AP Psychology- 15 Psychologists You Must Know

Does not include all the psychologists on the CED

Soloman Asch

Soloman Asch

Studied conformity and impression formation experiments; found that participants are more likely to conform to an opinion if the group opinion is unanimous

Albert Bandura

He established the social learning theory (children observing and imitating behavior), reciprocal determinism(a person’s personality is created by their traits, environment, and behavior), and self efficacy (how optimistic someone is that they will get things done)

Albert Ellis

Developed rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT): a specific type of cognitive behavior therapy that shows participants that their fears are unlikely to happen, and even if they do, it is not a big deal

Erik Erikson

Developed the psychosocial stage theory of development: our psychological development was heavily influenced by our interactions with others. The theory has eight stages and includes social stages from infancy to death.

Sigmund Freud

Developed the psychosexual stage theory of personality; stressed the importance of the unconscious mind and sexual drive; psychoanalysis; theory of dreaming

Harry Harlow

Studied attachment studies with infant monkeys: showed the importance of physical attachment/ comfort in handling stress

Lawrence Kohlberg

Studied the three stage theory of moral development: believed that our ability to reason about ethical situations changes over time and categorized these changes into 3 groups: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional

Abraham Maslow

Known for The Maslow Hierarchy of Needs and self actualization; His hierarchy of needs is five units tall with the fifth one being self actualization— reaching one’s unique potential

Stanley Miligram

Studied obedience in participants: his famous experiment where participants had to deliver electric shocks to another person showed that people are likely to obey the experimenter, even to do bad things

Ivan Pavlov

Developed the principle of classical conditioning through his famous experiment with dogs; in each stage of his experiment that dogs showed an unconditioned response(a natural response) to an unconditioned stimuli but over time developed a conditioned response to that new conditioned stimuli

Jean Piaget

Developed the stage theory of cognitive development: children use a set of cognitive rules, a schemata, to interpret the world. It contains three stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations

Carl Rogers

Developed client centered therapy(person centered therapy) and unconditional positive regard (acceptance and support of a person regardless of what the person says or does)

B. F Skinner

Discussed operant conditioning(learning based on consequences and Skinner’s box(this box was initially used to deliver food to an animal— reinforcement); reinforcement can be categorized into positive reinforcement (giving a good thing) or negative reinforcement (taking away a bad thing)

John B. Watson

Father of behaviorism; Baby Albert experiment; conditioned fear: Here Watson was able to condition baby Albert into fearing a white rat he initially liked by using classical conditioning

William Wundt

Set up the first psychological laboratory; founded the theory of structuralism (uses introspection to determine the structure of the mind)