Edward Thorndike
American psychologist of learning and educational psychology
American psychologist who studied animal learning with puzzle boxes for his 1898 Columbia doctorate, described the law of effect and spent his career at Teachers College, Columbia, working on educational psychology and testing.
Why this person matters
Thorndike's puzzle-box studies showed gradual learning through consequences, and B. F. Skinner later reframed the law of effect through his definition of reinforcers. He also brought measurement into educational psychology. His writings on eugenics, race and women remain part of the record.
Main contributions
Puzzle boxes and the law of effect
His doctoral work, Animal Intelligence (1898), put animals, mostly cats, in boxes that each opened in a different way and plotted escape times across trials. Times fell gradually, which he took as trial-and-error learning, and responses followed by a satisfying state of affairs became more likely to recur.
Revision of the law of effect
In 1929 he said he had been wrong, dropped the law of exercise entirely and removed half of the law of effect, finding that punishment does not effectively change behaviour.
Educational psychology and testing
At Teachers College from 1899 he worked on learning, testing and classroom research. The Teacher's Word Book (1921) was the first of three word books, and he helped develop the Army Beta test used in the First World War to evaluate recruits who were illiterate, unschooled or did not speak English.
Context and limits
Critics have called the law of effect circular. Thorndike argued that selective breeding can alter human capacities and wrote that women are 'by original nature submissive to men'. In July 2020 the Teachers College trustees voted unanimously to remove his name from Thorndike Hall, describing him as a proponent of eugenics who held racist, sexist and antisemitic views, while saying the college was not erasing his name from its history.
In your introductory course
Learning.Appears in the learning chapter as the precursor of operant conditioning through the law of effect.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 6.3. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1898
Completed Animal Intelligence and his Columbia PhD under James McKeen Cattell.
- 1899
Joined Teachers College, Columbia University.
- 1921
Published The Teacher's Word Book, the first of three word books.
- 1929
Revised the law of effect and dropped the law of exercise.
Sources
- Teachers College, Columbia University, announcement on Thorndike Hall (July 2020)University. Institutional biography inspected.
- New World Encyclopedia, Edward ThorndikeReference work. Reference article inspected.
- Classics in the History of Psychology (York University), Thorndike, Animal Intelligence (1911 edition, contents page)Original work. Abstract inspected.
- Wikipedia, Edward ThorndikeReference work. Reference article inspected.