Edward Tolman noted in 1948 that rats running in a maze become more rigid and less successful in their behavior when they are pushed harder (by hunger and other motivations) and faced with obstacles that prevent their success, not unlike humans:
"Over and over again men are blinded by too violent motivations and too intense frustrations into blind and unintelligent and in the end desperately dangerous hates of outsiders. And the expression of these their displaced hates ranges all the way from discrimination against minorities to world conflagrations... What in the name of Heaven and Psychology can we do about it? My only answer is to preach again the virtues of reason... And to suggest that the child-trainers and the world-planners of the future can only, if at all, bring about the presence of the required rationality... if they see to it that nobody's children are too over-motivated or too frustrated. Only then can these children learn to look before and after, learn to see that there are often round-about and safer paths to their quite proper goals -- learn, that is, to realize that the well-beings of White and of Negro, of Catholic and of Protestant, of Christian and of Jew, of American and of Russian (and even of males and females) are mutually interdependent... We must, in short, subject our children and ourselves (as the kindly experimenter would his rats) to the optimal conditions of moderate motivation and of an absence of unnecessary frustrations, whenever we put them and ourselves before that great God-given maze which is our human world. I cannot predict whether or not we will be able, or be allowed, to do this; but I can say that, only insofar as we are able and are allowed, have we cause for hope."

The University of California began to require its faculty members to sign a loyalty oath, and Tolman led a group of faculty members who would rather resign than sign it. They saw the requirement as an infringement of their civil liberties and academic freedom. Tolman was suspended from his duties at California and taught for awhile at the University of Chicago and Harvard University. Finally, the courts agreed with Tolman, and he was reinstated at the University of California. In 1959, upon his retirement and shortly before his death, the regents of the university symbolically admitted that Tolman's position had been morally correct by awarding him an honorary doctorate. (Hergenhahn, An Introduction to the History of Psychology, 1992, p. 374)

In 1949, toward the end of the McCarthy era, the university tried to impose loyalty oaths on the faculty, in conformity to state law. During the "Year of the Oath", 1949-1950, it was Tolman who became the leader of the faculty in the fight against the oath. He refused to sign it but, in his usual style, he made the point that he could afford the financial sacrifice if they were to fire him. He advised his younger colleagues to sign, and leave that battle up to others who were in a better position to conduct it. These courageous efforts brought Tolman widespread acclaim. He received honorary degrees at major universities and, when he died on November 19, 1959, the Washington Post wrote in an editorial: "His death last week is a loss to the nation as well as to the academic community." (Gleitman in Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology, 1991, p. 239)

He wanted us to stand on our own feet and be our own men, not his. Any slavish adherence to his views would have been repugnant to him. So all of us who were fortunate enough to have been associated with him have struck out for ourselves and hopefully we are better psychologists, and yet more hopefully, better people for having been associated with him. (reminiscence quoted in Krantz and Wiggins, 1973)

Race a rat through this maze. I'm not saying it's hard, just that he's faster than you think - and the rat doesn't get the bird's eye view that you get either.