Yerkes, Robert Mearns - Historical Context
Historical Context
The informal observation of animal behavior is as old as humanity. Animals have been the subjects of systematic study since at least the time of the ancient Greeks. During the early years of the twentieth century, however, the study of animal behavior became more experimental in nature. Rather than just observing animals in the field, psychologists were now researching their behavior in laboratories, where conditions could be precisely controlled. It was a heady time for comparative and experimental psychology. Yerkes was one of the pioneers who helped map out this new direction.
Birth of a new discipline
Yerkes was a college student during the 1890s, the same decade in which comparative psychology first emerged as a separate discipline. In 1894, German philosopher-psychologist Wilhelm Wundt...
[The entire page is 2188 words long]
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