CCoberly_Tracing_the_Roots_of_Comparative_Psychology_DrWComments

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


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


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


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


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


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


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.


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).


References

Abramson, C. L., (2013). A tool for every job: Assessing the need for a universal definition of

tool use. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 26, 281-303.

Blumberg, M. S., & Wasserman, E. A. (1995). Animal mind and the argument from design.

American Psychologist, 3, 133-144.

Cherry, K. (n.d.). The origins of psychology: A brief history of psychology through the years. In

about.com psychology. Retrieved from

http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/psychistory.htm.

Darwin, C. (1859). The origin of species by means of natural selection. London: Murray.

Dawkins, R. (1986). The blind watchmaker. New York: Norton.

Dennett, D. (1983). Intention systems in cognitive ethology: The “panglossian paradigm”

defended. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 343-390.

Goldiamond, I. (1965). Stuttering and fluency as manipulable operant response classes In L.

Krasner & L. P. Ullman (Eds.), Research in behavior modification: New developments

and implications (pp. 106-156), New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Gould S. J. (1980). The panda’s thumb: More reflections in natural history. In S. J. Gould (Ed.),

Research in behavior modification: New developments and implications (pp. 20-21). New

York: Norton.

Griffin, D.R. (1978). Prospects for a cognitive ethology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 4, 527-

538.

Hefferline, R. F., Keenan, B., & Hartford, R. A. (1959). Escape and avoidance conditioning in

human subjects without their observation of the response. Science, 130, 1338-1339.


Hergenhahn, B. R. (2005/2009). An introduction to the history of psychology: Sixth edition.

United States: Michele Sordi.

Hume, D. (1779/1985). Dialogues concerning natural religion. In R. H. Popkin (Ed.) Dialogues

concerning natural religion and the posthumous essays (pp 1-89). Indianapolis: Hackett.

Kuczaj, S. A., (2013). Are conversations between dolphins and humans possible? International

Journal of Comparative Psychology, 26, 114-123.

Nijhout, H. F. (1990). Metaphors and the role of genes in development. BioEssays, 12, 441-446.

Paley, W. (1802/1851). Natural theology; Or, evidences of the existence and attributes of the

deity. London: Gould & Lincoln.

Pisula, W., Turlesjski, K., & Charles E. P. (2013). Comparative psychology as unified

psychology: The case of curiosity and other novelty-related behavior. Review of General

Psychology, 17, 224-229.

Romanes, G. J. (1883/1977). Animal Intelligence. Washington, DC: United Publications of

America

Svartdal, F. (1991). Operant modulation of low-level attributes of rule-governed behavior by

nonverbal contingencies. Learning and Motivation, 22, 406-420.

Thomas, G. V. (1981). Contiguity, reinforcement rate and the law of effect. Quarterly Journal of

Experimental Psychology, 33B, 33-43.

Thorndike, E. L. (1898). Animal intelligence: An experimental study of the association processes

in animals. Psychological Review Monographs, 2, 4.

Udell, M. A. R., Spencer, J. M., Dorey, N. R., & Wynne, C. D. L, (2013). Human-socialized

wolves follow diverse human gestures… and they may not be alone. International

Journal of Comparative Psychology, 25, 97-117.


Vauclair, J. (1996). Animal cognition: An introduction to modern comparative psychology.

United States: Harvard University Press.

CCoberly_Tracing_the_Roots_of_Comparative_Psychology_DrWComments

Documents

Transcript of CCoberly_Tracing_the_Roots_of_Comparative_Psychology_DrWComments