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Purposive behaviorism is a branch of psychology that was introduced by Edward C. Tolman (LINK). It combines the objective study of behavior while also considering the purpose or goal of behavior. Tolman’s goal was to identify the complex cognitive mechanisms and purposes that guided behavior Tolman's Purposive behaviorism focused on large, meaningful behavior, or molar behavior (LINK) such as kicking a ball. This focus was in contrast to simple muscle movements aka molecular behavior (LINK) such as flexing of the leg muscle. Tolman regarded the molecular behavior as fairly removed from human perceptual capacities for a meaningful analysis of behavior. This approach of Tolman’s was first introduced in his book, Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men, published in 1932. To Tolman, it was obvious that all actions are goal-oriented, including those for animals. The main difference between behaviorism and Tolman's purposive behaviorism is that behavior is goal oriented.

Tolman's Experiment
Tolman’s investigation used rats to represent clinical behaviors of men. He had the rats go through mazes, like picture 1. A hungry rat was put at the entrance of a maze, wondering through it until he gets to the food. In the maze, there are true segment paths and blind alleys. Trials for every rat reoccurred every 24 hours. The more trials the rats completed, the fewer errors, which he characterized by the rat avoiding the blind alleys. they made as well as taking less time to complete the maze and get to their goal which was their food.

Tolman's Interpretation of the Experiment
Tolman interpreted the rats’ progress had to do with the rat learning a “field map” of the environment, the environment being the maze. He believed that this learning was not rooted in stimulus-response connections (LINK) but in the nervous system of sets which are to function like cognitive maps (LINK). Also, Tolman assumed that these cognitive maps vary from a narrow strip of variety to a broader, comprehensive variety. Tolman showed in his study that the rats exhibited a capability of latent learning. The results showed that the rats used problem solving because of the absence of reinforcement, which could not have been resolved by S-R representations. For Tolman, these results showed the powerful cognitive role stimuli have on the organism, sending signals to the organism which lead to formation of cognitive maps.

Publication into Society
From 1920 to 1928, Tolman published numerous articles in the Psychological Review that attempted to objectively define such concepts as instinct, consciousness,emotions, purpose, and cognition. Finally in 1932, Tolman coined the term "purposive behaviorism" when he published Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men(LINK?), which summarized these theoretical concepts and supported them with data he obtained from numerous studies. Like many other behaviorists in his time, he carried out these studies with rats, believing that "everything important in psychology can be investigated in essence through the continued experimental and theoretical analysis of the determiners of rat behavior at a choice point in a maze."[2] In this book, he described purposive behavior as behavior directed toward some ultimate goal. Examples he gave of this kind of behavior were "a rat running a maze, a man driving home to dinner, a child hiding from a stranger, a woman gossiping over the telephone, etc."[3] Tolman's purposive behaviorism was not as widely received in its day as other psychological theories. This was largely due to the fact that many did not consider its foundation to being in line with behaviorism at all, which was the dominating force in psychology at the time. However, the insistence on studying implicit mental concepts as opposed to looking solely at explicit behavior was an idea that opened the door to the school of cognitive psychology. While much work in purposive behaviorism was dismissed by the mainstream of psychologists in its time, many of Tolman's publications, most notably ''Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men" and "Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men", continue to be cited in today's research.[4]