Psychologists

Alfred Adler

Is a psychotherapist who also founded the school of individual psychology. He created the personality theory that focuses on inferiority and superiority complexes.

Mary Ainsworth

Is a developmental psychologist who conducted the study about attachment styles between a child and their caregiver (secure, avoidant, and resistant).

Solomon Asch

Focused on people’s’ conformity in certain situations based on group size. He lined them up and observed how they changed their answers depending on other participants’ responses.

Albert Bandura

Created the social learning theory: people learn by simply observing others in a social situation. He conducted the Bobo Doll experiment.  

Diana Baumrind

Is a developmental psychologist who stated that there are 3 different types of parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, permissive).

Aaron Beck

Created cognitive therapy for depression and anxiety.

Alfred Binet

Is a psychologist who created the intelligence tests to observe children’s intelligence levels and abilities. 

Paul Broca

Is a surgeon who discovered the center of motor speech in the brain (spoken speech).

Mary Whiton Calkins

Was the first female president of the American Psychological Association and created self-psychology (self-evaluation of experiences). 

Noam Chomsky

Contradicts behaviorists by stating that he believes that language learning is inborn and is not actually learned.

Paul Costa & Robert McCrae

Created the Big 5 (Five-Factor Model of personality) Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Developed the study of memory and discovered the forgetting curve and the spacing effect.

Albert Ellis

Developed rational emotive behavior therapy which taught patients to eliminate negative thoughts and to focus on more beneficial ones.

Erik Erikson

Believed each stage of life had its own obstacles: infancy, toddlerhood, preschool, elementary school, etc.

Leon Festinger

Developed cognitive dissonance (when there are two opposing thoughts, the person changes one of them to reduce dissonance).

Sigmund Freud

Highly focused on the unconscious, and is the father of psychology and psychoanalysis. Created theories such as the stages of psychosexual development (oral, anal, phallic, latent, genital) and the parts of the mind (id, ego, superego).

John Garcia

Researched taste aversion.

Howard Gardener

Created a theory of multiple intelligences which describes the many ways that students acquire  information.

Michael Gazzaniga

Discovered split-brain and conducted research on the left brain interpreter.

Carol Gilligan

Focused on gender differences in psychology. Explained the development of women’s morality and sense of self. 

Harry Harlow

A psychologist who studied and experimented on primates using techniques such as maternal separation, dependency needs, and social isolation. Known for the cloth monkey experiment.

Karen Horney

Contributed to personality and neuroses by changing the view of how personalities developed. Stated that social and cultural conditions have powerful effects on personality. Critiqued Freud’s penis envy.

David Hubel

Contributed to sensation and perception by discovering that different groups in the visual cortex respond to different types of visual images.

William James

Father of American psychology and contributed to theories of consciousness, perception, memory, and emotion. Was a Functionalist and focused on self-theory.

Carl Jung

Expanded on Freud’s theory of personalities. Created the personal and collective unconsciousness. Believed the personal unconscious held painful memories that people suppressed.

Alfred Kinsey

Known for researching sexual habits and changing attitudes towards sexuality.

Lawrence Kohlberg

Developed three stages of morality (in children): preconventional, conventional, postconventional morality.

Wolfgang Köhler

Figure in Gestalt psychology (the whole is greater than its parts) which looks at the human mind and behavior as a whole. Contributed to insight learning.

Elizabeth Loftus

Pointed out the weaknesses of memory and how malleable it really is. Memories aren’t always accurate and can be false.

Abraham Maslow

Developed the hierarchy of needs (physiological, safety, love & belonging, esteem, and self-actualization).

Stanley Milgram

Studied obedience to authority. Conducted the electric shock experiments.

George A. Miller

Focused on short-term memory capacity of humans by developing how long they could hold things in memory (seven plus/minus two or five to nine).

Ivan Pavlov

Worked on classical conditioning; conditioning dogs to salivate to sounds.

Jean Piaget

Worked on child development and produced the developmental stages of sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

Robert Rescorla

Created the contingency theory (a leader is only effective if their leadership style matches the situation at hand, otherwise it doesn’t align).

Carl Rogers

Founder of humanistic psychology (self-actualization). Focused on client-centered therapy and unconditional positive regard towards clients.

David Rosenhan

Challenged psychiatric diagnosis and developed the examination of expert witnesses, jury selection, and jury deliberation.

Elisabeth Kubler Ross

Identified the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Stanley Schachter

Created the Schachter-Singer Two-Factor theory of emotion. After arousal, there is cognitive appraisal that occurs before the emotions happen.

Martin Seligman

Worked on learned helplessness and developed positive psychology (focuses on humans flourishing).

Hans Selye

Created the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) in response to stress. 

1) alarm   2)adaptation   3) exhaustion.

B.F. Skinner

Behaviorist who developed operant conditioning (reinforcements & punishments). Argued that language develops through environmental factors.

Charles Spearman

Worked on factor analysis and general intelligence (g factor). This is reflected in a person’s performance on cognitive tasks (IQ scores, etc).

Roger Sperry

Uncovered that humans have two sides to the brain and they have special, independent functions. Worked on split brain patients.

Robert Sternberg

Worked on intelligence theory and identified three aspects: creative (out-of-the-box), analytical (academic), and practical (street smarts).

Lewis Terman

Expanded on the Stanford-Binet intelligence test and created his own version to assess children’s cognitive abilities and giftedness.

Edward Thorndike

Created the law of effect (behaviors w/ favorable consequences occur more often vs. behaviors w/ unfavorable consequences).

Edward Tolman

Discovered latent learning (learning is not apparent unless there is an incentive).

Lev Vygotsky

Developed the Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development (social interactions affect cognitive development).

John Watson

Classical conditioning. Conducted “Little Albert” experiment.

Ernst Weber

Weber’s law: just-noticeable difference.

David Wechsler

Developed the Adult Intelligent Test. Also worked on cognitive abilities in both children and adults.

Carl Wernicke

Discovered Wernicke’s area which deals with language comprehension.

Torsten Wiesel

Worked with David Hubel to contribute to sensation and perception by discovering that different groups in the visual cortex respond to different types of visual images.

Benjamin Lee Whorf

Believed that your specific language affects how you view the world (linguistic relativity).

Joseph Wolpe

Developed systematic desensitization (exposure to anxiety-inducing stimuli, while practicing relaxation methods).

Wilhelm Wundt

The founder/father of psychology as a whole.

Philip Zimbardo

Conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment to observe social influence.