Non-significant results as for the association between heart rate variability, personality, and the objectification of lab-animals into the conduct of animal testing.

Abstract

To develop pharmaceutical drugs, people experiment on lab-animals. While this practice disturbs the general population, various factors in laboratory settings may contribute to enabling experiments that harm animals. Using an ultra-realistic protocol mimicking animal research and collecting behavioral and physiological data, we invited laypersons from the general population to administrate a toxic drug on a (fake) laboratory animal. This preregistered study (n = 145) aimed to examine individual determinants and contextual frameworks that may influence willingness to engage in such experimentation. Because low self-regulatory abilities are associated with less discomfort seeing others suffer, and that objectification of lab-animals allows disengagement from them, we also examined whether they both would predict involvement in an animal-research. We also examined whether some personality markers known to predict human-animal relations (i.e. social dominance orientation, speciesist attitudes, and empathic dispositions) could be related to the willingness to experiment on a lab animal. Overall, the results of this research were mixed, as neither self-regulation abilities, animal objectification, social dominance orientation, nor empathy significantly predicted participation in animal testing. However, low speciesist attitudes significantly reduced the willingness to kill animals for science.