The genesis of Hull's principles of behavior

Abstract

It is claimed that, in writing the Principles of Behavior, Clark L. Hull was under the influence of four imperatives (the need to distance himself from Gestalt psychology, the need to make quantitative predictions, the need for theoretical unification, and the need to express a biologico-mechanistic philosophy). Mainly by using the correspondence between Hull and Kenneth W. Spence it is suggested how each imperative might have controlled Hull's thinking. The article concludes by saying that this approach could explain many of the obscurities in Hull's theories of learning.

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