ABSTRACT
In 1973, the Nobel Foundation awarded a tripartite prize in the category of physiology and medicine to three behavioral scientists. The granting of this particular Nobel prize was noteworthy for at least two reasons. First, this was the only time that a prize had been awarded for work that was based on a general theory of behavior. Earlier prizes to Wagner-Jauregg in 1927 and Moniz in 1949 were for work on specific psychopathologies, and von Bekesy was granted the award in 1961 for his contribution to the study of the workings of the basilar membrane. Pavlov received the prize in 1904 for his work on the physiology of digestion - not the discovery of conditioned reflex. Second, this prize had been awarded for the study of social behavior. Clearly, the recent re cipients were interested in the social lives of their subjects as reflected in the areas of study for which they are widely known: (a) the formation and expres sion of social attachment; (b) territoriality and the ritualization of intraspecies aggression; and (c) nonverbal social communication. Based on their interests, the reader could be forgiven for assuming that they were social psychologists. They were not, of course. Their names were Konrad Lorenz, Nikolass Tinbergen, and Karl von Frisch, and they were ethologists.
