What Rats Can Teach Us About Empathy

<p><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span lang="EN" style="font-family:"Lato",sans-serif"><span style="color:black">An in-class activity near the end of an introductory biology course’s ethology unit covering pro-social behavior elicited by empathy. This lecture demonstrates the importance of animal models in the field of human psychology and medicine. </span></span></span></span></span>Learning objectives include: <span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="color:black"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span lang="EN" style="font-family:"Lato",sans-serif">Discuss evolution of social behavior, e</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="color:black"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span lang="EN" style="font-family:"Lato",sans-serif">xplain how behaviors can be elicited by proximate and ultimate mechanisms, r</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="color:black"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span lang="EN" style="font-family:"Lato",sans-serif">eflect on the benefits of empathy, ap</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="color:black"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span lang="EN" style="font-family:"Lato",sans-serif">ply the scientific method and discuss ideas for experimental designs building off findings from study discussed, i</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="color:black"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span lang="EN" style="font-family:"Lato",sans-serif">nterpret graphs and/or data figures related to the concepts from this lesson</span></span></span></span></span>, r<span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="color:black"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span lang="EN" style="font-family:"Lato",sans-serif">eflect on your perceptions about using graphs or figures in biology, </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:11pt">r<span style="color:black"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span lang="EN" style="font-family:"Lato",sans-serif">eflect on your perceptions of people who do biology, c</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="color:black"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><span lang="EN" style="font-family:"Lato",sans-serif">ompare your own interests and/or identities to those of people who do biology.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p>