Ethology, sociobiology and developmental psychology: In memory of Niko Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz

Abstract

Niko Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz, who both died recently, contributed enormously to the development of modern ethology; and, both indirectly through the influence of ethological thinking and methodology, and directly through their own interests, they have both had profound influences on the study of human development. Their names are linked through their personal friendship and collaboration, and also through their joint award (with Otto von Frisch) of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1973; the only behavioural scientists so far to receive this honour. In September 1989 a symposium in their memory, with the title of this paper, was held at the Annual Meeting of the Developmental Section of the British Psychological Society. This article summarizes the content of that symposium, and in particular reviews the lives of Tinbergen and Lorenz, and the contributions which ethology, and the more recent ideas of sociobiology, have had on the study of human behavioural development.