans and the mistreatment that other animals are victims of. Is this link scientifically well established?

The link between the way in which individuals behave towards each other and the way in which they behave towards animals is already well established. For example, extensive literature shows that there is a strong relation between cruelty towards animals and interpersonal violence. However, growing evidence suggests that there is in fact an interrelation between discrimination with regard to individuals and attitudes and behaviours towards animals. Thus, research shows that individuals having strong negative prejudice towards another due to their ethnicity are also more likely to agree strongly with speciesism, an ideology that defends the idea that all animal species do not deserve the same moral considerations and that the exploitation of certain animals is justified. Recent research led by a team of researchers from the University of Oxford incidentally shows that adhering to speciesist ideologies has a positive correlation with other types of discrimination such as racism, sexism, or even homophobia.

Despite these intriguing results, in reality it is not surprising to note that the manner in which individuals perceive members from discriminated groups is closely linked to the way in which they perceive animals, because after all, animals themselves have all the characteristics of discriminated individuals and are exploited because of who they are.

Where does animal testing fit in in this field?

Animal testing involves relying on animal models to lead experiments, the majority of the time for scientific purposes, which we prefer not to carry out on humans for ethical or moral reasons. Animal testing thus strongly involves considerations that we have for a specific social group, humans, compared to those we have for another social group, laboratory animals. While numerous surveys show that the majority of the population is opposed to the use of laboratory animals, there is some variability when it comes to the perceived legitimacy of this practice, and it appears necessary to understand where these interindividual and contextual differences come from. Furthermore, animal testing is carried out to the detriment of the animals that we should be motivated to protect from suffering, and it is vital to understand what the behavioural strategies that allow individuals to rationalise and legitimise their use for scientific purposes are, while it is almost always synonymous with dire purposes. It is a safe bet that the answers to our questions are found in the way we perceive and interact with others, and the social psychology is very pertinent in this respect.

Are those who practise animal testing therefore devoid of empathy? If not, how do they manage to inflict this suffering on animals?

Devoid of empathy, probably not. Incidentally, in our research, in reality we have no data regarding the empathetical disposition of laboratory technicians, therefore we cannot give any clear answers in this respect. On the other hand, our research indicates that in the general population, the least empathetic dispositions are actually associated with a greater perceived legitimacy of animal testing, but also of more harmful behaviours towards a laboratory animal within pharmaceutical research.

As for knowing how people come to inflict suffering on animals for scientific purposes, our research provides some answers. By taking inspiration from Stanley Milgram’s protocol, we invited people to conduct (fake) pharmaceutical research on a (fake) laboratory animal, and our results showed that the preliminary focus on the benefits of science would also significantly increase individuals’ motivation to participate in research to the detriment of the animal, but also that strong pro-scientific dispositions were strongly linked to the perceived legitimacy of the experiment and the instrumental vision of a laboratory animal. In summary, this research showed that pursuing scientific aims allowed temporary alleviation of empathetic considerations that individuals had with regard to laboratory animals in order to facilitate their use for research purposes and in the pursuit of research. In other research currently being done, we have also shown that disparagement strategies for laboratory animals’ mental and cognitive capacities can be used in order to justify the use of laboratory animals. While making another suffer goes against our most fundamental moral principles, we have shown that individuals can be motivated to reduce the mental capacities and the sentience of a laboratory animal in order to make its use more morally acceptable in some way.

Armed with the knowledge gained from your research, what course of action would you recommend in order for the situation to improve for these animals?

Our research shows that the scientific objectives behind animal testing allow moral considerations that individuals have towards laboratory animals to reduce. However, we must reiterate that animal testing is not only criticised by animal advocates, but also by a part of the scientific community who question its validity, its lack of replicability, or very weak pharmaceutical applications in humans. We imagine that communication and information campaigns questioning the legitimacy and usefulness of animal testing could thus ensure that individuals do not blindly justify the suffering of laboratory animals under the pretext that significant benefits for human health would be key, because it is not always so clear.

Furthermore, our research also shows that animals’ cognitive and mental capacities are central in moral considerations towards them, and the more we perceive their capacity for sentience and intelligence, the more they endure in laboratories what seems to us to be morally unjustified and unacceptable. Therefore, awareness campaigns around the originality of laboratory animals, showing their cognitive abilities and personality, could somehow impart greater moral considerations on them and perhaps further motivate individuals to oppose this practice.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice