Edward C. Tolman (April 14, 1886 - November 19, 1959) was an American psychologist who belonged to the currents of behaviorism and cognitivism. He is known mainly for his creation of a branch of it known as propositional psychology, which tried to mix the ideas of both theories, faced at that time.
At the time that Edward C. Tolman lived, psychology was totally divided into two streams. One, in which the Gestalt school predominated, was concerned above all with studying mental and internal phenomena. The other, whose greatest exponent was behaviorism, refused to try to understand any human element that was not related to observable behavior.
Tolman.
Tolman, although he initially opted for behaviorism, was also heavily influenced by the Gestalt school. In the 1920s, he began to defend the idea that Watson's theories (which are based on the simple stimulus-response relationship to explain human behavior) were very limited.
In his best known work, Purposeful behavior in animals and men (1932), he suggested that behavior should be understood as an act with a specific objective. This would be formed both by the muscular movements involved, and by the cognitive processes that guide them. Still, his approach remained basically behavioral throughout his life.
Biography
Edward Chace Tolman was born on April 14, 1886 in West Newton, Massachusetts (United States). He grew up in a family with a lean toward science: his brother, Richard Tolman, was a physicist at the California Institute of Technology. Probably because of this, during the first years of his life Edward intended to study engineering.
In fact, during the first years of his university life, Edward Tolman studied in this discipline. However, at one point he decided to change paths and specialize in the study of the human mind, after reading Watson's book Principles of Psychology. In 1915, he obtained his doctorate in this field at the prestigious Harvard University.
After spending three years as a professor at Northwestern University, Tolman decided to move to California, where he began to teach at the famous University of Berkeley.
There he spent a large part of his life, teaching in the faculty of psychology from 1918 to 1954. During these years, he gained the reputation of being a very close professor with great teaching skills.
I work as a researcher
Model of one of the mazes used by Edward C. Tolman in his experiments. Source: Rose M. Spielman, PhD
During the time he was teaching at Berkeley, Edward C. Tolman combined his teaching work with his research. Most of their experiments were carried out using rats as study subjects.
His goal was to understand the principles of behavior, but rejecting the idea that all behavior has to do with a simple stimulus-response relationship as proposed by behaviorism.
With these experiments, Tolman was able to develop one of his most important theories: that of mind maps. This researcher found that if a rat traversed a maze a sufficient number of times, it ended up getting an idea of its composition and could reach the exit even if the path it usually followed was blocked.
In this way, he proposed the theory that some learning takes place even in contexts in which there is no external reinforcement, which went against the prevailing behaviorist theories at the time.
Tolman christened this phenomenon "latent learning"; and this idea, together with that of mind maps, ended up giving rise to cognitive psychology.
Recognitions
Through his research and teaching work, Edward C. Tolman received several important awards and accolades throughout his career. Some of the most important are the following:
- In 1937, he was named president of the American Psychological Association (APA), the most important institution in this country.
- In 1940, he became president of the Lewin Society for the Psychological Study of Social Problems.
- In 1949, he was made a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- In 1957 he received a special award from the APA in recognition of his contributions to science and psychology.
- Finally, in 1963, posthumously, the University of Berkeley built a new building for the teaching of education and psychology, which was called the "Tolman Room."
Learning theory
One of the most interesting characteristics of Edward C. Tolman's work is that, despite considering himself a behaviorist and following the experimental methodology developed by this branch of psychology, he had much more flexible ideas than the main exponents in this field, such as Watson or Skinner.
Thus, despite agreeing with these authors on the need to follow an experimental model, he also incorporated ideas from other less "objective" currents, mainly the Gestalt school.
His main obsession with learning theory was to show that the presence of external reinforcement is not always necessary for an organism (be it an animal or a person) to acquire new knowledge. In this way, he opted for a "stimulus - stimulus" model, which was opposed to the classic "stimulus - response" that prevailed at that time.
To demonstrate his ideas, Tolman turned to the experiments with mazes and rats already mentioned above. In them, he discovered that some learnings do not produce externally visible results the moment they occur. On the contrary, they fall "asleep" waiting until the moment when it is necessary to use them.
Edward C. Tolman called this phenomenon "latent learning." Although his ideas in this regard were not very developed due to the difficulty of studying this phenomenon, in subsequent decades they served as the basis for many other more advanced currents within psychology, mainly cognitivism.
Thus, for example, today we know that an "expert" person in a given field is so because he has internalized a large amount of latent learning, which he can draw on when he needs it.
On the contrary, a beginner in any subject has not yet been able to internalize the most important data about his discipline.
Cognitive maps
The other best known idea of all those developed by Edward C. Tolman was that of cognitive maps. In his experiments with rats, he found that these animals were able to navigate a maze that they already knew with ease even when their usual path was blocked.
For this experimenter, the explanation for this phenomenon is that rats are capable of memorizing the most relevant data about their environment and constructing a "cognitive map" of what surrounds them. This map would help them navigate their surroundings without difficulties, and would give them a greater capacity for adaptation.
Tolman defended the idea that human beings build these kinds of maps constantly, with the intention of understanding the reality that surrounds us in the simplest way possible.
In this way, every time we encounter a similar situation on several occasions, we internalize some of its characteristics and use them to guide us in any similar situation that we may experience in the future.
Again, this idea was not over-developed by Tolman, due to the existence of little objective data during his lifetime that could have been used to expand it. However, in the following decades the theory of cognitive maps gave rise to many other useful concepts within the field of psychology.
For example, Daniel Kahneman used the theory of cognitive maps as the basis for formulating his own theory of mental biases and the dual system of thought.
This theory was so influential in the study of the human mind that it earned him a Nobel Prize, as well as laying the foundation for many of the concepts used in this science today.
On the other hand, in less academic disciplines such as neurolinguistic programming, the concept of cognitive maps is used to explain the way in which human beings relate to the world around us.
Due to the development of his ideas by disciplines of this type, Tolman is considered one of the fathers of modern psychology.
Experiments
One of the keys to Edward C. Tolman's thinking was his belief that psychology should be treated as a natural science, and therefore had to be based on objective and replicable experiments rather than other less reliable methods, such as introspection.
Thus, throughout his life Tolman tried to design objective experiments with which to study the human mind, learning and other similar phenomena. This idea arose from behaviorism, a current that was becoming stronger within psychology; but his approach was slightly different.
The main difference between classical behaviorism and that practiced by Edward Tolman was that while the former only tried to study observable behavior, the latter's experiments aimed to understand more complex and apparently inscrutable phenomena such as the subconscious, memory or love..
References
- "Edward C. Tolman" in: Britannica. Retrieved on: July 22, 2019 from Britannica: britannica.com.
- "Edward C. Tolman" in: New World Encyclopedia. Retrieved on: July 22, 2019 from New World Encyclopedia: newworldencyclopedia.org.
- "Edward C. Tolman" in: VeryWell Mind. Retrieved on: July 22, 2019 from VeryWell Mind: verywellmind.com.
- "Edward C. Tolman" in: The Mind is Wonderful. Retrieved on: July 22, 2019 from La Mente es Maravillosa: lamenteesmaravillosa.com.
- "Edward C. Tolman" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: July 22, 2019 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.