Wallace Craig (1876–1954) was anAmericanexperimental psychologist andbehavior scientist. He provided a conceptual framework for the study of behavior organization and is regarded as one of the founders ofethology. Craig experimentally studied the behavioral expression ofemotion, the way innate and learned behavioral tendencies are integrated, and how vocal as well associal behaviors are organized. He encouraged a view of behavior as an integrated process withevolutionary, motivational, experiential, social and ecological degrees offreedom. This integrative perspective helped shape modern behavioral science.[1]
Wallace Craig was born on July 20, 1876, inToronto,Ontario,Canada, the son of Alexander Craig ofEdinburgh, a Scottish immigrant to theUnited States, and Marion Brookes ofLondon, an Englishwoman. He married Mima Davis Jenness ofSheffield on October 12, 1904.
Craig graduated fromHyde Park High School,Chicago,Illinois, in 1895 and received both his Bachelor of Science degree (1898) and his Master of Science degree (1901) from theUniversity of Illinois. From 1901 he studied withCharles O. Whitman[2] and received his PhD from the University of Chicago, Illinois (1908), for his research onpigeon behavior.[3]
Craig worked as a high school science teacher (1900, Harlan, Iowa; 1900–1901 Fort Collins, Colorado; 1904–1905 Coshocton, Ohio), as a university assistant inzoology (1901–1904, University of Chicago), and as a psychology and biology teacher (1905–1907, State Normal School, Valley City, North Dakota). In 1903 and 1906, he was a student at theMarine Biological Laboratory,Woods Hole,Massachusetts.
After receiving his doctorate, Craig became a professor of philosophy at theUniversity of Maine atOrono (1908–22).[3] During this period Craig published most of his papers on the principles of behavior organization. These include a series of articles comparing the expression of emotions across different species of pigeons (1909–1911), articles on time keeping and behavioral synchronization (1916, 1917), as well as conceptual papers on appetites and aversions (1917, 1918) and on fighting (1921). The circumstances surrounding the end of Craig's appointment at the University of Maine are not clear; determinants may include both a progressive loss of hearing and dissatisfaction with collegiality and with research conditions.
After 1922, Craig's professional standing remained unstable. Thanks to support fromGordon Allport and James Woods of the Department of Philosophy and Psychology atHarvard University, Craig held various posts there until the mid-1930s (1922–1923, lecturer in psychology; 1923–1927,biophysics librarian; various other posts). He was unable to procure an established academic position or regular research program until 1937. During this period, Craig and his wife lived inScotland for two years.In the mid-1930s the AmericanornithologistMargaret Morse Nice instigated a contact withKonrad Lorenz, anAustriannaturalist. Craig and Lorenz exchanged letters concerning key concepts of behavior such asreflex,instinct,taxis,tropism, learning, as well as search, appetitive and aversive behavior. None of these letters has been located to date.
Together with Craig's published work, in particular his 1918 essay on appetites and aversions, they were regarded by Lorenz as foundational for the development ofethology. A key insight was that much behavior is expressed not in response to, but in search of sensory input – or the lack of such input.[4] With increasing appetite, animals engage in an undirected search for food, and only once located will the food stimuli be tracked down and consumption ensue. The role of learning in these processes is to provide ever more 'educated guesses' during the initial search phase.[5]
In an essay from 1954, Lorenz refers to this view of a three-step organization of behavior as the Craig–Lorenz schema.Craig used a notably broad definition of appetite (p. 91, Craig 1918): "An appetite (…) is a state of agitation which continues so long as a certain stimulus, which may be called the appetedstimulus, is absent. When the appeted stimulus is at length received it stimulates a consummatory reaction, after which the appetitive behavior ceases and is succeeded by a state of relative rest". Likewise, he defined aversion as "a state of agitation which continues so long as a certain stimulus, referred to as the disturbing stimulus, is present; but which ceases, being replaced by a state of relative rest, when that stimulus has ceased to act on the sense-organs."[6] One of the students of Lorenz, Monika Holzapfel, extended these notions to suggest that states of rest are goals of behavior (Holzapfel, 1940).Within his framework of appetites and aversions, Craig in his essay of 1921 described aggression as an aversion, in contrast to Lorenz, who regarded it as an appetite (Lorenz, 1966).
From 1937, Craig worked as a temporary ornithologist at theNew York State Museum,State University of New York,Albany, with the support of the director of this institution, Charles C. Adams. By the end of this appointment Craig had finished amonograph on the organization and psychology ofbird song (1943).[7] This monograph features an introduction by Adams and, despite being academic in character, an unusual preface by Craig directed at young ornithologists of the future. Adams, who had known and supported Craig since Craig's student days, mentions in his introduction that Craig had been interested in birds and bird song since boyhood and had a musical bent for the violin and flute.
Funded by one-year grants from theAmerican Philosophical Society (1944, 1945 and 1948) and by an appointment as a research fellow (1944–1947, supported byE.G. Boring andGordon Allport), Craig returned to Harvard and worked on an essay on "The space system of the perceiving self". A 127-page manuscript of four chapters of this essay, which in a letter to Boring, Craig mentions having sent to the Society, has not been located to date.
Craig retired from Harvard in 1947. He moved to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in 1953 and died there on April 25, 1954.
In retrospect, Craig appears one of the most insightful students of behavior of the 20th century. The reasons why his insights did not resonate more strongly with his contemporaries, with few exceptions, and why these insights did not secure him academic success continue to be discussed.
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