Biography of edward c tolman purposive behaviorism

Edward Chace Tolman (April 14, 1886 – November 19, 1959) was an Americanpsychologist. He was most famous 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 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 including "The determinants of behavior at a choice point" (1938) and "Cognitive maps in rats and men" (1948), and "Principles of performance" (1955). Tolman's goal was to understand human mental processes through experimental methods. Although he used rats in mazes as his technique, and was a behaviorist in his approach, he also incorporated significant ideas from Gestalt psychology. His theories, while not necessarily accepted at the time, laid the foundation for later work in cognitive psychology and theories of decision making. As such, he succeeded in making a significant contribution to our understanding of human thinking.

Life

Edward Chace Tolman was born on April 14, 1886, in West Newton, Massachusetts. He was the brother of California Institute of Technology physicist Richard Chace Tolman. Edward Tolman’s original interest was in engineering. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a degree from there. Then, Edward Tolman switched to psychology and finished his Ph.D. at Harvard University, in 1915.

After teaching at Northwestern University for three years, Tolman joined the University of California at Berkeley, where he contributed considerably to the developing reputation of that institution. In fact, most of his career was spent at UC Berkeley (from 1918 to 1954), where he taught psychology. Tolman became known as an excellent and warm teacher.

Tolman was one of the senior professors whom the University of California sought to dismiss in the McCarthyite era of th

Tolman was born on 14 April 1886 in Newton, Massachusetts. After graduation from high school in 1907 and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1911, he studied psychology at Harvard until 1915. At this time, he became familiar with two emerging approaches of experimental psychology: Gestalt psychology and behaviorism. These two approaches would inform his entire work as psychologist. In 1915, Tolman received his Ph.D. He spent 3 years at Northwestern University before accepting a position at the University of California at Berkeley in 1918, where he spent the rest of his life.

Tolman’s research focused particularly on animal learning, but in 1942 he published the book Drives Toward War, in which he tried to explain the motives that drive men to go to war as well as the associated social constraints and made suggestions on the social controls necessary to constitute a society without war. Tolman was a man with principles, which also became evident in the...

Purposive behaviorism is a branch of psychology that was introduced by Edward Tolman. It combines the study of behavior while also considering the purpose or goal of behavior. Tolman thought that learning developed from knowledge about the environment and how the organism relates to its environment. Tolman's goal was to identify the complex cognitive mechanisms and purposes that guided behavior. His theories on learning went against the traditionally accepted stimulus-response connections (see classical conditioning) at his time that had been proposed by other psychologists such as Edward Thorndike. Tolman disagreed with John B.Watson's behaviorism, so he initiated his own behaviorism, which became known as purposive behaviorism.

Tolman's purposive behaviorism focused on meaningful behavior, or molar behavior, such as kicking a ball. This focus was in contrast to simple muscle movements or molecular behavior such as flexing of the leg muscle. Tolman regarded the molecular behavior as fairly removed from human perceptual capacities for a meaningful analysis of behavior. This approach of Tolman's was first introduced in his book, Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men, published in 1932. To Tolman, it was obvious that all actions of behavior are goal-oriented, including those for animals. The main difference between other types of behaviorism and Tolman's purposive behaviorism is that in his view behavior is goal orientedas opposed to?.

Tolman's cognitive maps

Tolman's experiment

Tolman's investigation used rats to represent clinical behaviors of men. He had the rats go through mazes. A hungry rat was put at the entrance of a maze, wandering through it until he gets to the food. In the maze, there are true segment paths and blind alleys. Trials for every rat reoccurred every 24 hours. The more trials the rats completed, the fewer

American psychologist (1886–1959)

Edward Chace Tolman (April 14, 1886 – November 19, 1959) was an American psychologist and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Through Tolman's theories and works, he founded what is now a branch of psychology known as purposive behaviorism. Tolman also promoted the concept known as latent learning first coined by Blodgett (1929). A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Tolman as the 45th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Tolman was one of the leading figures in protecting academic freedom during the McCarthy era in early 1950s. In recognition of Tolman's contributions to both the development of psychology and academic freedom, the Education and Psychology building on Berkeley campus, the "Tolman Hall", was named after him.

Early life

Born in West Newton, Massachusetts, brother of Caltech physicist Richard Chace Tolman, Edward C. Tolman studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving B.S. in electrochemistry in 1911. Tolman's father was a president of a manufacturing company and his mother was adamant of her Quaker background. Tolman attended MIT because of family pressures, but after reading William Ja