ABSTRACT
In his autobiography E. O. Wilson (1994) de scribes his long-standing skepticism over the oversimplified ways that psychologists have at times studied nonhuman subjects: Rats can be confined in small chambers for small fractions of their lives, and permitted only limited move ments; these activities are monitored only indi rectly until, finally, sweeping, generalized con clusions are made. Writing as a self-confessed naturalist, Wilson notes that the preceding ste reotype (probably more typical of the 1950s than the 1990s) lacks adequate concern for behavioral topologies, for how various species may have evolved to cope with specific environ mental pressures, and for how the similarities between the laboratory testing situation and those ecological forces affect the results. From the very start of my exposure to psychologists’ studies of animal learning, I found myself ex pressing Baconian skepticism and uncertainty much like Wilson’s. Psychologists seemed not to be collecting enough data.
