AP Psych People - Units 1 & 2 - History and Approaches, Research Methods

Socrates + Plato

believed the mind and the body are two distinct entities, and that we are born with all the knowledge we will ever have (knowledge is innate)

Aristotle

believed that knowledge was not innate, and that knowledge that comes from experience

Francis Bacon + John Locke

believed in empiricism (what we know comes from experience, observation, and experimentation)

Wilhelm Wundt

the father of psychology; started the first psychology lab at the German University of Leipzig in 1879

Edward Titchener

Wundt’s student; founded the idea of structuralism; focused on introspection

William James

pioneered psychology in America; founded the idea of functionalism; influenced by Charles Darwin

John Watson + B.F. Skinner

founded the idea of behaviorism; focused less on cognitive processes

Sigmund Freud

founded the idea of psychodynamics; focused on the influence of childhood on a person as well as the unconscious

Phineas Gage

a famous case study; suffered a severe brain injury during construction which caused a dramatic personality change and provided early evidence that the frontal lobes of the brain influenced personality

Philip Zimbardo

constructed the famous “Stanford Prison Experiment” study; observed the role of power in influencing behavior