Home > Encyclopedia of Psychology > Clark Leonard Hull

1884-1952
American psychologist who was a primary representative of the neobehaviorist school.

Clark L. Hull was born in a country farmhouse near Akron, New York, on May 24, 1884. He attended high school for a year in West Saginaw, Michigan, and the academy

of Alma College. His education was interrupted by bouts of typhoid fever and poliomyelitis, giving him pause to consider possible vocational choices; he decided upon psychology. He then matriculated at the University of Michigan, took his bachelor's degree, and went on to the University of Wisconsin, receiving his doctorate in 1918. Staying on at Wisconsin to teach, Hull was at first torn between two schools of psychological thought which prevailed at the time: early behaviorism and