FAMOUS NAMES/STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY THAT YOU

MAY NEED TO KNOW

As suggested by the AP psychology workshop handbook 2010-2011 pp. 2-10

1-HISTORY AND EARLY APPROACHES

Wilhelm Wundt & Structuralism
William James & Functionalism
And the firsts:
Mary Whiton Calkins= 1st Woman president of the American Psychological Association
Margaret Floy Washburn: experimental work in animal behavior and motor theory
development; 1st woman granted a Ph.D in psychology
G. Stanley Hall: Childhood Development and Evolutionary Theory; 1st President of APA and
Clark University

2. RESEARCH METHODS
Descriptive= Phineas Gage,case history,observation
Correlation=By-stander Effect (Kitty Genevese)
Experiment=Aschs conformity experiments, Milgrams obedience study

3. BIOLOGICAL BASES OF BEHAVIOR

Charles Darwin
Paul Broca : Brocas Aphasia(speech)
Carl Wernicke: Wernickes Aphasia (comprehension)
Roger Sperry: Split-Brain research; Nobel Prize
Michael Gazzaniga: UC Santa Barbara; SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind; leading researcher in
cognitive neuroscience

4. SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

Gustav Fechner: founder of psychophysics; Weber-Fechner law in sensation
Ernst Weber: one of the founders of experimental psychology; Weber-Fechner law in sensation
David Hubel: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work with information processing in the
visual system
Torsten Wiesel: with Hubel, received the Nobel Prize for information processing in the visual system

5. STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
William James: Stream of consciusness
Sigmund Freud: unconscious processes and conflicts; iceberg metaphor
Ernest Hilgard: Stanford University; research on hypnosis, especially pain control

6. LEARNING
Ivan Pavlov: Classical Conditioning; Dogs and Salivation; Neutral stimulus (bell) becomes CS
Edward Thorndike: Animal behavior and learning process; led to connectionism (neural networks);
layed the scientific foundation for modern educational psychology
Edward Tolman: Behaviorist; rats in mazes show learning
John B. Watson: Little Albert experiment; animal behavior, child rearing and advertising
BF Skinner: Operant Conditioning Chamber (Skinner Box); schedules of reinforcement
John Garcia: Research on taste aversion
Robert Rescorla: Rescorla-Wagner model of conditioning; elementary learning processes
Albert Bandura: Social learning (observational learning); Bobo doll experiment

7.COGNITION
Herman Ebbinghaus: memory; discovered the forgetting curve and spacing effect; described learning curve
Wolfgang Kohler: contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology
George A Miller: one of the founders of cognitive psychology; 7-item limit on STM
Noam Chomsky: language acquisition; father of modern linguistics; humans are prewired for language
Elizabeth Loftus: expert on human memory; misinformation effect and eyewitness memory; false
Memories; recovered memories for childhood sexual abuse

8 MOTIVATION AND EMOTION

James-Lange: First physiology, then emotion (physical leads to emotional)
Cannon-Bard: Emotion begins in the brain, then out to the body
Schacter Two Factor: (Schachter-Singer Theory); physiological and emotional occur simultaneously
Abraham Maslow: Hierarchy of needs; physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, self-actualization
Alfred Kinsey: Kinsey Reports; controversial research on human sexuality
Hans Selye: response of an organism to biological stressors

9.DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Sigmund Freud: Stages of psychosexual development; Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latent, Genital
Erik Erikson: Theory of psychosocial development; trust v. mistrust; autonomy v. shame and doubt; initiative v.
guilt; industry v. inferiority; identity v. role confusion; intimacy v. isolation; generativity v.
stagnation; integrity v. despair
Jean Piaget: theory of cognitive development; sensorimotor (birth to 2); Preoperational stage (2-7); Concrete
operational stage (7-11); Formal operational (12+)
Lev Vygotsky: zone of proximal development; acquisition of new knowledge
Carol Gilligan: womens psychology and girls development; wrote In a Different Voice
Lawrence Kholberg: stages of moral development
Level 1: Pre-Conventional
A. Obedience and Punishment Orientation
B. Self-interest Orientation
Level 2: Conventional
A. Interpersonal Accord and Conformity
B. Authority and social-order Maintaining Oreintation
Level 3: Post-Conventional
A. Social Contract Orientation
B. Universal Ethical Principles
Konrad Lorenz: one of the founders of modern ethology; instinctive behavior in animals
Harry Harlow: maternal separation and social isolation using Rheesus monkeys
Mary Ainsworth: early emotional attachment; the Strange Situation; attachment theory
Diana Baumrind: parenting styles; authoritarian (too hard), permissive (too soft), authoritative (just right)
Also Albert Bandura and BF Skinner

10.PERSONALITY
Sigmund Freud: Early childhood experiences affect you later; ego defense mechanisms
Carl Jung: extraverted and introverted personality arechetypes; collective unconscious
Abraham Maslow: Hierarchy of Needs; see above; tied to Humanistic psychology
Carl Rogers: Person-centered theory; people are basically good; actualizing tendency innate
Alfred Adler: Individual psychology; inferiority complex in self-esteem;
Albert Bandura: Social Learning theory (Observational Learning); human behavior is developed
Paul Costa: Five-Factor Model (OCEAN); Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and
Neuroticism
Robert McCrae: Co-creator of Five Factor Theory of Personality
MMPI: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
TAT: Thematic Apperception Test; ambiguous scenes; subject projects emotion into interpretation

11 TESTING AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

Alfred Binet: Binet Scale of Intelligence; first usable intelligence test
Francis Galton: Inheritance of intelligence; coined nature vs. nurture
Howard Gardner: Multiple Intelligences; linguistic, logic-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic,
interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic
Charles Spearman: statistics and factor analysis; g-factor=general intelligence factor
Robert Sternberg: Triarchic theory of intelligencecomponential, experiential, and practical; intelligence is
how well an individual deals with environmental changes
Louis Terman: Stanford University; refined the Binet-Simon scale; Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale
David Wechsler: WAISWechsler Adult Intelligence Scale; WISC Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

12 and 13 ABNORMAL BEHAVIOR AND ITS TREATMENT

Philippe Pinel: father of modern psychiatry; study of mental illness
Dorothea Dix: activist for the insane; created mental asylums
Aaron Beck: father of cognitive therapy; treated clinical depression
Albert Ellis: cognitive-behavioral therapy; developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)
Sigmund Freud: fixation in a psychosexual stage; neuroses, psychoses
Mary Cover Jones: mother of behavior therapy; desensitization to cure phobias; worked with Watson
Carl Rogers: Obstacles in peoples way of actualizing; remove obstacles and they will grow
BF Skinner: Changing the environment will change the person; rewards and punishments
Joseph Wolpe: Behavior therapy; treated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in South African Army
DSM: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual; categorizes mental illnesses and disorders
Rosenhan study: experiment; pseudopatients reported hallucinations; validity of diagnosis

14 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Solomon Asch: conformity; elevator behavior
Leon Festinger: cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory
Stanley Milgram: obedience to authority experiment; influenced by the Holocaust
Phillip Zimbardo: Prison experiment