Will le Fleming

In the 1970s Bruce Alexander, a Canadian experimental psychologist, ran a series of tests to do with rats and drug addiction. Most people, hearing that preamble, nod sagely. I know, they say. Give a rat a heroin/sexual pleasure pump and it will lie beneath it, rat jaws wide open, and drink until it explodes. Or something. Until it dies, anyway. This is well-known. It is a fact.

Image: flickr.com/asplosh

However, most people would be speaking too soon. Some experiments have indeed suggested that rats behave in this way, but not Bruce Alexander’s. His tests were in fact designed to rebut such claims. Putting it with horrible simplicity (because my understanding of experimental psychology is horribly simple), his contention was that the drug addiction of lab rats might possibly have something to do with their lifestyle as lab rats. Rats are usually social animals, living in family nests (or warrens. Or… Continue reading →