The field most closely associated with Konrad Lorenz is which?

• A. Comparative psychology
• B. Behaviorism
• C. Psychoanalysis
• D. Ethology

Answer: (D)

Ethology focuses on instinctive behavior in natural settings and its evolutionary significance. Konrad Lorenz helped establish this field, famous for work on imprinting in birds and fixed action patterns, showing how many behaviors are innate and shaped by natural selection. This sets ethology apart from behaviorism, which emphasizes learned behavior through conditioning in controlled settings, and from psychoanalysis, which centers on unconscious human processes. Comparative psychology studies behavior across species but is more often concerned with learning mechanisms than with innate, species-typical behavior in natural contexts. So the field most closely associated with Lorenz is ethology.