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Sunday, May 13, 2012

A Good Psychology Research Topic

I've wondered before about the mental characteristics of vivisectors. See for instance: Vivisectionists' disease. The quote below fits pretty neatly with my impressions.
In some children, C.U. [callous-unemotional] traits manifest in obvious ways. Paul Frick, a psychologist at the University of New Orleans who has studied risk factors for psychopathy in children for two decades, described one boy who used a knife to cut off the tail of the family cat bit by bit, over a period of weeks. The boy was proud of the serial amputations, which his parents initially failed to notice. “When we talked about it, he was very straightforward,” Frick recalls. “He said: ‘I want to be a scientist, and I was experimenting. I wanted to see how the cat would react.’”(Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath? Jennifer Kahn. New York Times Magazine. May 11, 2012
I don't think most vivisectors would participate in a study of psychological trends in their population, but it'd be worthwhile for someone to attempt the study nevertheless. Maybe some sort of enticement could be used to attract participants; maybe undergrads intending to pursue a career involving experimentation on animals could be used as subjects.

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