Experimental Animal Behaviour Studies: The Loss of Initiative in Britain 100 Years Ago

Flugel J. C. West D. J. , A hundred years of psychology 1833–1933, 3rd edn with Part 5: 1933–1963 (London, 1964).

Bowler P. J. , The Fontana history of the environmental sciences (London, 1992), 307.

Spalding D. , “On instinct”, Nature, vi (1872); “Instinct; with original observations on young animals”, Macmillan's magazine, xxvii (1873), 282–93.

Boakes R. A. , From Darwin to behaviourism: Psychology and the minds of animals (Cambridge, 1984), 16.

Gray P. H. , “Spalding and his influence on research in developmental behavior”, Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, iii (1967), 168–79.

Gray P. H. , “Prerequisite to an analysis of behaviorism: The conscious automaton theory from Spalding to William James”, Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, iv (1968), 365–76.

He was nevertheless “aware of the collectivist ideological uses of social insects”, and “employed ‘disinterested’ experimentation to cast doubts upon the utopian depictions of co-operative, altruistic communities of ants and bees”. Clark J. F. M. , “‘The ants were duly visited’: Making sense of John Lubbock, scientific naturalism and the senses of social insects”, The British journal for the history of science, xxx (1997), 151–76.

Romanes G. J. , Evening discourse delivered before the British Association, Dublin (London, 1878); idem, Animal intelligence (London, 1882); idem, Mental evolution in animals (London, 1883); idem, Jelly-fish, star-fish and sea-urchins. Being a research on primitive nervous systems (London, 1885); Romanes E. G. , The life and letters of George John Romanes (London, 1896).

Gottlieb G. , “Comparative psychology and ethology”, in Hearst E. (ed.), The first century of experimental psychology (Hillsdale, NJ, 1979), 147–76, p. 149.

Thompson R. F. Robinson D. N. , “Physiological psychology”, in Hearst (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 9), 407–58, p. 421.

Gray P. H. , “The Morgan–Romanes controversy: A contradiction in the history of comparative psychology”, Proceedings of the Montana Academy of Sciences, xxiii (1963), 225–30.

Morgan C. Lloyd , Emergent evolution (London, 1923).

Dewsbury D. A. , Comparative psychology in the twentieth century (Stroudsburg, 1984), 315.

Morgan C. Lloyd , Animal life and intelligence (London, 1890); Introduction to comparative psychology (London, 1894); Habit and instinct (London, 1896); Animal behaviour (London, 1900); Instinct and experience (London, 1912); The animal mind (London, 1930).

Hobhouse L. T. , Mind in evolution (London, 1901).

Lloyd Morgan's desk became a forum for most of those involved in psychological research with animals in Britain until the 1930s. All types of investigator as well as some foreign workers corresponded with him. New publications were exchanged and admired, and points of disagreement discussed. The following correspondence is preserved in the Bristol University History Collection (as referenced). Charles Sherrington (1901) writes in appreciation of his newly received copy of Animal behaviour (DM 612); and much later both he (1923) and, via his wife, an infirm Henry Head (1929) express great interest in Lloyd Morgan's published studies of ‘emergent evolution’ (DM 128/346 and DM 128/415). Margaret Washburn (1913) refers to Lloyd Morgan's criticisms of her The animal mind, to her misgivings about Watsonian behaviourism and to her appreciation of Lloyd Morgan's Instinct and experience (DM 128/290). Much further correspondence on each other's work took place between Lloyd Morgan and C. S. Myers, E. B. Poulton (Hope Professor of Zoology at Oxford), McDougall William Thomson J. A. (DM 128/various numbers and DM 612). Lloyd Morgan remained at the centre of a network of correspondence on matters concerning animal behaviour long after he ceased his own experiments.

Standing L. MacLean M. , “Contributions to the history of psychology: LXXVIII. Citation overlap between histories of animal behavior studies”, Psychological reports, lxviii (1991), 707–10.

Adler H. E. Adler L. L. Tobach E. , “Past, present, and future of comparative psychology”, in Tobach E. Adler H. E. Adler L. L. (eds), Comparative psychology at issue (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, ccxxiii (1973)), 184–92.

Morgan Lloyd , op. cit. (ref. 14, 1930), 248. He established some universal terminology that remains current, including ‘trial and error’, ‘reinforcement’ and ‘inhibition’.

Thorpe W. H. , “Some implications of the study of animal behaviour”, The advancement of science, xiii (1956), 42–55.

Morgan Lloyd , op. cit. (ref. 14, 1894), 53. A good example of Lloyd Morgan's identification of misinterpretation is quoted by L. T. Hobhouse, Mind in evolution, 2nd edn (London, 1915), 298.

For example, Myers Charles pronounced in 1931: “The ‘behaviourists’ are quite right when they insist that scientific measurement is applicable only to the behaviour of the organism. Where they are quite wrong is in their assumption that conscious processes must necessarily be ousted from scientific psychology, because measurement is excluded; the truth being that, even when measurement is excluded, the possibilities of systematic observation and experiment still remain. Natural science surely has a function wider than that of merely reducing its subject-matter to units of space and time. Highly valuable and deserving of the utmost encouragement as is the measurement of behaviouristic data, however helpful be the light they may ultimately throw on mental processes and their general characters, however wider be mental processes than the range of mere conscious experience, the scientific study of the mind by direct observation and experiment is never to be discountenanced or discarded…. The fundamental purpose of consciousness is to enable the self to preserve the organism by guidance and direction, — By the formation and satisfaction of ends and values. As in the evolution of living species something far more is involved than the mere blind running down-hill of a wound-up mechanism.” Myers C. S. , Presidential address to Section J of the British Association, British Association for the Advancement of Science: Reports, 1931, 185–6; 194.

Richards suggests that in his exchanges with Romanes in the 1880s there was some ambivalence and inconsistency of attitude on Lloyd Morgan's part concerning the legitimacy of a comparative psychology from the ejective standpoint. He then accepted comparative psychology centred on the examination of instinct, but applied to it his precautionary Canon as a steadying constraint. Richards R. J. , Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior (Chicago, 1987), 380–1; 385. Costall goes so far as to claim that “the Canon was to provide the ground rules for interpreting animal behaviour anthropomorphically”. Costall A. , “How Lloyd Morgan's Canon backfired”, Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, xxix (1993), 113–22. But Radick proposes that Morgan's precautionary Canon was a reflection of his agreement with the Oxford Sanskrit scholar Friedrich Max Müller that language and reason went together, and that because animals lack language, interpretations of their behaviour should not become anthropomorphic by attributing to it humanlike rational thought. Secondly, he argues that Morgan qualified both his view and the basis of the Canon, on being unsettled by the potential of the phonographic research of J. L. Garner, who proposed that simians had language and therefore reason. Radick G. , “Morgan's Canon, Garner's phonograph, and the evolutionary origins of language and reason”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxiii (2000), 3–23. Dewsbury notes that the Canon has often been misinterpreted. It was not written in an effort to eliminate the attribution of consciousness to nonhuman animals but rather to counteract casual anthropomorphism in comparative psychology. Since its enunciation many scientists have acknowledged that rampant application of it can lead to a denial of the existence of complex processes where complex processes exist. Lloyd Morgan himself found this problem in Thorndike's puzzle-box experiments with cats. Dewsbury, op. cit. (ref. 13), 188.

Morgan Lloyd , op. cit. (ref. 14, 1900).

Warden C. J. , “The development of modern comparative psychology”, Quarterly review of biology, iii (1928), 486–522.

Mackenzie B. D. , Behaviourism and the limits of scientific method (London, 1977).

Boakes , op. cit. (ref. 4), 181.

Bitterman M. E. , “C. Lloyd Morgan and the theory of instrumental learning”, American journal of psychology, lxxxii (1969), 126–33.

Richards R. J. , “Lloyd Morgan's theory of instinct: From Darwinism to neo-Darwinism”, Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, xiii (1977), 12–32, pp. 31–32. McDougall viewed purposive striving as a fundamental category of psychology and believed that the energy for such striving springs from the instincts: These cannot be defined in terms of stimuli and responses but are intimately related to emotions. Dewsbury, op. cit. (ref. 23), 312.

Rollin B. E. , The unheeded cry: Animal consciousness, animal pain and science (Oxford, 1989), 51 and 53.

Rollin , op. cit. (ref. 30), 67–68, observes: “One can indeed find elements of this reductionistic, ‘no frills’ philosophy throughout European culture. By the end of the nineteenth century, art, architecture, design, music, and literature had become extremely extravagant…. Much early twentieth-century culture can be seen as an attempt to eliminate or trim away that excess.”.

Hobhouse , op. cit. (ref. 15).

Weiskrantz L. , “Categorization, cleverness and consciousness”, Philosophical transactions. Series B: Biological sciences, cccviii (1985), 3–19.

Boakes , op. cit. (ref. 4), 181–2.

Singer B. , “History of animal behaviour”, in MacFarland D. (ed.), Oxford companion to animal behaviour (Oxford, 1981), 255–72, p. 268.

Mackenzie , op. cit. (ref. 26).

Gottlieb , op. cit. (ref. 9), 162.

Hearnshaw L. S. , The comparative psychology of mental development (L. T. Hobhouse Memorial Trust Lecture no. 36, 5 May 1966, Bedford College, London; London, 1966).

Yerkes was an American who untypically developed his investigations outside mainstream behaviourism.

Hearnshaw L. S. , A short history of British psychology 1840–1940 (London, 1964), 103.

Boakes , op. cit. (ref. 4), 182–4.

Dewsbury , op. cit. (ref. 23), 303.

Hobhouse L. T. , articles under the title “The diversions of a psychologist”, The pilot: A weekly review of politics, literature, and learning, v (London, 1902).

Hearnshaw , op. cit. (ref. 40), 104; Hearnshaw L. S. , “Psychology in Great Britain: An introductory historical essay”, Supplement to the Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, xxii (1969), 3–9.

Boakes , op. cit. (ref. 4), 51.

Beatrice Edgell, for example, appears by 1923 to have become resigned to the fact that her full ambitions for the experimental work of her psychology department at Bedford College for Women would not be met. Edgell B. , “Report to Council on the needs for the future development of Psychology” (8 December 1923). Archives, Royal Holloway, University of London, AR 334/10/1.

It is however true that Myers maintained some interest in animal work and advised E. M. Smith in her Cambridge experiments. After her marriage to Bartlett she gave up such research and clearly failed to create much enthusiasm for it in her husband. Wilson D. A. H. , “British women academics and comparative psychology: Attempts to establish a research niche in the early twentieth century”, History of psychology (in press). It is important to note that by 1911 Cambridge students choosing psychology would be examined in six topics, but that the sixth required either ‘Application to Education’ or ‘Animal Psychology’. No clearer indication can be given of the different perceptions of the theoretical and applicable links between these two subject areas existing at the time in Britain and the United States. Myers C. S. , “Charles Samuel Myers”, in Murchison C. A. (ed.), A history of psychology in autobiography (3 vols, Worcester, Mass., 1930–36; New York, 1961), iii, 215–30.

Howard H. E. , Letter to C. Lloyd Morgan, 13 May 1923. Bristol University History Collection, DM 128/347.

Wilson D. A. H. , “Admiralty science, U-boats and the performing arts, 1916–1917”, Journal of defence science, vi (2001), 157–167; “Sea lions, greasepaint and the U-boat threat: Admiralty scientists turn to the music hall in 1916”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, lv (2001), 425–455.

Rivers W. H. R. McDougall W. spent the war in similar capacities.

Myers left Cambridge in order to develop his new interests in applied industrial psychology. Given his recognition of the relevance of animal studies in academic psychology, it is interesting to speculate on the possibility of his having supported its development at Cambridge, had not the diversions of applied clinical and industrial psychology been created by the occurrence of the war.

Wilson , op. cit. (ref. 47).

For example: Hazlitt V. , “The acquisition of motor habits”, British journal of psychology, ix (1917–19), 299–320.

Wolters A. W. , “Obituary: Victoria Hazlitt, 1887–1932”, British journal of psychology, xxiii (1933), 205–8.

Midgley M. , “Are you an animal?”, in Langley G. (ed.), Animal experimentation — The consensus changes (Basingstoke, 1989), 1–18, p. 7.

Hearnshaw L. S. , The shaping of modern psychology (London, 1987), 227–8.

For example, Thomson J. A. , Science and religion (London, 1925), 129 and 132.

Durant J. , “Innate character in animals and man: A perspective on the origins of ethology”, in Webster C. (ed.), Biology, medicine and society 1840–1940 (Cambridge, 1981), 157–92.

Selous E. , Bird watching (London, 1901), 166.

Thorndike E. L. , Animal intelligence (Collected papers, 1898–1901) (New York, 1911).

Warden , op. cit. (ref. 25), 503.

Dewsbury D. A. , Comparative animal behaviour (New York, 1978), 23.

Jenkins H. M. , “Animal learning and behavior theory”, in Hearst , op. cit. (ref. 9), 177–230, p. 183. O'Donnell notes that “The need to find an experimental basis for an educational psychology underwritten by the genetic viewpoint led paradoxically to an abandonment of that viewpoint. Aided by biological objections to the theory of recapitulation and by psychologists' disenchantment with [G. Stanley] Hall's unscientific procedures of using analogous records of parallel development to account for mental growth in humans, animal psychology increasingly came to focus on the second aspect of child study: The determination of how organisms learn”. O'Donnell J. M. , The origins of behaviorism: American psychology, 1870–1920 (New York, 1985), 165.

Thorndike , op. cit. (ref. 60), 15.

Hilgard wrote as late as 1960: “I am inclined to believe that the term ‘comparative psychology’ should be confined to studies carried out in evolutionary spirit, but contemporary practice does not distinguish sharply between those who use animals in one way or the other.” Hilgard E. R. , “Psychology after Darwin”, in Tax S. (ed.), Evolution after Darwin, ii (Chicago, 1960), 269–87.

“Report by Professor Sir Ernest Rutherford FRS and Commander Cyprian Bridge RN, on Visit to the USA in company with French Scientific Mission, May 19th to July 9th, 1917.” BIR 28208/17. Public Record Office: ADM 293/10.

Littman R. A. , “Social and intellectual origins of experimental psychology”, in Hearst, op. cit. (ref. 9), 39–88, p. 46.

Alter P. , The reluctant patron: Science and the state in Britain 1850–1920 , transl. by Davies A. (Oxford and Hamburg, 1987), 223. But there were, of course, significant scientific successes in other areas in the early twentieth century, such as particle physics and X-ray crystallography.

Myers , op. cit. (ref. 47), 215–16.

Moore J. R. , “Of love and death: Why Darwin ‘gave up Christianity’”, in Moore J. R. (ed.), History, humanity and evolution: Essays for John C. Greene (Cambridge, 1989), 195–230, p. 195.

Morton R. A. , “Biochemistry at Liverpool 1902–1971”, Medical history, xvi (1972), 321–53.

In 1911, Professor Moore, the first holder of the research chair at Liverpool, criticized university funding and its effects, and noted: “Research … is usually regarded by administrators as a luxury.” Researches in biochemistry 1908–11, i, in the Harold Cohen Library of Liverpool University, quoted in Roderick G. W. Stephens M. D. , “Scientific studies and scientific manpower in the English civic universities 1870–1914”, Science studies, iv (1974), 41–63.

Cardwell D. S. L. , The organization of science in England, 2nd edn (London, 1972), 215.

Hearnshaw , op. cit. (ref. 56), 125.

Farr R. , An inaugural lecture: Some reflections on the historical development of psychology as an experimental and social science (London, 1985).

MacLeod R. M. , “The Royal Society and the Government grant: Notes on the administration of scientific research, 1849–1914”, Historical journal, xiv (1971), 323–58; “The support of Victorian science: The endowment of research movement in Great Britain, 1868–1900”, Minerva, iv (1971), 197–230 (both reprinted in MacLeod R. M. , Public science and public policy in Victorian England (Aldershot, 1996)).

Danziger K. , “Social context and investigative practice in early twentieth-century psychology”, in Ash M. G. Woodward W. R. (eds), Psychology in twentieth-century thought and society (Cambridge, 1987), 13–33, p. 29.

Quoted in Crampton C. , “The Cambridge School: The life, work and influence of James Ward, W. H. R. Rivers, C. S. Myers and Sir Frederic Bartlett”, Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh University, 1978, 156.

Daston L. J. , “British responses to psycho-physiology, 1860–1900”, Isis, lxix (1978), 192–208, pp. 192, 200 and 207–8.

Hearnshaw , op. cit. (ref. 40), 208.

Myers C. S. was appointed Consultant Psychologist to the British Armies in France in 1916, and frequently appeared as an expert witness in court-martial cases concerning a soldier's degree of responsibility for desertion or for other serious infractions of discipline. In the last year of the war he devised tests and supervised their application for the selection of men suited to hydrophone work for submarine detection. Myers , op. cit. (ref. 47). During the First World War Charles Spearman was seconded for at least three months to the Admiralty's Board of Invention and Research, which paid pro rata his annual professorial salary in University College, London, of £400, in order to pursue work with the approval of the naval bases HMS Excellent and HMS Vernon on the ‘personal factor’ including quickness of perception, acuity of vision, localization of sound, nerve reactions etc. Memorandum of Preliminary Meeting of Sub Committee, Section II, BIR, held on 8 January 1918. PRO ADM 293/11. On his return to University College, at a meeting in 1919 to consider the needs of his department, he recalled: “Already at the outbreak of the war, our laboratory was full of as much work as it could hold. And the war appears to have caused a very great development of the practical applications of this science. Previously these had been almost confined to education and medicine. There is now being opened to it a field of surprisingly large dimensions, particularly industrial and sociological.” University of London, University College, London Manuscripts Library UCL Hist: VI A/2.

Danziger K. , Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research (Cambridge, 1990), 184 and 185.

Littman , op. cit. (ref. 67), 68–69.

Tweney R. D. , “Programmatic research in experimental psychology: E. B. Titchener's laboratory investigations, 1891–1927”, in Ash Woodward (eds), op. cit. (ref. 77), 35–57.

Titchener to Harvard's President Lowell, 13 June 1917. Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, John M. Olin Library, Cornell University.

Titchener E. B. , Experimental psychology: A manual of laboratory practice (4 vols, New York, 1901–5), i, pp. vii–viii.

O'Donnell , op. cit. (ref. 63), 137–43, 152–8 (with reference to Perkinson H. J. , The imperfect panacea: American faith in education, 1865–1965 (New York, 1968), 163–4).

Danziger , op. cit. (ref. 77), 26. The importance of the educational market to the development of American psychology from the late nineteenth century is also analysed by Smith, as is the willingness of American society to encourage scientific psychology as a means of social improvement and modernization. Smith R. , The Fontana history of the human sciences (London, 1997), 519–29.

Watson J. B. , “Psychology as the behaviorist views it”, Psychological review, xx (1913), 158–77.

O'Donnell , op. cit. (ref. 63), 181–208.

Two such refugees were Ludwig Koch, who worked with Julian Huxley on animal language in 1938, and David Katz, who had earlier made acquaintance with Manchester University's Department of Psychology as visiting professor before arriving from the University of Rostock in 1936. He thereupon helped to found the Institute for the Study of Animal Behaviour, but soon left for a professorial appointment in Sweden.

Smith , op. cit. (ref. 88), 640, 643, 651.

Broadhurst P. L. , Psychology in its natural habitat: An inaugural lecture delivered in the University of Birmingham on 16 February 1967 (Birmingham, 1967), 13 and 14.

Joncich G. , “E. L. Thorndike: The psychologist as professional man of science”, American psychologist, xxiii (1968), 434–46.

Dewsbury , op. cit. (ref. 62), 22.

“The leadership of America in comparative psychology is very largely due to this extensive development of the laboratory method during the past three decades.” Warden C. J. , “The historical development of comparative psychology”, Psychological review, xxxiv (1927), 135–68.

Hearnshaw , op. cit. (ref. 56), 125.

Sokal M. M. , “Psychology at Victorian Cambridge: The unofficial laboratory of 1887–1888”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, cxvi/2 (1972), 145–7.

Cattell wrote to his parents from Cambridge on 5 October 1887: “I have been busied this afternoon trying to find a place for a psychological laboratory. All the buildings are very crowded. Some of the colleges are rich, but the university itself is poor, and finds it expensive to house the laboratories and museums which have grown so rapidly during the past few years. I suppose, however, we shall be able to get something. I dine with Ward tomorrow to talk it over.” Ward had earlier advised Cattell: “It is, I fear, pretty clear that if a beginning is to be made it must be in some college … & not in the University.” Sokal M. M. , An education in psychology: James McKeen Cattell's journal and letters from Germany and England, 1880–1888 (Cambridge, MA, 1981), 281.

Knight A. R. , “The Department of Psychology in the University of Aberdeen”, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, xlvii (1962), 3–11.

Hearnshaw L. S. , “Sixty years of psychology”, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, xlvi (1962), 2–10, p. 7.

Hearnshaw , op. cit. (ref. 101), 10.

Hearnshaw , op. cit. (ref. 40), 136 and 139.

Ward J. , “Modern psychology: A reflexion”, Mind, n.s., ii (1893), 54–82.

Except to Cyril Burt, who became in 1912 Britain's first professional psychologist on his educational appointment to London County Council.

Cambridge University Library Department of Manuscripts and University Archives: Prem. VII.4.

Myers , op. cit. (ref. 47), 224–5.

Zangwill O. L. , Psychology as the study of behaviour (Cambridge, 1954), 22.

Bartlett F. C. , “Fifty years of psychology”, Occupational psychology, xxix/4 (1955), 203–16.

Bartlett F. C. , “Critical notice: ‘Behaviorism’ by John B. Watson”, Mind, xxxvi (1927), 77–83.

Gotch's receptiveness to students of psychology as well as his belief in the links between experimental psychology and education, still unusual at that time in Britain, are revealed in the evidence he gave to the Royal Commission on Vivisection on 30 October 1907. Students of philosophy and psychology asked to come specially to the last course of [physiological] lectures on the central nervous system, and he said that “in a special annex to my department which is now being built, special rooms are reserved for this particular subject, psycho-physics, which is taken up, not only by philosophers, but by those who are qualifying for the education scheme of the University…. All education should be based on neurology”. Royal Commission on Vivisection. Appendix to 4th Report of the Commissioners. Minutes of Evidence 13638–9, October–December 1907. HMSO 1908. (Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, Contemporary Medical Archives Centre: SA/RDS H.14/22.).

McDougall W. , “William McDougall”, in Murchison , op. cit. (ref. 47), i.

Crew F. A. E. , “A repetition of McDougall's Lamarckian experiment”, Journal of genetics, xxxiii (1936), 61–101. At the Institute of Animal Genetics of the University of Edinburgh, Crew trained eighteen generations of rats in a water tank, using six trials a day to a criterion of twelve ‘correct’ shock avoidances. His experimental design and control appeared superior, and to disprove McDougall's claims for the Lamarckian hypothesis.

Warden , op. cit. (ref. 96), 154 and 155.

McDougall W. , “A second report on a Lamarckian experiment”, British journal of psychology, xx (1930), 201–18.

Heidbreder E. , “William McDougall and social psychology”, Journal of abnormal and social psychology, xxxiv (1939), 150–60, cited by Webb W. B. , “William McDougall's Lamarckian experiments”, The psychological record, xxxix (1989), 159–76.

McDougall W. , Letter to C. Lloyd Morgan, 24 July 1934. Bristol University History Collection: DM 128/537.

Thorpe , op. cit. (ref. 20).

The engagement of public interest has since proved most influential on the progress of animal behaviour studies, not without problems for the individuals involved. Academic disapproval was expressed over Julian Huxley's use of the press to attract interest in his work on the axolotl, but his eagerness, like that of his grandfather, to inform the public of the value of science was shown by his collaboration with (the anti-behaviourist) H. G. Wells in the publication of The science of life in 1930. More recently, and with the advent of mass communications, it has become expected of scientists that they communicate, explain and even justify the value of their work to public audiences. The criticism now sometimes levelled is that of commercial popularization which might affect academic honesty and accuracy. Desmond Morris has received such criticism: He is much better known for his popular and somewhat speculative publications than for his important academic work, but in the 1960s and 1970s he successfully maintained an appreciative public focus on his subject.

Wilson , op. cit. (ref. 47).