Edward Tolman
American psychologist who argued for purposive behaviourism and cognitive maps
American psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who studied maze learning in rats and argued that behaviour is goal-directed and guided by internal representations he called cognitive maps.
Why this person matters
Tolman accepted behaviourist methods but challenged the view that learning is only a chain of stimulus-response links strengthened by reward. His maze experiments, run with students and colleagues, are cited as groundwork for later cognitive psychology, though his influence faded for a time in the late 1950s and 1960s.
Main contributions
Purposive behaviourism
His 1932 book Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men treated behaviour as directed towards goals. The National Academy of Sciences memoir credits him with showing that purpose and knowledge can be treated experimentally.
Latent learning and cognitive maps
In 'Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men' (1948) he drew on experiments by several researchers, including Blodgett's 1929 latent learning work, Honzik's repetitions with him, and the sunburst maze of Ritchie and Kalish. He argued that rats learn a map of a maze's layout, and contrasted narrow strip maps with broader comprehensive maps.
Context and limits
Clark Hull charged that Tolman left the rat 'buried in thought' and offered other explanations of the maze results. Skinner's 1950 paper 'Are theories of learning necessary?' turned many animal-learning psychologists towards observable behaviour, and Tolman's influence faded in the late 1950s and 1960s. The 1948 paper reports experiments by several researchers, not Tolman alone. In 1949 to 1950 he led Berkeley faculty resistance to the University of California loyalty oath, which the California Supreme Court overturned in 1955.
In your introductory course
Learning.Appears in the learning chapter wherever latent learning and cognitive maps are used to show that learning can occur without reward and without visible behaviour change.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 1.2. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1915
Received his doctorate at Harvard University.
- 1918
Joined the University of California, Berkeley, as an instructor; he remained there until 1954.
- 1932
Published Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men.
- 1937
Served as president of the American Psychological Association.
- 1948
Published 'Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men' in Psychological Review.
Sources
- National Academy of Sciences, Edward Chace Tolman: A Biographical Memoir (Ritchie)Society or association. Institutional biography inspected.
- Classics in the History of Psychology (York University), Tolman, Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men (1948)Original work. Text passages inspected.
- Wikipedia, Edward C. TolmanReference work. Reference article inspected.