Читать книгу The Behavior of Animals - Группа авторов - Страница 16

During the early days of ethology there was a certain amount of scientific rivalry between mainly European ethologists and North American experimental psychologists, who also studied animal behavior in what was usually called comparative psychology. The European ethologists emphasized that animal behavior is a biological phenomenon, and as such a product of evolution. This is exemplified by the use of the word “instinct” (e.g., in the title of Tinbergen’s 1951 classic book The Study of Instinct), which referred to the “innate” components of behavior that are subject to natural selection. A prominent critique of this way of thinking came from the American psychologist Daniel Lehrman, in his 1953 paper “A critique of Konrad Lorenz’ theory of instinctive behavior.” In this paper he argued against Lorenz’ theory in which behavior can be dissected into “innate” and “acquired” (learned) components (see Chapter 7 for a more detailed discussion of these issues). In general, American psychologists emphasized the effects of learning on behavior. Pavlov had already demonstrated the importance of what we now call Pavlovian (or classical) conditioning, and Thorndike studied learning processes that are now known as instrumental conditioning (Chapter 8). Another difference between the ethologists and experimental psychologists was that the former often observed animals of many different species in their natural environment, while the latter, despite the name comparative psychology, often concentrated on one species, such as the rat or the pigeon, that was studied exclusively in the laboratory.