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Running head: COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 1
Tracing the Roots of Comparative Psychology
Christy G. Coberly
Armstrong Atlantic State University
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2
Abstract
Human curiosity may be seen in the earliest of times with religious thinkers. It has since
developed into a broad field of science known as psychology. The subfield of comparative
psychology has more recently developed and incorporates development, evolution, and a
significant understanding of organism-environment relationships. Since comparative psychology
involves a wide possibility of studies involving both humans and non-human animals, it has been
suggested to be not only a sub discipline of psychology, but a more general psychology that may
be used in order to develop more insight into the minds of humans.
Keywords: comparative psychology, animal studies, human studies
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 3
Tracing the Roots of Comparative Psychology
Humans have been enthralled with the world around them for thousands of years and a
yearn for greater knowledge of man and nature can be dated back to the cosmologists of ancient
Greece. These cosmologists, including Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Pythagoras used
such techniques as observation of the natural world, mathematics, navigation, and astronomy, in
order to develop philosophical theories. The ideas of these men led to a greater knowledge about
the physical world around us. As these ideas developed and turned into basic concepts and
principles of nature, the field became known as philosophy and those studying the basic concepts
of nature became known as philosophers (Hergenhahn, 2009).
Ancient Greek philosophy dates back to the 6th century BCE. However, it was not until
the 19th century that marked the beginning of psychology. While the early philosophers depended
on observation to develop theories regarding nature, psychology separated itself by using a
scientific approach by means of experimentation. Wilhelm Wundt was a German physiologist in
the mid 1800s that began using scientific analyses of reaction time in humans and therefore
became known as one of the first scientific psychologist. In 1879, Wundt opened up the first
psychology lab at the University of Leipzig which many regard as the beginning of psychology
as an independent field of science (Cherry, n.d.; Hergenhahn, 2009).
Some may consider Rene Descartes as the spark of animal studies and comparative
psychology. In the 17th century, Descartes proposed his ideas of discontinuity. Descartes ideas
established a connection between the mind and the machine. According to Descartes, the mind
belongs to the human and the animals were considered the machines. Therefore, if one may
accept the idea that humans originated from an animal ancestor, then the connection would make
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 4
it acceptable to study non-human animals in order to better understand human behavior
(Vauclair, J. 1996).
Following David Hume’s death in 1776, his book, Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion, was published in 1779 sparking interest in the Argument from Design. This work
focused on the creation of nature and aims at determining rational thought about religion.
Hume’s book encompassed the thoughts of Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes whom all agreed on the
existence of a god; however, they differed significantly in their theories (Hergenhahn, 2009;
Hume, 1779/1985).
According to the views of Cleanthes, the complexity of nature should be noted but also
the non random patterns of design. Cleanthes claimed that products of nature closely resemble
products created by humans. Therefore, Cleanthes relied on analogical reasoning and association
in order to demonstrate the existence of a divine creator by examining the physical world (Hume,
1779/1985).
Philo was a skeptic of Cleanthes. Although Philo appreciated the many elaborate and
purposeful designs of nature, he also concluded that there were many imperfect designs in the
natural world. Philo’s approach in his Argument from Design was to demonstrate the
imperfections in the world which were previously thought to be made in the image of a “perfect”
god. Through Philo’s observations of imperfect designs, he implied an imperfect creator,
therefore, suggested a “divine” creator must not exist (Hume, 1779/1985).
Neither Cleanthes nor Philo were capable of developing an explanation for the
functionality or complexity of nature. However, Hume suggested a “blind nature.” He believed
that one’s experience could only exist through internal or external stimuli and agreed with
George Berkeley that we are only capable of developing perceptions of the physical world
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 5
through these experiences. However, they suggested that one would never directly know the
physical world (Hergenhahn, 2009).
Much like Cleanthes and Philo, William Paley was fascinated with the complexity of the
world and organisms around him but was unable to produce a theory for the origin of nature.
Following Cleanthes’s ideas and methods, Paley used an analogical approach in the development
of his theories. Paley’s goal was to expand on philosophical proposals regarding God’s existence
and in 1802 published Natural Theology: Or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the
Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (Paley, 1802/1851). Although he did not give
proof to the existence of a god, it was his ideas that laid the ground work for current thoughts
regarding genes as “creator” and their effects in development (Nijhout, 1990). Charles Darwin
(1859) followed up the ideas presented by Paley with the suggestion of a creator who provides
order through a “blind, unconscious, automatic process” (Dawkins, 1986 p. 5).
Darwin was known for his theory of evolution and his beliefs that organisms are capable
of exquisitely adapting to their environment. However, he also noticed the “serendipity” of
evolution and its imperfections. Stephen Gould wrote on this subject that “odd arrangements and
funny solutions are the proof of evolution” (Gould, 1980, p. 20).
Darwin later became known as the cornerstone for the field of comparative psychology
which is the scientific study of memory, learning, conceptualization, and many other forms of
cognitive processes in animals. His theories were inspired by many of the philosophers before
him including the evolutionary works of his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, who was a leading
scholar of the eighteenth century. Including the philosophers already mentioned, Darwin was
also inspired by the works of Jean Lamarck who discovered the change in species over time
through fossil studies and developed theories which closely mimicked the ideas of Darwin’s
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 6
grandfather. Opposed to Darwin’s theories of evolution, Erasmus Darwin and Jean Lamarck
believed that evolution was a process of increasing perfection which did not occur by chance.
Lamarck’s studies eventually led to Thomas Malthus’s, An Essay on the Principles of
Population. Malthus suggested that war, starvation, and disease were all necessary in order to
maintain a balance of food supply and population. From this theory, Darwin created his Theory
of Evolution by applying Malthus’s ideas about non-human animals to humans and including the
thoughts of Charles Lyell in his theory (Darwin, 1859; Hergenhahn, 2009). Lyell was a Scottish
paleontologist who created the work Principles of Geology. Charles Darwin considered Lyell a
major influence on his ideas because Lyell’s book inspired Darwin to think of evolution as a very
slow process in which small changes occur over a vast amount of time.
George Romanes (1883/1977) was one of Darwin’s youngest academic friends who
developed the term neo-Darwinism to describe updated Darwinism. At the end of the 19th
century, scientists such as Romanes and C. Lloyd Morgan began focusing more on animal
studies and engaging in a form of anthropomorphism in which one attributes human
characteristics to animals. They labeled animals with substantial intelligence in comparison with
humans. Therefore, it was the anecdotes produced by these scientists that commenced the road to
the science focused on animal behavior known as comparative psychology (Blumberg &
Wasserman, 1995).
Edward Thorndike was disgusted with the stories of extraordinary behaviors of animals.
He stated that “besides commonly misstating what facts they report, they report only such facts
as show the animal at his best” (Thorndike, 1898, p. 4). Thorndike was the first doctoral graduate
to compose a dissertation with non-human animal subjects called Animal Intelligence: An
Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in Animals. This work included Thorndike’s
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 7
famous puzzle boxes in which he proposed his law of effect. According to Thorndike (1898), if
an action is followed by a pleasant stimulus then that action will be more likely to occur in the
future. However, if an action is followed by an aversive stimulus then that behavior will become
less likely to occur. He stated that this phenomena is a gradual process, however, once a specific
behavior has been associated with a positive stimulus multiple times, it will eventually become
an automatic behavior. Thorndike took these conclusions he had made using non-human animals
and applied his theories to humans. Thorndike’s conclusion that this law was a “general learning
process” for all animals became the start of behaviorism and ultimately comparative psychology.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner created an operant chamber for animals whose behaviors were
conditioned using consequences and rewards, much like the studies of Thorndike. However,
Thorndike and Skinner’s studies differed in the respect that Thorndike studied behavior
controlled by consequences, whereas Skinner was concerned with how the organism acts on the
environment to produce consequences. Although Skinner disagreed with Thorndike’s theories,
he did agree that operant conditioning is a rather subconscious matter (Blumberg & Wasserman,
1995).
Daniel Dennett (1983) attempted to reestablish studies of animal behavior by arguing that
it is not prior training that makes these animals intelligent, but the unique accounts of behavior
that could not possibly be explained by conditioning. Following Dennett’s objections, many
students studying in the field of animal behavior began anthropomorphizing, again.
One of the scientists at the time pushing to continue his studies on the mental knowledge
of animals was a biologist named Donald Griffin. Griffin founded a field of science that has
recently grown in popularity and closely resembles that of comparative psychology. This field is
known as cognitive ethology and aims to understand the mental process of non-human animals
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 8
and the behavioral outcomes of these processes. Griffin attempted “to learn as much as possible
about the likelihood that non-human animals have mental experiences, and insofar as these do
occur, what they entail and how they affect the animals’ behavior, welfare, and biological
fitness” (Griffin, 1978, p. 528)
Griffin’s ideas closely resembled that of Paley’s theories. Both Griffin and Paley
appreciated the complexity and beauty of life, and they both employed an ahistorical perspective
in their search for an explanation of design. Whereas Paley suggested that God was the ultimate
creator, Griffin contributed the complexity of animal behavior to a design that each organism
posses in one’s head. However, it was the work of Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, and Nikolaas
Tinbergen in the field of cognitive ethology that significantly impacted comparative psychology.
Frisch, Lorenz, and Tinbergen were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973 for their work with animals
which led to a better understanding of the system of individual and social behavior patterns.
Proceeding Dennett’s objections, G. V. Thomas’s (1981) research examined how
temporal contiguity effected lever pressing using rats as the subjects. Thomas’s conclusions
mirrored the findings of Thorndike and Skinner. If a reinforcer must follow a response in order
to alter a behavior, then it is merely conditioning which does not require logical thought.
With animal studies growing in number and developing similar results, behaviorists
began questioning if these results of unintelligent behavior would be obtained in a human study
as well (Goldiamond, 1965; Hefferline, Kennan, & Harford, 1958; Svartdal, 1991). Goldiamond
(1965) used a negative reinforcement paradigm in order to cause a specific behavior in his
human participants. Goldiamond was capable of producing a stutter in individuals who typically
do not stutter. However, the more enlightening aspect of Goldiamond’s finding was that the
participants were unaware of the stimuli causing this behavior to appear.
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 9
The research of Goldiamond stemmed from the original thoughts of Thorndike, Skinner,
and Thomas, their approach at comparative psychology, and their use of animals. Goldiamond
adopted the findings from these animal studies and applied them to humans. The results of
Goldiamond’s human studies were remarkably similar to the findings of Thorndike, Skinner, and
Thomas’s animal studies.
Hefferline, Kennan, and Harford (1958) expanded on the ideas of Goldiamond and used
electromyographic amplification to produce a subconscious thumb twitch in human participants.
In order to escape the aversive stimuli in the experiment, the participant had to simply twitch
their thumb. Even though the participants were unaware of their behavior, the rate of their thumb
twitching increased during the experiment outside of their knowledge. Therefore, the general
conclusions of operant conditioning in animals were closely mimicked in these human studies.
Conclusion
Psychology has struggled to be considered a field of science and that debate continues
today. However, psychology has been responsible for many significant findings about the
capabilities and thought processes of animals and humans. The researchers of comparative
psychology strive to understand what drives animal behavior and how closely those driving
forces relate to those of humans. Just as the original philosophers appreciated nature and aimed
towards a better understanding of the world around them, comparative psychologists, today,
persist to develop understandings of the mind and body connection and aspire towards a better
understanding of behavior in all human and non-human animals (Abramson, 2013; Kuczaj, 2013;
Udell, Spencer, Dorey, & Wynne, 2013).
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 10
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