Clark L. Hull

Clark Leonard Hull (1884-1952) was an influential American psychologist and learning theorist in behaviorism. He sought to explain learning and motivation by scientific laws of behavior. Clark Hull's most important contribution to psychology lies in his theory of learning, considered one of the most important learning theories of the twentieth century. He conducted research demonstrating that his theories could predict and control behavior.

Life

Clark Leonard Hull was born in Akron, New York. He was raised in Michigan. Hull suffered from health problems, had poor eyesight, and was crippled from polio. His education was interrupted at various times because of illness and financial problems. After pursuing mining engineering at the University of Michigan, where he obtained bachelor's and master's degrees, he turned to psychology and received his PhD in psychology in 1918 from the University of Wisconsin, where he stayed for ten years as an instructor. His doctoral research on "Quantitative Aspects of the Evolution of Concepts" was published in Psychological Monographs.

During that time, Hull studied the effects of tobacco smoking on performance, reviewed the existing literature on testing, and began research on suggestion and hypnosis, the latter culminating in a widely read book, NAME, in 1933. Before that, in 1929, Hull was named to a research position at Yale University and began the serious development of his behavior theory. Unitil the end of his career, Hull and his students dominated behavioristic psychology.

Clark Hull died on May 10, 1952, in New Haven, Connecticut.

Work

Clark Hull’s system is intricate and relies heavily on mathematical elaboration, with detailed modifications as the system unfolded over time. Essencially, Hull’s ‘’’theory of leaning’’’is centered on the necessity of reinforcement, defined in terms of ‘’’drive reduction’’’.The behaving organism is viewed in the context of ‘’homeostatic model’’ seeking equilibrium from drive forces. The core level of psychological analysis concerns the notion of ‘’’intervening variables’’’, described as unobservable behavior. Thus, from a purely behavioral perspective Clark Hull extended John Watson’s conceptualization of behavior in terms of the peripheral (S – R) events to a consideration of central, organismic factors, stimulus – organism – response (S – O – R), intervening variables.

One aspect of Hull's work on aptitude testing would prove instrumental in the development of his behaviorism. To facilitate the computation of correlations between various tests, he constructed a machine to perform the calculations, completing the project in 1925 with support from the National Research Council. Aside from the machine's practical benefit, the success of the project convinced Hull that a purely physical device with the right arrangement of material components was capable of performing operations characteristic of high-level mental processes.

Hypnosis Research

Hull is often credited with having begun the modern study of hypnosis. His work Hypnosis and Suggestibility (1933) was a rigorous study of the phenomenon, using statistical and experimental analysis. Hull's studies emphatically demonstrated once and for all that hypnosis had no connection with sleep ("hypnosis is not sleep, … it has no special relationship to sleep, and the whole concept of sleep when applied to hypnosis obscures the situation"). The main result of Hull's study was to rein in the extravagant claims of hypnotists, especially regarding extraordinary improvements in cognition or the senses under hypnosis. Hull's experiments did show the reality of some classical phenomena such as hypnotic anaesthesia and post-hypnotic amnesia. Hypnosis could also induce moderate increases in certain physical capacities and change the threshold of sensory stimulation; attenuation effects could be especially dramatic.

In experimental psychology, he created the "hypothetic-deductive" systematic method, after the observation and elaboration of hypotheses. This method brought him precise definitions and conceptualised axioms which helped him develop his theories. He believed that behavior was a set of interactions between an individual and their environment. He analysed behavior from a perspect of biological adaptation, which is an optimization of living conditions through need reduction.

Habit Formation Research

As a behaviorist, Clark Hull centered his psychological views on habit formation, the accumulations of environmental experiences for effective adaptation. His scientific approach was truly systematic. While recognizing the importance of observation and experimentation, Hull advocated a hypothetic-deductive structure to guide research. In this strategy, following the approach of Euclidian geometry, a behavior principle or formulation was first postulated and then rigorously tested. A successful test supported belief in the principle; failure resulted in revision of the principle. Hull’s theory was positive and followed a logical progression, verified through empirical demonstration.

Legacy

In the decades before and after World War II, Clark Hull symbolized psychologists' hope that psychology could be an objective natural science. Hull established a reputation as an eclectic experimental psychologist, then rose to prominence as a learning theorist. Hull's most significant works were the Mathematico-Deductive Theory of Rote Learning (1940), and Principles of Behavior (1943), which established his analysis of animal learning and conditioning as the dominant learning theory of its time.

Hull and Tolman

Clark Hull is also known for his debates with Edward C. Tolman.

Clark Hull's Students — Neo-Hullians

Hull's most famous student and later collaborator was Kenneth W. Spence (1907-1967), who spent his most productive years at the [University of Oiwa]]. The research of Spence and his many students was characterized by a concern with refining Hull's theory as well as applying those principles to varieties of behavioral processes, including an analysis of anxiety. His major contribution to the theoretical basis of Hullian behaviorism was his explanation of discrimination learning. Spence held that gradients of excitory potential and inhibitory potential were generated around stumulus values that are reinforced and not reinforced, respectively, during discrimination learning.

Another important student of Hull is Neal Miller (1909-), whose productive career has involved important studies of a variety of psychological issues. His early work (with Dollard, 1950) attempted to apply a Hullian analysis to behavioral issues derived from psychoanalytic literature.

A third student of Hull, Hobart O. Mowrer (1907), expressed the distinction between Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning in a 1947 paper.

Publications

• Hull, Clark L. (1934a). The concept of the habit-family hierarchy and maze learning: Part I. Psychological Review, 41, 33-54.
• Hull, Clark L. (1934b). The concept of the habit-family hierarchy and maze learning: Part II. Psychological Review, 41, 134-152.
• Hull, Clark L. (1935). The conflicting psychologies of learning — A way out. Psychological Review, 42, 491-516.

Hull is known for his debates with Edward C. Tolman.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Angell, J. R. (1913). Behavior as a category of psychology. Psychological Review, 20, 255-270.
• Ben-David, J.and Collins, R. 1966. Social factors in the origin of a new science: The case of psychology. American Psychological Review, 31, 451-465.
• Boring, E.G.(1950). A history of experimental psychology, 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
• Brennan, J.F.(1982). History and systems of psychology. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
• Dollard, J. & Miller, N. E. 1950. Personality and psychotherapy: An analysis in terms of learning, thinking, and culture. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Guthrie, E. R. 1946. Psychological facts and psychological theory. Psychological Bulletin, 43, 1-20.
• Guthrie, E. R.1952. The psychology of learning(rev. ed.). New York: Harper & Row.
• Guthrie, E. R. 1959. Association by contiguity. In S. Koch (ed.), Psychology: A Study of a science. Vol. 2: General Systematic Formulations, Learning, and Special Processes. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Hull, C. 1951. Essentials of behavior. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Hull, C. 1952. A behavior system. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Leahey, Th. H. (1991). A History of Modern Psychology. Englewood Cliff, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
• Luria, A. R.1979. The making of a mind. A person’s account of soviet psychology. In M. Cole & S. Cole Eds., Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Miller, N. E. 1969. Learning of visceral and grandular responses. ‘’Science’’. 163, 434-445.

• Mowrer, O. H. 1949. On the dual nature of learning: A reinterpretation of “conditioning” and ‘problem solving.” Harvard Educational Review, 17, 102-148.
• Mowrer, O. H. 1960. Learning theory and behavior. New York: Wiley.
• Sahakian, W. S. 1968. History of Psychology: A source book in systematic psychology. Itasca, Illinois: F. E. Peacock Publishers, Inc.
• Skinner, B. F. 1950. Are theories of learning necessary? Psychological Review, 57, 193-216.
• Smith, S. & Guthrie, E. R..1921. General psychology in terms of behavior. New York: Appleton.
• Spence, K. (1948). Postulates and methods of behaviorism. Psychological Review, 55, 67-78.
• Tolman, E.C. (1951/1966). Behavior and psychological man. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Tolman, E.C. (1955). Principles of performance. Psychological Review, 62, p. 315-326.
• Tolman, E.C. (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological Review, 55, 189-208.
• Tolman, E.C., Ritchie, B. F., & Kalish, D. (1946). Studies in spatial learning: II. Place learning versus response learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 37, p. 385-392.
• Williams, K. (1931). Five behaviorisms. American Journal of Psychology. 22, 337-361.
• Woodworth, R. S. (1924). Four varieties of behaviorism. Psychological Review, 31, 257-264.

Links

• http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Hull/Conflict/ - Here you'll find everything about him

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Clark_Hull  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Clark L. Hull"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.