Tolman, Edward Chace

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Tolman, Edward Chace, 1886-1959, American psychologist, b. West Newton, Mass., grad. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1911; Ph. D. Harvard, 1915. He spent most of his academic career at the Univ. of California, Berkeley, where he taught psychology (1918-54). His approach to human behavior involved a synthesis of Gestalt psychology and behaviorism, focusing on an entire, goal-directed action, including both muscular responses and the cognitive processes which direct them. The first to selectively breed rats for high and low maze-solving abilities, Tolman wrote Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men (1932, repr. 1967), and Drives Toward War (1942).