The journey in comparative psychology matters more than the destination.

Abstract

The Journal of Comparative Psychology has enjoyed a century of publishing some of the best investigations of animal behavior, often with reference to human cognition and behavior. This long history has manifested many paradigm-like shifts. Researchers have fluctuated between treating animals as models of human learning to emphasizing stark differences between animal and human behavior to stressing psychological continuity across species. At this time, there appears little consensus regarding questions of psychological continuity. I argue that this is a futile debate. Rather than focusing on behavior in nonhuman animals that represent potential parallels to human psychology (or behavior), comparative psychologists should focus on questions of development, function, and mechanism of behavior to better understand the behavior of all species in biological context. A focus on understanding underlying mechanisms for behavior rather than settling on behavioral outcomes alone as diagnostic of a species' status on some imaginary scale of progress will help address anthropocentric biases in current approaches. A focus on the "why" and "how" questions espoused by Tinbergen over half a century ago will move the field in better alignment with related fields, such as ethology, and provide greater insights into both animal and human minds. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).