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Do Symbols of Children as Innocent, Orphaned, and Vulnerable Serve Children's Best Interests? Judith Gibbons; PsycCRITIQUES

What do laboratory rats, men, and college students have in common? They have often been studied by psychologists as representatives of a larger group, such as nonhuman animals or people in general. More recently, psychologists have turned to studying the species-typical behavior of rats and the roles and behavior of men and boys with respect to their masculine gender. Likewise, college students have served psychologists as representatives of humanity in studies of cognition and social and emotional behavior, but they have been studied infrequently as occupying a distinct developmental period.

The literature concerning the neuropharmacology of mouse killing was reviewed with attention to the behavioral specificity of the response. Several tentative conclusions were forwarded: (1) Increases in monoamine activity (serotonin or catecholamine) result in a behaviorally specific blockade of the killing response by natural killers. (2) Large decreases in brain serotonin by peripheral or central drug treatment or by central brain lesions induce killing in both naive rats and experienced nonkiller rats. Moreover, the mode of depletion is important and, with certain manipulations, the induction of killing is accompanied by increases in general irritability and by an alteration of the stereotypic killing pattern. (3) Large depletions of the catecholamines either by synthesis inhibition or by neurotoxic drug action do not induce killing in the majority of nonkillers. (4) Peripherally administered cholinergic agonists and antagonists, with two exceptions, are ineffective in inducing killing in nonkillers or in blocking killing by killers. Evidence for centrally elicited sterotyped killing by cholinergeric stimulation of brain tissue is not consistent, but cholinergic systems are implicated in the facilitation of killing by spontaneous killers.

Thirty albino rats were tested for mouse killing and then tested for intraspecific aggression in a paradigm that generates fighting without the use of electric shock. Mouse killers showed significantly more attacks and lateral blocks than did nonkillers; they also inflicted more wounds on their opponents. The two groups did not significantly differ on other often used measures of social dominance; they also did not differ in the display of stereotypic defensive behavior. The experience of fighting or of cyclic food deprivation did not induce killing in the nonkillers. The results suggest that there may be some relationship between mouse killing and intraspecific fighting.