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Review: Famous People in Psychology
History & Approaches
Charles Darwin: Natural Selection: overpopulation, competition for limited resources, survival of the fittest (only
those with the best adaptations survive), and reproduction (passing of fit genes to the next generation)
Wilhelm Wundt with student Edward Titchner: school of Structuralism (searching for the discrete ‘atoms’ that make
up the mind), established the first psychological research lab, developed research method Introspection (trained
participants to report detailed descriptions of their own conscious mental experiences)
William James: Functionalist, influenced by the work of Darwin, interested in the function or purpose of behaviors,
played a key role in establishing psychology in USA, authored the first psychology book, “The Principles of
Psychology”, still widely read today.
Mary Whiton Calkins: studied psychology under William James, denied a PhD at Harvard, served as the first elected
female president of the APA.
Margaret Floy Washburn: first American woman to receive a PhD in psychology (Cornell), best known for her work
on animal behavior, wrote the book “The Animal Mind”
John B. Watson: Father of Behaviorism, along with Rosalie Raynor. famous for the case of Little Albert, classical
conditioning experiment with stimulus generalization
Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis, emphasized the role of unconscious conflicts in determining behavior &
psychological experiences. Dreams key to insight of unconscious motives
Basis of Biological Behavior
Paul Broca: area in lower left frontal lobe that is necessary for speech production
Carl Wernicke: left hemisphere has an area for the interpretation of language
Roger Sperry : proposed lateralization of the brain (left & right hemispheres have different functions); first to
propose “spilt-brain” surgery to help epileptic patients.
Michael Gazzaniga: furthered Sperry’s research; proposed that the two hemispheres communicate with each other
Sensation and Perception
Ernest Weber: Just Noticeable Difference (JND) and Weber’s Law – the size of the JND will vary depending on the
strength of the original stimulus.
Hubel and Weisel: Studies with monkeys to show that they had specific FEATURE DETECTORS to aid them in visual
processing (some for lines, bards, edges, shapes, etc.)
Development
Jerome Kagan: infant's "temperament" is quite stable over time, in that certain behaviors in infancy are predictive of
certain other behavior patterns in adolescence
Jean Piaget – Proposed four stages of COGNITIVE development. (Remember the acronym Socks Pulled over Cold Feet
to remember these in order.) Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete, and Formal Stages.
Erik Erikson – Proposed eight stages of SOCIAL development (know these!!)
Lawrence Kohlberg – Proposed three stages of MORAL development (all framed around the word conventional.)
This theory was criticized as it only tested young children by framing hypothetical situations for them and their
responses to these. It did not test cross-culturally and between the genders.
Carol Gilligan – Studied gender differences in morality. Women are not inferior, just different. Males value
accomplishments and women value relationships.
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Konrad Lorentz – Imprinting studies. Showed how baby animals would follow the first object they saw after birth.
Believed to be a built-in survival mechanism.
Lev Vygotsky: cognitive development is continuous (opposite to Piaget); believed children learned through social
interactions and mentors (parents, teachers) Learn cultural habit of the mind through internalization. Key term:
Zone of Proximal Development
Harry Harlow: Showed importance of physical touch over nourishment in infant monkeys.
Mary Ainsworth :Secure infants have good bonds with mothers. Reverse is also true.
Eleanor Gibson: The “visual cliff” experiment. Showed that depth perception cues are innate.
Diana Baumbrind: research on parenting styles: permissive, authoritarian, authoritative, uninvolved.
States of Consciousness
Ernest Hilgard – Studies showing that a hypnotic trance includes a “hidden observer” suggesting that there is some
subconscious control during hypnosis.
Learning
Ivan Pavlov: Famous for his classical conditioning experiments. Contiguity model (Pavlov’s dog)
Robert Rescorla - Contingency model - Proposed that there is a conscious connections between the CS and the UCS
in classical conditioning experiments. (A smoker is aware that a nausea-producing drug will affect his behavior)
John Garcia: taste aversion; supports the evolutionary perspective that being biologically prepared to quickly
associate nausea with food/drink is adaptive
Edward Thorndike: Law of Effect – responses followed by satisfying outcomes are more likely to be
repeated; those responses that are followed by negative outcomes are less likely to be repeated.
B. F. Skinner – Famous for the “Skinner Box” to demonstrate operant conditioning in low level animals.
Formulated the principles of operant conditioning.
Edward Tolman: experiments with rats and mazes found that rats made cognitive maps; learning involves
acquisition and use of knowledge
Wolfgang Kohler – Demonstrated use of “insight” in apes when they used sticks to reach a banana that
was out of reach.
Albert Bandura – “Bo-Bo Doll” Experiment to demonstrate how children imitate anti-social behavior.
Cognition
George Miller: short-term memory, noted for the magic number of 7 bits of information plus or minus 2
Herman Ebbinghouse: forgetting curve, overlearning effect
Elizabth Loftus – “misinformation effect” (confabulation) shown in memory studies.
Noam Chomsky: children possess an innate capacity to learn , inborn language acquisition device
Motivation and Emotion
Abraham Maslow: hierarch of needs, must satisfy each level before you can move onto the next
James and Lange – Physical before cognitive when appraising an emotional situation.
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Cannon and Bard – Emotions and cognitive appraisal at the same time.
Schachter-Singer Experiment – showed that emotions have both a physical and a cognitive component.
Hans Selye – General Adaptation Syndrome (stress responses)
Alfred Kinsey: pioneering scientific research on human sexuality
Masters and Johnson: human sexuality researchers, 4 stages of sexual response
Testing and Individual Differences
Francis Galton: developed the statistical concept of CORRELATION and was the first to demonstrate that
the ‘normal distribution’ could be applied to intelligence
Charles Spearnman: proposed that intelligence is based on one underlying factor “g”
Alfred Binet: invented the first standardized intelligence test, made an important distinction between the
child’s mental and chronological age.
Lewis Terman: inventor of the Standford-Binet Intelligence Scale in America; Modern IQ formula. Mental
age/chronological age x 100.
Howard Gardner: theory of multiple intelligences
Robert Sternberg: Triarchic theory of intelligence; analytic, creative & practical
David Wechsler - Modern IQ tests with specialized subtests and use of factor analysis.
Personality
Sigmund Freud: id, ego, super ego
Alfred Adler: inferiority complex
Carl Jung: collective consciousness
Carl Rogers: humanist, self-concept was the cornerstone of personality, believed that healthy individuals are
motivated to achieve their full potential (self-actualize)
Paul Costa & Robert McCrae: Five Factor Model of Personality (CANOE or OCEAN) openness, conscientiousness,
extroversion, agreeableness, & neuroticism.
Treatment of Abnormal Behaviors
Dorothea Dix: mental health reformer; first to set up; enabled legislation to set up the first generation of
American mental institutions
Sigmund Freud: free association, manifest & latent content of dreams, defense mechanisms
Albert Ellis: Rational Emotive Therapy (REBT)
Aaron Beck: cognitive therapy; Cognitive Triad Theory used to treat depression
Carl Rogers: humanist, client centered therapy
Mary Cover Jones: first to apply behaviorism techniques to therapy; often referred to as the mother of
behavior therapy.
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Joseph Wolpe: developed desensitization techniques
Martin Seligman – “Learned Helplessness Experiment” with dogs. Showed the external locus effect in
animals (generalized to depression with humans)
Social Psychology
Leon Festinger: cognitive dissonance
Philip Zimbardo: famous Stanford Prison experiment
Solomon Ashe: conformity study – used confederates to see if participants would conform to “line-test” answers
even when they were sure they were wrong.
Stanley Milgram: obedience study with electric shocks (power of an authority figure)
Muzafer Sherif : Cooperation among divisive groups when they had subordinate (shared) goals.
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