Purposive Behaviorism

Purposive behaviorism, also called molar behaviorism, is a school of psychology developed by Edward Tolman, most fully set out in his 1932 book Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men. Unlike the radical behaviorism of B.F. Skinner, Tolman held that organisms learn meaningful cognitive relationships between stimuli, forming what he called cognitive maps, rather than simple automatic stimulus-response habits, and that this learning is expressed flexibly rather than triggered mechanically. Though methodologically behaviorist, Tolman's emphasis on internal cognitive representations anticipated and helped prepare the ground for the later cognitive revolution in psychology. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/