| Childhood/Family Life
Edward Chace
Tolman was born in Newton,
Massachusetts
on April, 14th, 1886. He had
one brother who was 5 years older then him named Richard. His mother
was a
housewife and his Father was the president of a manufacturing company.
Tolman’s
childhood was not discussed much in the articles and books. Other than
that, he
attended public schools in Newton
and although he and his brother were expected to follow in their
father’s foot
steps and continue on the family business, they both chose to do
otherwise.
Edward and his brother Richard attended the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. When Edward first decided his major, he declared it as
electrochemistry. This didn’t change until his senior year in college
when he decided
he wanted to be a philosopher after graduation. It is said that he
decided to
change because of the great impact William James’s readings had on him.
He
graduated form MIT in 1911 with a B.S. in electrochemistry. Although
that
summer he took courses in philosophy, he also took a course in
psychology. He
decided that philosophy was going to be too hard and he wasn’t cut out
for it,
so he chose psychology instead. (reference.allrefer.com,
2003)
Adult Life
In the fall of 1911, Tolman was
in enrolled at the Harvard
Graduate School
as a philosophy and psychology student. He was influenced that year by
his
ethics class professor and readings from McDougall to study motivation.
Soon
after the first year was over, he went to Germany in the summer of
1912 to
study under Kurt Koffka. Tolman was introduced to Gestalt psychology by
Koffka.
Once he returned from Germany,
he studied the concept of nonsense syllables under Hugo Munsterberg and
Langfeld, in their laboratory. He wrote his dissertation on retroactive
inhibition. He received his PhD from Harvard in 1915. (a2zpsychology.com, 2002)
During his
adult life he worked at two major schools. The first was Northern University,
where he taught for only three years before he was dismissed for his
anti-war
statements that a student published. He then was hired at the University of California,
Berkeley.
He
taught psychology there from 1918 until 1954 when he retired. He was
also
married, but again not much could be found on this subject other then
it was a
“happy” marriage.
Professional Accomplishments
Tolman
had numerous accomplishments.
Of course, his Ph.D. from Harvard would be on top of the list. He also
wrote
the book “Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men”
in 1932. In 1937, he became the American Psychological
Association’s 46th
president. In 1940, he was the Chairman of Lewin's Society for
the
Psychological Study of Social Issues. He published another book in 1942
called
“Drives Toward War”. In 1949, he wrote a paper titled "There is
More than One Kind of Learning". In1957, he received the APA award for
“distinguished scientific contributions”. Finally, in 1959, he was
given a
LL.D. Degree from the University
of California.
(Schultz
& Schultz, Chapter 11)
Contributions to Psychology
His contributions, like his
accomplishments, are numerous. Tolman
had four main contributions to psychology. The first was showing
cognitive maps
in rats. The second was latent learning in which he also used the rats
to back
up his findings. The third was the concept of the intervening variable,
and
lastly was his support of rats for subject use.
To
successfully show that rats used cognitive maps rather than just
running and
turning right, he used his rats as examples. He would run them through
a maze
similar to the one pictured below.
A was the starting point for the
rats. B was the goal at
which he wanted them to reach. He ran several experiments in which one
would
have the rats start at A and learn to run to B to get the food. In
doing so,
they would have to turn right to get the food. Once the rats learned,
this he
tried a different method. He would start them at point C; if the rat
turned
right and went to section D, then they were not using cognitive maps,
but
instead he found they turned left and went to section B proving the use
of
cognitive maps. (a2zpsychology.com,
2002)
This
idea that rats don’t just
learn movements for only rewards but instead learn even when there are
no
rewards suggests a latent learning theory. Again, by using a rat to run
a maze,
he could show how this latent learning was possible. The setup would be
three
different groups with as a control that would start with food
automatically.
Another second experimental group would not get food until the 7th
day. Finally, another third experimental group would not get the food
until the
3rd day. Surprisingly, in the two experimental groups, once
food was
given at the goal point, the rats began to improve their routes after
the
reward was introduced. After they were fed, the rat began to run the
maze
better on the next trial, showing that even though there was no reward
the rat
was still making a cognitive map of the maze. This was evident when the
reward
was introduced. Tolman coined this phenomenon, “latent learning” and
said that
this experiment could be extended to humans and that we too use latent
learning
everyday. (a2zpsychology.com,
2002)
From
this latent learning theory,
he also found “intervening variables”. These were variables that could
not be
observed and. For example, hunger was an intervening variable. He
showed that
these variables were the actual determinants of a behavior. It forced
behaviorists to think in a new light. They could no longer only use the
model
S-R (stimulus to response), but now had to add the organism in to
become S-O-R
(stimulus to organism to response). (a2zpsychology.com, 2002)
Finally,
Tolman was the
psychologist who helped make white rats to be used as the subject as
widely as
they are today for experiments. He was
quoted in 1945 that “let it be noted
that rats live in cages; they do not go on binges the night before one
has
planned an experiment; they do not kill each other off in wars; they do
not
invent engines of destruction, and, if they did, they would not be so
inept
about controlling such engines; they do not go in for either class
conflicts or
race conflicts; they avoid politics, economics, and papers in
psychology. They
are marvelous, pure and delightful. And, as soon as I possibly can, I
am going
to climb back again out on that good old phylogenic limb and sit there,
this
time right side up and unashamed, wiggling my whiskers at all the
silly, yet at
the same time far too complicated, specimens of homo sapiens, whom I
shall see
strutting and fighting and messing things up, down there on the ground
below
me." (Tolman, 1945, csbsju.edu) He wasn’t always so happy with rats;
early
on in his career he was quoted to say “I don’t like them. They make me
feel
creepy.” Tolman’s need for control changed his mind on rats. He loved
to use
rats because he had to be in control of everything. He felt ordinary
people
were far too unreliable, especially when he had rats at his disposal.
All in all,
Tolman can be
considered the pioneer to today’s cognitive psychology. He was a man
who
believed in change. Unlike many others, when information came to show
something
was wrong, he wasn’t afraid to change the way he thought about it and
adapt.
His contributions were all very important, especially the concept of
intervening
variables. Intervening variables made it possible for unseen behaviors
to now
be considered important and to be measured.
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