Give an example of an intervening variable. Describe how it can be defined operationally.
Like a behaviorist, Tolman accepted that both the starting reasons of behavior and the final changing into a behavior that should be capable of detached observation and definition of operations.
He enlisted 5 variables which were independent as the reasons for behavior: age, heredity, earlier training, and stimulus by environment and drives of physiology. Behavior is dependent on these variables, an ideology expressed by Tolman in an equation.
The typical example of a variable which is intervening would be hunger. One cannot really see hunger in lab animal or in a person, however, hunger could be objectively or precisely related to an analytical variable, like the time elapsed since the individual last obtained food.
Hunger could also be linked to a detached response or variable of behavior like the quantity of food consumed or the rate at which the food was eaten. Therefore, hunger variable which is unobserved could be demonstrated accurately in linkage to experimental variables and are available to experimental and quantification manipulation.
By citing the dependent and independent variables, that are observable, Tolman was able to give definitions of operations of internal, unobservable states. He earlier referred to his way, as behaviorism which was operational before picking the accurate word, “variables of intervention.”