AP psych important people

Mary Whiton Calkins

Mary Whiton Calkins

First female president of the American Psychological Association

Dorothea Dix

Pushed for the creation of asylums in America to treat mentally ill

G. Stanley Hall

Created first psychology research lab in the United States of America, became first president of the American Psychological Association

Philip Pinel

Founded humane movement to treat mentally ill, first to classify disorders as medical illnesses (medical model)

Edward Titchener

Created theory of structuralism, believed in examining the components of conscious experience through introspection

Margaret Floy Washburn

First woman to earn a Ph.D. in psychology

Wilhelm Wundt

Set up the first psychological laboratory (Germany, 1879), studied conscious experience; Father of psychology

Paul Broca

Discovered the area in the left frontal lobe that controls the muscles involved in the production of speech

Charles Darwin

Proposed theory of evolution through natural selection by means of "survival of the fittest", ideas led to evolutionary perspective

Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Sperry

Neuropsychologists, pioneered operations to severe the corpus callosum of people with epilepsy

Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley

Studied giant squid axons and found that a neuron at rest has a slightly negative charge inside the cell with an estimated charge of

Carl Wernicke

Discovered the area in the left temporal lobe which interprets spoken and written language

Gustav Fechner

Psychophysicist who studied perception of stimuli, created the law that states that the perceived magnitude of a just noticeable difference scales with the number of just noticeable differences added

Eleanor Gibson

Studied the age at which human infants perceive depth, conducted the visual cliff experiment

Ewald Hering

Created the opponent-process theory of color; white/black, red/green, blue/yellow; explains afterimage effect

David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel

Perception researchers, discovered feature detectors

Ernst Weber

Studied perception of stimuli, created the law that states that the size of a just noticeable difference is proportional to the type of stimulus

Max Wertheimer

Gestalt psychologist, theorized that the whole experience is more than just the sum of the parts of experience

Thomas Young and Hermann von Helmholtz

Believed that cones are sensitive to red, blue, and green, proposed the trichromatic theory of color

Sigmund Freud

Created psychoanalytic theory, emphasized examination of unconscious mind (dream analysis, transference, free association), developed psychosexual stages; id, ego, superego

William James

Created theory of functionalism, described mind as a stream of consciousness

Albert Bandura

Studied observational learning/modeling, conducted Bobo doll experiment, created reciprocal determinism

John Garcia and Robert Koelling

Tested biological preparedness in classical conditioning of rats, studied taste aversion

Ivan Pavlov

Discovered classical conditioning, had experiments on salivation of dogs

Robert Rescorla

Revised Pavlovian model of classical conditioning to include cognitive view, described contingency; spontaneous recovery

Martin Seligman

Discovered learned helplessness, conducted experiments in which dogs that could not stop electric shocks learned to act helpless even when given the ability to escape later on

B. F. Skinner

Behaviorist, led research on operant conditioning, researched animal learning using a self

Edward L. Thorndike

One of the first people to research operant conditioning, conducted experiments with cats in a puzzle box, described the law of effect

Edward Tolman

Studied latent learning, performed experiments on rats in mazes to see how rewards affect time to complete maze, suggested cognitive maps

John B. Watson

Behaviorist, conducted Little Albert experiment (conditioned Albert to fear a white rat)

Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin

Studied the different memory stores; sensory, short

Alan Baddeley

Believed that short-term memory is more complex than acknowledged by the Atkinson-Shiffrin theory, created the concept of working memory

Noam Chomsky

Believed humans are born with a language acquisition device, theorized that there is a critical period for learning language

Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart

Suggested that encoding can be influenced by levels of processing, described three levels of processing (structural, phonemic, and semantic)

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Hypothesized the forgetting curve by memorizing non-sense syllables; devised the serial-positioning effect

Wolfgang Köhler

Studied insight learning, observed chimpanzees as they generated solutions to retrieve bananas that were out of reach

Elizabeth Loftus

Memory researcher, tested constructed memory, performed experiments on recall of car crash based on term used to describe crash; misinformation effect

George A. Miller

Found short-term memory capacity to be seven, plus or minus two, described chunking as a way to expand capacity

Benjamin Whorf

Created the linguistic relativity hypothesis, theorized that the language we use might control and limit our thinking

Walter Cannon and Philip Bard

Devised the theory of emotion that states that we experience physiological arousal and emotion simultaneously

Paul Ekman

Studied emotion and facial expressions, found that facial expressions of basic emotions are universal, worked on microexpressions

William James and Carl Lange

Devised the theory of emotion that states that we experience physiological arousal before emotion

Alfred Kinsey

Documented a variety of human sexual behaviors

William Masters and Virginia Johnson

Documented the human sexual response pattern, conducted lab studies on men and women to determine the response cycle they go through during sex

Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer

Devised the theory of emotion that states that we experience physiological arousal and engage in cognitive labeling to determine our emotion; noted that similar physiological arousal may be present with drastically different emotions

Hans Selye

Created the general adaptive syndrome; described the general response animals have to stress in three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion

John Yerkes and Robert Dodson

Studied how arousal can affect performance, developed the law that states that performance is best under moderate levels of arousal

Mary Ainsworth

Researched attachment styles; performed the "Strange Situation"; secure, insecure (anxious

Diana Baumrind

Researched parent-child interactions; described parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, neglectful

Erik Erikson

Neo-Freudian; thought personality was influenced by experiences with others; created eight psychosocial stages with social conflicts; identity crisis

Carol Gilligan

Critic of Kohlberg; pointed out that Kohlberg based stages on only males; believed males have a more absolute view of morality while females have a more situational view

Harry Harlow

Showed the importance of physical comfort in the formation of attachment with parents; found that tactile stimulation is more important than nourishment in explaining attachment

Lawrence Kohlberg

Created stages of moral development; used the Heinz dilemma (a man must make a moral choice about whether to steal a drug he cannot afford in order to save his wife); preconventional, conventional, postconventional

Elisabeth Kubler-ross

Developed the stages of death and grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance

Konrad Lorenz

Biologist, found that some infant animals become attached on individuals/objects they see during a critical period after birth (imprinting)

James Marcia

Proposed the concept of identity formation; achievement, foreclosure, moratorium, and diffusion

Jean Piaget

Developed stages of cognitive development; described how children viewed the world through schemas; accommodation, assimilation

Alexander Chess and Stella Thomas

Studied infant development; identified three temperaments in children: easy, difficult, and slow

Lev Vygotsky

Created the concepts of zone of proximal development and scaffolding; interactionist perspective of language

Alfred Adler

Believed that people are motivated by inferiority (fear of failure) and superiority (desire to achieve); studied birth order; compensation

Gordon Allport

Trait theorist; differentiated between cardinal dispositions, central dispositions, and secondary dispositions

Raymond Cattell

Developed the 16 PF using factor analysis; believed there were 16 basic traits present in all people to different degrees

Paul Costa and Robert McCrae

Trait theorists; proposed that personality can be described using the Big Five personality traits (OCEAN)

Hans Eysenck

Biological perspective of personality; P-E-N model: psychoticism, extroversion, neuroticism

Karen Horney

Suggested that women are envious of men due to social advantages (not penis envy); suggested womb envy

Carl Jung

Proposed personal unconscious and collective unconscious; described archetypes

Abraham Maslow

Humanist; developed the hierarchy of needs

Walter Mischel

Social cognitive psychologist; studied delayed gratification (Marshmallow study); person

Carl Rogers

Believed humans require unconditional positive regard, empathy, and genuineness to grow; developed client

Alfred Binet

Wanted to design a test to identify children needing special attention in school; came up with the concept of mental age

Francis Galton

Pioneered study of human intelligence and testing and the extent to which intelligence is hereditary

Howard Gardner

Believed in multiple intelligences; named nine different intelligences

Charles Spearman

Argued that intelligence could be expressed by a single factor (g); used factor analysis to make his conclusion

Robert Sternberg

Triarchic theory of intelligence (creative, analytical, practical); triarchic theory of love (passion, intimacy, commitment)

Louis Terman

Used Binet's ideas to create intelligence quotient, made the test known as the Stanford

David Wechsler

Created the WAIS and the WISC tests; noted that mental age was not appropriate for use in adults

Aaron Beck

Created cognitive therapies; explained depression using the cognitive triad (beliefs about themselves, the world and their futures)

Albert Ellis

Developed Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy; believed in challenging and confronting illogical thinking

Mary Cover Jones

Behaviorist; developed counter-conditioning; Little Peter study

Fritz Perls

Developed Gestalt therapy; encouraged clients to get in touch with their whole selves in order to treat disorders

David Rosenhan

Challenged the validity of psychiatric diagnoses; conducted the classic experiment in which pseudo

Joseph Wolpe

Behaviorist; developed systematic desensitization; believed in treating phobias by replacing the feelings of anxiety with relaxation

Solomon Asch

Conducted the line experiment; found that people conformed one

John Darley and Bibb Latane

Conducted the smokey room experiment; discovered the bystander effect; diffusion of responsibility

Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith

Created the cognitive dissonance theory; conducted the boring task experiment to demonstrate dissonance

Stanley Milgram

Conducted the shock experiment; found that people are obedient two

Muzafer Sherif

Conducted the Robbers Cave experiment; discovered superordinate goals unite formerly antagonistic groups

Phillip Zimbardo

Conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment; found that roles and situations can lead to deindividuation