Comprehensive Psychology Key Figures and Theories for Study

Alfred Adler

Neo-Freudian who stressed the importance of striving for superiority and power.

Mary Ainsworth

Designed the 'strange' situation experiment to study infant attachment.

Gordon Allport

Traits therapist who defined personality in terms of fundamental characteristic patterns.

Aristotle

Believed knowledge comes from experiences stored in our memories.

Solomon Asch

Studied conformity and how group pressure distorted judgment.

Eugene Aserinsky

Discovered REM sleep.

Richard Atkinson/Richard Shiffrin

Proposed original sensory/short-term/long term memory theory.

Alan Baddeley

Added working memory, including a central executive, to Atkinson and Shiffrin's concept.

Albert Bandura

Suggested people learn through observation and modeling.

Diana Baumrind

Studied parenting styles and their effects on children.

Aaron Beck

Developed a cognitive therapy for depression.

Alfred Binet

Developed the first modern intelligence test for the French school system.

Thomas Bouchard

Studied similarity of identical twins separated at birth.

Marian Breland/Keller Breland

Noted instinctive drift in training animals.

Isabel Briggs Myers/Catherine Briggs

Developed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

Paul Broca

Discovered Broca's area in the left side of the brain responsible for muscle movements in speech.

Linda Buck/Richard Axel

Discovered receptor proteins in the nasal cavity which trigger specific smells.

John Cade

Discovered the use of lithium as a mood stabilizer.

Walter Cannon/Philip Bard

Developed the Cannon-Bard theory of emotions.

Raymond Cattell/John Horn

Proposed a general intelligence theory composed of fluid and crystallized intelligence.

Fergus Craik/Endel Tulving

Researched different types of encoding information and its effects on memory.

Tanya Chartrand/John Bargh

Studied the Chameleon Effect.

Noam Chomsky

Studied innate language development and universal grammar.

Paul Costa/Robert McCrae

Developed the Big Five Trait theory.

Mary Cover Jones/Joseph Wolpe

Helped develop exposure therapies including systematic desensitization.

John Darley/Bibb Latané

Studied bystander intervention.

Charles Darwin

Proposed the evolutionary process of natural selection.

Judy DeLoache

Researched children's reactions to a miniature version of a room.

William Dement

Sleep deprivation researcher.

Dorothea Dix

Advocated for humane treatment of the mentally ill.

Carol Dweck

Studied growth mindset.

Alice Eagly

Studied social learning theory differences between males and females.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Developed the forgetting curve.

Paul Ekman

Studied the universality of facial expressions.

Albert Ellis

Creator of rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT).

Erik Erikson

Developed eight stages of psychosocial development.

Hans Eysenck/Sybil Eysenck

Developed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.

Gustav Fechner

Studied absolute thresholds.

Leon Festinger

Developed cognitive dissonance theory.

James Flynn

Discovered the Flynn effect.

Otfrid Foerster/Wilder Penfield

Mapped the motor cortex.

Sigmund Freud

Father of the Psychoanalytic School of Psychology.

Meyer Friedman/Ray Rosenman

Found blood cholesterol levels change with stress levels.

Gustav Fritsch/Edward Hitzig

Discovered the motor cortex by electrically stimulating parts of an animal's cortex.

Phineas Gage

Railroad worker who survived a brain accident but developed emotional difficulties.

Franz Gall

Proposed phrenology could reveal mental abilities and character traits.

Francis Galton

Believed intelligence was purely hereditary.

John Garcia/Robert Koelling

Studied conditioned taste aversion in rats.

Howard Gardner

Proposed nine distinct intelligences.

Eleanor Gibson/Richard Walk

Researched innate depth perception in infants.

Carol Gilligan

Studied differences in social connectedness between males and females.

Harry Harlow/Margaret Harlow

Studied attachment in infant monkeys.

Starke Hathaway

Helped develop the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI).

Fritz Heider

Proposed attribution theory.

Hermann von Helmholtz/Thomas Young

Responsible for Young Helmholtz trichromatic theory.

Ewald Hering

Responsible for the opponent-process theory.

Ernest Hilgard

Studied hypnosis and dissociation.

Albert Hofmann

Chemist who created LSD.

Karen Horney

Challenged the male bias in Freud's theories.

David Hubel/Torsten Wiesel

Did work on feature detectors.

Carol Izard

Isolated 10 basic emotions.

William James/Carl Lange

Developed the James-Lange theory of emotions.

Irving Janis

Studied groupthink.

Carl Jung

Divided the unconscious mind into collective and personal unconscious.

Eric Kandel/James Schwartz

Studied the neural basis of learning and memory.

Immanuel Kant

Maintained that knowledge comes from inborn ways of organizing sensory experience.

Ancel Keys

Researched motivation by reducing food levels of subjects.

Alfred Kinsey

Questioned Americans about their sexuality.

Heinrich Kluver/Paul Bucy

Surgically removed a rhesus monkey's amygdala.

Lawrence Kohlberg

Developed three levels of moral thinking.

Wolfgang Kohler

Co-founder of Gestalt psychology.

Konrad Lorenz

Studied imprinting in ducklings.

Bibb Latané

Studied bystander intervention.

Richard Lazarus

Suggested cognitive appraisal is sometimes without awareness.

Joseph LeDoux

Suggested some emotional responses bypass cognitive appraisal.

Kurt Lewin

Proposed motivation concepts including approach-approach and avoidance-avoidance.

John Locke

Suggested at birth the mind is a tabula rasa.

Elizabeth Loftus

Studied how eyewitness memories can be influenced.

Abraham Maslow

Developed a hierarchy of needs theory.

Harry McGurk/John MacDonald

Developed the McGurk Effect.

Stanley Milgram

Studied obedience.

George Miller

Proposed short-term memory is limited to seven +/- two bits of information.

David Milner/Melvyn Goodale

Research in blindsight led to visual perception track and visual action track.

Henry Molaison (H.M.)

Famous patient who suffered anterograde amnesia.

Egas Moniz

Developed the lobotomy technique.

Giuseppe Moruzzi/Horace Magoun

Discovered the reticular formation enables arousal.

Henry Murray

Developed the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).

James Olds/Peter Milner

Discovered the pleasure centers in rats.

Charles Osgood

Advocated for GRIT to reduce international tensions.

Ivan Pavlov

Discovered classical conditioning.

Wilder Penfield

Identified the sensory cortex.

Jean Piaget

Developed concepts of schema, assimilation, and accommodation.

Philippe Pinel

Suggested abnormal behavior was due to the sickness of the mind.

Steve Pinker

Studied language acquisition.

Plato

Believed knowledge is innate.

James Randi

Used an empirical approach to test the paranormal.

Robert Rescorla/Allan Wagner

Developed the testing effect.

Henry Roediger/Jeffrey Karpicke

Researched how false memories are created.

Carl Rogers (theory)

Developed person-centered perspective.

Carl Rogers (therapy)

Developed client-centered therapy.