On Changing the Framework of Psychology: Comparative Psychology is What General Psychology Should Be

Abstract

When behaviorism became the dominant force in American psychology, many of the concerns of functionalism, including evolution, adaptation, and ontogenesis, were left behind. Contemporary psychology textbooks and curricula continue to perpetuate this behaviorist framework despite its atheoretical, nonbiological orientation. Even as these concepts begin to work their way back into textbooks and classrooms, they are treated unsystematically as appendages to the traditional behaviorist framework. Comparative psychology, the last bastion of the functionalist viewpoint, can solve this problem, but misconceptions about the field abound. Some of these misconceptions are discussed in this article, and I demonstrate how a comparative psychology course can provide the framework for reorganizing the focus of general psychology and integrating it into a neofunctionalist perspective.