The Fractionalization and Anthropocentric View of Comparative Psychology. Commentary: A Crisis in Comparative Psychology: Where Have All the Undergraduates Gone?

Horne, Murray R.; Ryczek, Cameron A.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01753

Cited by 1 publication

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“…I believe that comparative psychology can continue to benefit from greater integration into other traditional areas of psychology: social, developmental, cognitive, and neuroscience rather than maintaining a stubborn insistence on sharp dividing lines between subdisciplines (Vonk et al, 2015). This view seems to be widely shared based on numerous commentaries on Abramson's (2015) call to arms (Chiandetti & Gerbino, 2015;Horne & Ryczek, 2015;McMillan & Sturdy, 2015) and even earlier publications (Galef, 1987;Tinbergen, 1963). Therefore, I was surprised recently to see that Endel Tulving wrote to Roediger in a comment on a draft of Roediger's 2004 commentary that:…”

Section: Integrationmentioning

confidence: 97%

The journey in comparative psychology matters more than the destination.

Vonk

2021

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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The Journal of Comparative Psychology has enjoyed a century of publishing some of the best investigations of animal behavior, often with reference to human cognition and behavior. This long history has manifested many paradigm-like shifts. Researchers have fluctuated between treating animals as models of human learning to emphasizing stark differences between animal and human behavior to stressing psychological continuity across species. At this time, there appears little consensus regarding questions of psychological continuity. I argue that this is a futile debate. Rather than focusing on behavior in nonhuman animals that represent potential parallels to human psychology (or behavior), comparative psychologists should focus on questions of development, function, and mechanism of behavior to better understand the behavior of all species in biological context. A focus on understanding underlying mechanisms for behavior rather than settling on behavioral outcomes alone as diagnostic of a species’ status on some imaginary scale of progress will help address anthropocentric biases in current approaches. A focus on the “why” and “how” questions espoused by Tinbergen over half a century ago will move the field in better alignment with related fields, such as ethology, and provide greater insights into both animal and human minds.

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Section: Integrationmentioning

confidence: 97%

The journey in comparative psychology matters more than the destination.

Vonk

2021

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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The Fractionalization and Anthropocentric View of Comparative Psychology. Commentary: A Crisis in Comparative Psychology: Where Have All the Undergraduates Gone?

Cited by 1 publication

References 7 publications

The journey in comparative psychology matters more than the destination.

The journey in comparative psychology matters more than the destination.

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