psychology-history

Edward Thorndike's 1898 puzzle box experiments with cats established the Law of Effect — the principle that rewarded behaviors strengthen. It is the root of all operant conditioning.

How Harry Harlow's wire-mother and cloth-mother experiments with rhesus monkeys overturned behaviorism's model of love, and why the ethical cost still matters.

In 1967, Martin Seligman showed dogs exposed to inescapable shocks stopped trying to escape when escape became possible. The learned helplessness model reshaped depression research.