Lamarkism
Lamarckism
An idea that knowledge acquired throughout an organism’s life can be passed on to its offspring. While this hypothesis had well been established before the time of Hormic Psychology, by Jean de Lamarck in the 1840s, it was William McDougall that had set out to put a purposive twist on the hypothesis by conducting his own experiments.
In order to test this theory out, the founder of Hormic Psychology, William McDougall, studied laboratory-bred white rats and their performance abilities from 1926 to 1938.
The experiment:
The rats were placed in a specially constructed tank of water. At the end of each tank were two passageways that led out of the water. A bright light illuminated the wrong way out, while the correct path had no light at all. Each time the rat went into the illuminated path, it received an electric shock. (Psychologists seem to love shocking things…) The light would vary at every trial. It was only when the rat consistently learned to leave the tank via the unlit pathway that gave measure as to when learning had occurred. Some rats were shocked over 150 times before they learned to avoid the illuminated pathway.
In each generation, McDougall made sure to randomly breed before rate of learning was measured, to ensure any unconscious favor in selecting the rats that had better performance. This experiment took 32 generations of white lab rats and 15 years to complete. William found that learning had occurred faster with each generation.
In the duration of his experiments, McDougall’s rats started with an average of 165 trials before being able to finish the maze flawlessly each time. After 32 generations however, the experiment had ended with the rats being able to achieve flawless performance after 20 trials.
William McDougall set out to confirm his hypothesis of hormic Psychology. McDougall spoke often of goal striving, and organisms having an internal drive to carry out purposeful behaviors, whether conscious or unconscious
An idea that knowledge acquired throughout an organism’s life can be passed on to its offspring. While this hypothesis had well been established before the time of Hormic Psychology, by Jean de Lamarck in the 1840s, it was William McDougall that had set out to put a purposive twist on the hypothesis by conducting his own experiments.
In order to test this theory out, the founder of Hormic Psychology, William McDougall, studied laboratory-bred white rats and their performance abilities from 1926 to 1938.
The experiment:
The rats were placed in a specially constructed tank of water. At the end of each tank were two passageways that led out of the water. A bright light illuminated the wrong way out, while the correct path had no light at all. Each time the rat went into the illuminated path, it received an electric shock. (Psychologists seem to love shocking things…) The light would vary at every trial. It was only when the rat consistently learned to leave the tank via the unlit pathway that gave measure as to when learning had occurred. Some rats were shocked over 150 times before they learned to avoid the illuminated pathway.
In each generation, McDougall made sure to randomly breed before rate of learning was measured, to ensure any unconscious favor in selecting the rats that had better performance. This experiment took 32 generations of white lab rats and 15 years to complete. William found that learning had occurred faster with each generation.
In the duration of his experiments, McDougall’s rats started with an average of 165 trials before being able to finish the maze flawlessly each time. After 32 generations however, the experiment had ended with the rats being able to achieve flawless performance after 20 trials.
William McDougall set out to confirm his hypothesis of hormic Psychology. McDougall spoke often of goal striving, and organisms having an internal drive to carry out purposeful behaviors, whether conscious or unconscious