The Fudan School of Anti-Instinct Studies:From Zing-Yang Kuo to Loh-Seng Tsai

Wang Yong; Chen Wei; Guo Benyu

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230630

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2023, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (6) : 1511-1517. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230630

Theories & History of Psychology

The Fudan School of Anti-Instinct Studies:From Zing-Yang Kuo to Loh-Seng Tsai

Wang Yong¹, Chen Wei¹, Guo Benyu²

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Abstract

Instinct has been always an old controversial issue in the history of behavioral science. The European school has always maintained a tradition of instinct research from McDougall’s teleological claims of behavior to the approach of Lorenz and Tinbergen’s Ethology. Zing-yang Kuo, the Chinese psychologist who is the main architect of anti-instinct movement, explicitly denied that the concept of instinct was merely a label that could not explain how these behavioral patterns were formed over the course of an individual’s life. Since Kuo returning to China as a professor of Fudan University in 1923, he used his limited laboratory to conduct a series of methodologically innovative experiments on animal behavior to critique the European school’s instinct claims. Loh-Seng Tsai, a postgraduate student of Kuo at Fudan University, endeavored to promote Kuo’s early armchair ideas and complement his later experimental studies. This led to the formation of the Fudan school of anti-instinct studies with Kuo as its founder and Tsai as its successor.

The claims of this school include: (1) Using rigorous experimental evidence to address scientific problems, denying the scientific existence of the concept of instinct through a series of cat & rat experiments; (2)Rejecting teleology and using a systemic developmental perspective on behavior occurrence, and thus questioning Darwinism; (3) Attempting to go beyond the nature-nurture dichotomy and construct a new theory that could explain the dynamic development of human behavior, that is, probabilistic epigenesis of behavioral development. This theory proposed that individual’s behavior comes out of his or her own experience in the process of growth, which is thought to be probable but unable to forecast the course of individuals’ growth. Instead, one’s growth can be reflected in behavior gradients and behavior potentials. Based on these propositions, Kuo and Tsai opened up a new path for the Fudan school of anti-instinct behavior research. Invited by Gottlieb, Kuo returned to the America in the 1960s. His work also attracted a host of developmental psychologists such as Gottlieb, Schneirla, and Lehrman, who later became the backbone and core member of this camp.

When analyzed from the perspective of the history of psychological science, the Fudan school’s critique of instinct is undoubtedly interspersed with the strong dissatisfaction of the scientific psychological forces represented by the behaviorist movement with armchair psychology. Kuo’s idea of probabilistic epigenesis developed and polished a conceptual framework for systematic analysis of behavioral development. This framework viewed the organisms as a developing system, and the dynamic and bidirectional interactions among the elements, either internally or externally, and environment shape the emergent characteristics concerning genes, nervous system, environment and other factors that had a thorough and comprehensive influence on the development of behavior. The framework also facilitated the establishment and development of a new path of the epiphenotype epigenetics. The school developed around Kuo continues to regard development as the core theme of comparative psychology research and consciously distanced itself from the evolutionary perspective. Tsai, Schneirla, Lehrman and Gottlieb et al. criticized nativists and promoted behavioral development science directly based on Kuo’s theory system. During the process, they laid a solid foundation for the developmental psychobiology, an emerging inter-discipline, which is of immense significance to revealing developmental differences in biological behavior of organisms.

Key words

Zing-Yang Kuo / Loh-Seng Tsai / instinct / behavior epigenetics / Fudan school

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Wang Yong, Chen Wei, Guo Benyu. The Fudan School of Anti-Instinct Studies:From Zing-Yang Kuo to Loh-Seng Tsai[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2023, 46(6): 1511-1517 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230630

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