AP Psychology: Famous People

Aaron Beck

developed cognitive-behavior therapy

Abraham Maslow

humanistic psychologist know for his Hierarchy of Needs and the concept of self-actualization

Albert Bandura

Famous for the Bobo Doll experiements on observational learning & influence in the Socio-Cognitive Perspective

Albert Ellis

developed rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT)

Alfred Adler

Neo-Freudian; introduced concept of inferiority complex and stressed the importance of birth order

Alfred Binet

created first intelligence test for Parisian school children

Alfred Kinsey

his research described human sexual behavior and was controversial (for its methodolgy and findings)

Ancel Keys

Conducted semi-starvation experiments to measure psych effects of hunger

B.F. Skinner

described process of operant conditioning

Benjamin Lee Whorf

famous for describing concept of liguistic determinism

Carl Jung

neo-Freudian who created concept of collective unconscious and wrtoe books on dream interpretations

Carl Rogers

Developed client-centered therapy

Carl Wernicke

an area of the brain (in the lleft temporal lobe) involved in language comprehension and expression was named for him because he discovered it

Carol Gilligan

presented feminist side of Kohlberg's moral development theory; believed women moral sense guided by relationship

Charles Darwin

his idea, that genetic composition of a species can be altered through natural selection, has had a lasting impact on psychology through the evolutionary perspective

Charles Spearman

creator of g-factor, or general intelligence, concept

Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky

investigated the use of heuristics in decision-making; studied the availability, anchoring, and representativeness heuristic

David Hubel & Torsten Weisel

two Nobel prize winning neuroscientists who demonstrated the importance of feature detector neurons in visual perception

David McClelland

studied achievement motivation; found those with high levels are driven too master challenging tasks

David Weschler

developer of WAIS and WISC intelligence tests

Diana Baumrind

her theory of parenting styles had three main types (permissive, authoratative, & authoritarian)

Dorothea Dix

American activist who successfully pressured lawmakers to construct and fund asylums for the mentally ill

Edward Throndike

famous for the law of effect and research on cats in puzzle boxes

Edward Tolman

researched rats' use of cognititive maps

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

wrote "On Death and Dying"; developed 5 stage theory of grief

Elizabeth Loftus

her research on memory construction and the misinformaiton effect created doubts about the accuracy of eye-witness testimony

Erik Erikson

known for his 8-stage-theory of psychosocial development

Ernest Hilgard

famous for hypnosis research & the theory that a hidden observer theory

Ernest Weber

best know for webers law, the notion that the JND magnitude is proportional to the stimulus magnititude

Francis Galton

interested in link between heredity and intelligence; founder of the eugenics movement

Fritz Peris

Creator of gestalt theory

G. Stanley Hall

first american to work for Wundt; founded the american psychological association (now largest organization of psychologists in the USA) and became first president

George A. Miller

made famous the phrase: the emagical number 7, plus or minus 2 when describing human memory

Gordon Allport

founder of trait theory

Gustave Fechner

early german psychologist credited with founding psychophysics

Hans Selye

accidently described general adaptation syndrome (GAS)

Harry Harlow

studied attachment in monkeys with artificial mothers

Hermann Ebbinghaus

memorized nonsense syllabbles in early study on human memory

Howard Gardner

best known for his theory of multiple intelligence

Ivan Pavlov

described process of classical conditioning after famous experiments with dogs

Jean Piaget

known for his theory of cognitive development in children

Jerome Kagan

conducted longitidinal studies on temperatment (infancy to adolescnecce)

John Garcia

studied taste aversion in rats; led to knowledge that sickness and taste preferences can be conditiioned

John Watson

Early behaviorist; famous for the little albert experiments on fear conditioning

Joseph Wolpe

described use of systematic desensitization to treat phobias

Karen Horney

Neo-freudian; offered feminist critique of Freud's theory

Konrad Lorenz

won Nobel prize for research on imprinting

Lawrence Kohlberg

famous for his theory of moral development in children; made use of moral dilemas in assessment

Leon Festinger

described concept of cognitive dissonance

Lev Vygotsky

found of social development theory (note: not social learning theory or psychosocial development); emphasizes importance of More Knowledge Others (MKO) and the Zone of Proximal Development

Lewis Terman

advocate of intelligence testing in US; ddeveloped Stanford-Binet test annd oversaw army's use of intelligence testing during WWI

Margaret Floy Washburn

first female to be awarded a PhD in psychology; 2nd president of APA

Martin Seligman

conducted experiments with dogs that led to the concept of learned helplessness

Mary Ainsworth

studied attachment in infants using the strange situations model. Label infants secure, insecure in attachment

Mary Cover Jones

mother of behavior therapy; used classical conditioning to help peter overcome fear of rabbits

Maryy Whiton Calkins

first female president of the APA; a student of William James; denied the PhD she earned from Harvard because of her sex (later, posthhumously, it was granted to her)

Michael Gazzaniga

conducted the HE-ART experiments with split brain patients

Noam Chomsky

created concept of universal grammar

Paul Broca

the part of the brain responsible for coordinating muscles involved in speech was named for him, because he first identified it

Paul Costa & Robert McCrae

creators of the Big Five model of personality traits

Paul Eckman

interested in the unversality of facial expressions: facial expressions carry same meaning regardless of culture, context, or language. Use of mircroexpressions to detect lying

Philip Zimbardo

conducted Stanford Prison experiment

Phineas Gage

his survival of a horrible industrial accident taught us about the role of the frontal lobes

Robert Rescorla

researched classical conditioning; found subjects learn the predicability of an event through trials (cognitive element)

Robert Sternberg

creator of successful intelligence theory (3 types)

Roger Sperry

like Gazzaniga, studieed split brain patients; showed that left/right hemispheres have different functions

Sigmund Freud

developed psychoanalysis; considered to be father of modern psychiatry

Solomon Asch

conducted famous conformity experiment that requiired subjects to match lines

Stanley Milgram

conducted shocking experiments on obediance

Stanley Schachter

developed two-factor theory of emotion; experiments on spillover effect

Thomas Bouchard

studied identical twins separated at birth

Walter Mischel

offered famous critique of trait theory and its claims

William James

created Functionalist school of thought; early American psychology teacher/philosopher

William Masters & Virginia Johnson

used direct observation and experimentation to study sexual response cycle (4 stages)

William Wundt

conducted first psychology experiments in first psych laboratory

Wolfgang Kohler

considered to be the founder of Gestalt Psychology