Home > Edward C. Tolman

Born in West Newton , Massachusetts, Tolman studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1915. Most of his career was spent at the University of California, Berkeley (from 1918 to 1954), where he taught psychology.

Tolman is best known for his studies of learning in rats using mazes, and he published many experimental articles, of which his paper with Ritchie and Kalish in 1946 was probably the most influential. His major theoretical contributions came in his 1932 book, Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men, and in a series of papers in the Psychological Review, "The determinants of behavior at a choice point" (1938) and "Cognitive maps in rats and men" (1948), "The determinants of behavior at a choice point" (1938), and "Principles of performance" (1955).

Although Tolman was firmly behavioristSocial philosophy Behaviorism (or behaviourism is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior is interesting and worthy of scientific research. Within that broad approach, there are different emphases. Some behaviorists argue simply t in his methodology, he was not a radical behavioristRadical behaviorism is the philosophy that underlies the approach to psychology known as the experimental analysis of behavior, and is a model developed by B. The term 'radical behaviorism' has also been associated with Skinner's theories of human behavio like John B. WatsonJohn Broadus Watson ( January 9, 1878 September 25, 1958) was an American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism. He is famous for boasting, facetiously, that he could take any 20 human infants, and by applying behavioural te or B. F. SkinnerBurrhus Frederic Skinner ( March 20, 1904 August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist. He was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. He majored in literature at Hamilton College in New York in hope of becoming a writer. Whilst taking a gap year between stud. As the title of his 1932 book indicates, he wanted to use behavioral methods to gain an understanding of the mental processes of humans and other animals. In his studies of learning in rats, Tolman sought to demonstrate that animals could learn facts about the world that they could subsequently use in a flexible manner, rather than simply learning automatic responses that were triggered off by environmental stimuli. In the language of the time, Tolman was an "S-S" (stimulus-stimulus), non- reinforcementIn operant conditioning, reinforcement is the presentation of a stimulus contingent on a response which results in an increase in response strength (as evidenced by an increase in the frequency of response). This concept has been criticized as circular, s theorist: he drew on Gestalt psychologyGestalt psychology (also: Gestalt theory of the Berlin School) is a psychological theory which provides a framework for a wide variety of psychological phenomena, processes, and applications. Human beings are viewed as open systems in active interaction w to argue that animals could learn the connections between stimuli and did not need any explicit biologically significant event to make learning occur. The rival theory, the much more mechanistic "S-R" (stimulus-response) reinforcement-driven view, was taken up by Clark L. Hull .

A key paper by Tolman, Ritchie and Kalish in 1946 demonstrated that rats that had explored a maze that contained food while they were not hungry were able to run it correctly on the first trial when they entered it having now been made hungry. However, Hull and his followers were able to produce alternative explanations of Tolman's findings, and the debate between S-S and S-R learning theories became increasingly convoluted and sterile. Skinner's iconoclastic paper of 1950, entitled "Are theories of learning necessary?" persuaded many psychologists interested in animal learning that it was more productive to focus on the behavior itself rather than using it to make hypotheses about mental states. The influence of Tolman's ideas declined rapidly in the later 1950sCenturies: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s Years: 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 Events and trends Technology United States tests the first fusion bomb. and 1960sCenturies: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s Years: 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 Events and trends The 1960s was a turbulent decade of change around. However, his achievements had been considerable. His 1938 and 1955 papers, produced to answer Hull's charge that he left the rat "buried in thought" in the maze, unable to respond, anticipated and prepared the ground for much later work in cognitive psychology, as psychologists began to discover and apply decision theory - a stream of work that was recognised by the award of a Nobel prize to Daniel Kahneman in 2002. And his 1948 paper introduced the concept of a cognitive map , which has found extensive application in almost every field of psychology, frequently among scientists who have no idea that they are using ideas first formulated to explain the behavior of rats in mazes.

Furthermore, when in the last quarter of the twentieth century animal psychologists took a cue from the success of human cognitive psychology, and began to renew the study of animal cognition, many of them turned to Tolman's ideas and to his maze techniques. Of the three great figures of animal psychology of the middle twentieth century, Tolman, Hull and Skinner, it can reasonably be claimed that it is Tolman's legacy that is currently the liveliest, certainly in terms of academic research.

Tolman was much concerned that psychology should be applied to try and solve human problems, and in addition to his technical publications, he wrote a book called Drives Toward War. He was one of the senior professors whom the University of California sought to dismiss in the McCarthyite era of the early 1950s, because he refused to sign a loyalty oath - not because of any lack of felt loyalty to the United States but because it infringed on academic freedom. Tolman was a leader of the resistance of the oath, and when the Regents of the University of California sought to fire him, he sued. The resulting court case, Tolman v. Underhill, led to the California Supreme Court in 1955 overturning the oath and forcing the reinstatement of all those who had refused to sign it. In 1963, at the insistence of the then President of the University of California Clark Kerr, the University named its newly constructed Education and Psychology faculty building at Berkeley "Tolman Hall" in his honour; his widow was present at the dedication ceremony. His portrait hangs in the entrance hall of the building.