READING 1 & 2 TEXTS

NAME:

EXAM ROOM NUMBER: Time: 60 minutes

READING TEXT 1 (15 points)

ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION

A) Many medical research institutions make use of non-human animals as test subjects.
Animals may be subject to experimentation or modified into conditions useful for gaining knowledge
about human disease or for testing potential human treatments. Because animals as distant from
humans as mice and rats share many physiological and genetic similarities with humans, animal
experimentation is thought to be tremendously helpful for furthering medical science. In this respect,
throughout history many scientists, like Robert Boyle, Stephen Hales and Luigi Galvani, used animals
to prove their scientific theories.
B) However, there is an ongoing debate about animal experimentation. It is argued by some
people that all animal experimentation should end because it is wrong to treat animals merely as
tools for furthering knowledge. According to this point of view, an animal should have as much right
as a human being to live out a full life, free of pain and suffering. Proponents of continued animal
experimentation, on the other hand, argue that while it is wrong to unnecessarily abuse animals,
animal experimentation must continue because of the enormous scientific resource that animal
models provide.
C) In 1959, William Russell and Rex Burch proposed their “3Rs” guidelines for making the use
of animals in scientific research more humane: restrict the use of animals; refine experiments to
minimize distress; and replace tests with alternative techniques. Over the course of five decades,
their guidelines have become widely accepted worldwide, and while the reliability of published
reports on the numbers used varies, they do at least provide a snapshot of historical trends. Around
29 million animals per year, predominantly rats and mice, are currently used in experiments in the US
and European Union countries. This is less than half the total in the mid-1970s – a significant drop,
but one that has stayed constant in the last decade.
D) On closer scrutiny, there exists a wide range of positions on the debate over animal
testing. The two main views mentioned above represent two common positions at the opposing ends
of the spectrum.

The Case against Animal Experimentation

E) An important part of the debate over animal rights centers on the question of the moral
status of an animal. Most people agree that animals have at least some moral status – that is why it is
wrong to needlessly hurt animals. This alone represents a shift from a past view where animals had
no moral status and treating an animal well was more about maintaining human standards of dignity
than respecting any innate rights of the animal. In modern times, the question has shifted from
whether animals have moral status to how much moral status they have and what rights come with
that status. The ethicists who endorse a pro-animal rights position do not mean that animals are
entitled to the very same treatment as humans; arguing that animals should have the right to vote or
hold office is clearly absurd. The claim is that animals should be afforded the same level of respectful
treatment as humans.
F) One common form of this argument claims that moral status comes from the capacity to
suffer or to enjoy life. In respect to this capacity, many animals are no different than humans. They
can feel pain and experience pleasure. Therefore, they should have the same moral status and
deserve equal treatment. Peter Singer's 1975 book, Animal liberation, brought the issue to a much
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wider audience. In it, he catalogued the suffering inflicted on animals in the name of science and
farming and argued that such animals deserved equal consideration, based on their capacity to
suffer. He adopted the principle that moral judgments should be made based on equal interests
irrespective of sex, ethnicity, or now, species. To make a distinction between humans and non‐
humans is, to Singer, “speciesism”, an argument no better than sexism or racism.
G) Animal testing is claimed to not just be dangerous to the animals tested on, but to
humans, as well. The reason may be because of the unreliable results animal testing produces. Dr.
Richard Klausner, a former director of the National Cancer Institute stated "We have cured mice of
cancer for decades, and it simply didn't work in humans." The journal of Annals of Internal Medicine
revealed that universities often exaggerate results from animal experiments conducted in their
laboratories as well as often promote research that has uncertain relevance to human health and do
not provide key facts or acknowledge important limitations. Of the drugs tested on animals, ninety-
two percent of them do not make it through Phase 1 of human clinical trials.
H) Opposition to animal experimentation is often said to derive from lack of knowledge about
science. But according to a 1994 survey led by Linda Pfeifer of the Chicago Academy of Sciences,
negative attitudes toward animal experimentation in the U.S. relate only weakly with lack of
knowledge about science. In Belgium, France and Italy, for instance, greater scientific literacy is
connected with an increased rejection of animal experimentation.

The Case for Animal Experimentation

I) Defenders of animal experimentation claim that the benefits to humans from animal
experimentation outweigh the harm done to animals. The first step in making that argument is to
show that humans are more important than animals. Some philosophers advocate the idea of a
moral community; that is a group of individuals who all share certain traits in common. By sharing
these traits, they belong to a particular moral community and thus take on certain responsibilities
toward each other and assume specific rights. ___________________________________________If
animals do not have the same rights as humans, it becomes permissible to use them for research
purposes. Under this view, the ways in which experimentation might harm the animal are less
morally significant than the potential human benefits from the research.
J) One problem with this type of argument is that many humans themselves do not actually
meet the criteria for belonging to the human moral community. Both infants and those with mental
disorders frequently lack complex cognitive capacities, full autonomy, or even both of these traits.
Are those individuals outside the human moral community? Do they lack fundamental human rights
and should we use them for experimentation? One philosophical position actually accepts those
consequences. However, most people are uncomfortable with that scenario and some philosophers
have put forth a variety of reasons to include all humans in the human moral community.
K) Besides the moral aspect of the issue, it is also believed that without the ability to use
animals in their research, scientists’ efforts would be massively hampered, not only in the direct
development of new treatments, but also in the fundamental research which supports all biomedical
knowledge. In fact, animal research has contributed to 70 per cent of Nobel prizes for physiology or
medicine.
L) In an article published in 2008, the neurobiologist Collin Blakemore stated, “Where there
are reliable alternatives, scientists use them, which is what the law demands. No one chooses to use
animals where there is no need. It gives no one any pleasure, and it is time consuming, expensive and
quite rightly subject to layers of regulation. Magnetic resonance imaging, computer models and work
on isolated tissues and cell cultures can be useful, but they cannot provide the answers that animal
research can.”
M) Obviously, discussions on the use of animals in experiments often attract extreme points
of view where two opposing sides appear to be stubborn and no possibility of compromise exists. But
there are many on both sides of the argument who want to find a middle ground where useful
discussions can take place. The “bottom line” for the middle ground position is that animal
experimentation should be avoided whenever possible in favor of alternative research strategies.
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READING TEXT 2 (15 points)

PROCRASTINATION

A Most of us can recall a time in our lives when we have procrastinated, perhaps because it is a nuanced
concept that appears to be understood differently by different individuals. Procrastination refers to an
individual’s intentional delay of an intended course of action, despite being aware of negative outcomes.
Broadly speaking, the term ‘procrastination’ seems to be commonly used to refer to an episode when an
individual is ‘putting off’ or failing to complete an activity such as doing homework or filing a tax return in any
given moment.

B “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task” said William James in an
1886 letter to fellow psychologist Carl Stumpf. Procrastination is not a new phenomenon. William James
recognized the psychological cost of procrastination 120 years ago, and Psychologist Steel (2007) traces
procrastination references back to 800 B.C. Contemporary psychologists are increasingly interested in
conducting research that explains procrastination, but in spite of growing research attention, much has yet to
be learned about the causes of procrastination, and procrastination remains one of the least understood
human miseries; thus, it is a relatively unexplored psychological construct.

C Procrastination appears to be a significant problem especially among students. Students may intend
to perform an academic activity within the expected or desired time frame, yet failing to motivate themselves
to carry out the intention. Academic procrastination can be described as an irrational tendency to delay in the
completion of an academic task, even to the point of creating emotional discomfort and anxiety.
Procrastination appears to be a problem behavior for many college students. It has been estimated that 80–
95% of college students engage in procrastination. Approximately 50% procrastinate on academic tasks
consistently and problematically.

D Procrastination can also take a toll on a student's mental health and well-being. In one 2007 study,
Florida State University psychologist Dianne M. Tice examined procrastination among students in a health
psychology class. She found that early in the semester, procrastinators reported lower stress and less illness
than non-procrastinators, but that late in the term, procrastinators reported higher stress and more
illness. Academic procrastination can be troubling to students because a range of studies have linked
procrastination to negative outcomes including poor academic performance, missing or late assignments,
cramming, anxiety during tests, use of self-handicapping strategies, and difficulties in following directions.
Procrastination also can result in damaging mental health outcomes such as depression and lower levels of
self-esteem.

A Survey on Taiwanese Adolescents’ Academic Procrastination

E Academic stress is common among Asian students due to familial and cultural demands for academic
excellence. The priority goal for Taiwanese junior high students is to obtain satisfactory scores on the entrance
examination for senior high schools (Grades 10–12). The pursuit of examination success has turned classrooms
into settings focused largely on the preparation for examinations. Adolescents spend a large part of lives in
school environment and often evaluate themselves on the basis of academic performance. Schools hence can
be a stressful environment filled with fear of failure and test anxiety that may contribute to Taiwanese
adolescent students’ inclination to procrastinate. Therefore, a total of 405 eighth-grade Taiwanese students
completed a self-reported survey assessing their perceptions of classroom structure, parental expectations and
criticism, perfectionistic tendencies, and time management to reach some findings about academic
procrastination.
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F As expected, adolescents’ perceptions of classroom structure positively predict their tendency to

procrastinate. Structure refers to the amount and clarity of information that teachers provide to students about
how to effectively achieve desired educational outcomes.The provision of classroom structure helps to nurture
students’ perceived competence in terms of managing academic tasks .When teachers guide students learning
by conveying clear direction, scheduling academic activities, and offering feedback on their personal
development, students are motivated to manage time effectively to carry out the learning task. Teachers can
increase students’ ability to plan their study by instructing them to set proximal goals for academic tasks. Setting
specific proximal goals may elevate students’ motivation to complete the work and thus alleviate their
procrastination. In turn, those who hold high standards of performance and have a strong sense of orderliness
are more likely to employ planning and other techniques to manage time while pursuing their academic goals.
Teachers can provide mastery-oriented motivational support through explicitly conveying to students that
making mistakes is a natural part of learning. In an environment where students feel free to take risks, make
mistakes, and try again on their way to success without worrying about putting their self-worth in jeopardy,
their concerns about negative evaluation are supposed to be greatly eased.

G Likewise, in the family environment, parental expectations are thought to engender students’ time
management behaviors that may help to meet the high standards set by parents. Parental criticism,
nevertheless, may be detrimental to students’ engagement in time management. Students’ fear of being
punished for not meeting parent-set standards is likely to generate avoidance motivation that may undermine
their desire to use time effectively in order to achieve academic excellence. When it comes to adolescents’
academic procrastination, parents appear to have much greater influence than teachers do. When students
perceive parents’ critical attitudes toward their failure to meet the standard, such perceptions may result in fear
of failure that eventually leads to procrastination. Parents’ expectations of excellence without criticism about
children’s less than perfect performance may reduce their children’s tendencies to put off starting homework
and preparing for the examination. Parental expectations may encourage students to manage time effectively
and therefore help to mitigate their academic procrastination. Parental criticism, by contrast, may be
deleterious to students’ time management and in turn, heighten their proclivity to procrastinate when engaging
in schoolwork.

H In addition to parental influences, individuals’ perfectionistic tendencies also function as predictors of

their procrastination on homework and preparing for the examination. Perfectionism has been generally
conceptualized as a an individual’s dispositional tendency to set excessively high standards for performance and
to define worth by the accomplishments of those standards. Simply setting high standards and striving for
excellence without worrying about failure is likely to motivate students to approach success. This approach may
enable students to actively pursue challenging tasks. Such engagement behaviors, apparently, are beneficial for
alleviating academic procrastination. Nevertheless, over the past two decades, theorists and researchers have
begun to distinguish between maladaptive and adaptive perfectionism based on cumulative evidence. Adaptive
perfectionism involves setting high personal standards and striving for success without psychological distress.
Maladaptive perfectionism, in contrast, is linked to the concern over making mistakes. Individuals with
maladaptive perfectionism tend to equate mistakes with failures and to worry that failure will lead to the loss of
respect of others. __________________________________________________________________________.
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I Final implication that can be drawn from the present findings is that the training of time management
skills for adolescents may be particularly useful to diminish their academic procrastination. Time management
refers to achievement behaviors aiming at using time effectively while engaging in goal-directed activities.
Adolescents who are able to use time effectively while engaging in academic tasks are less likely to
procrastinate. Nonetheless, not all the procrastinators are the same. In a 2005 study in The Journal of Social
Psychology, Jin Nam Choi, a business professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, differentiated
between two types of procrastinators: passive procrastinators, who postpone tasks until the last minute
because of an inability to act in a timely manner, and active procrastinators, who prefer the time pressure and
purposely decide to delay a task but are still able to complete tasks before deadlines and achieve satisfactory
outcomes. He found that although active procrastinators reported the same level of procrastination as their
passive counterparts, they demonstrated a productive use of time, adaptive coping styles and academic
performance outcomes that were nearly identical to—and in some cases even better than—those of non-
procrastinators.

J Academic procrastination may sometimes be discussed in a lighthearted and trivializing fashion, and
receive only a fraction of the research attention devoted to other common psychological problems like
depression, but the consequences are not trivial for the minority of people for whom procrastination is a
serious problem. It is highly significant that procrastination researches should be pursued universally to help
explain the mystery of why people choose to delay a course of action even when there can be serious negative
consequences.