Tolman, Edward Chace (1886-1959)

US psychologist. In his first book, Purposive Behaviour in Animals and Men (1932), he broke with the rigid stimulus-response behaviourism of John B Watson to postulate such variables as goals, cognition, and behavioural supports within the environment. During the 1930s and 1940s, he was one of the nation's leading theorists in the field of cognitive psychology.

Tolman was born in West Newton, Massachusetts. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, and Yale, and taught at Northwestern University before joining the University of California: Berkeley (1918-54).