Unit 1.2: Key Figures in Psychology

Alfred Binet

• Developed tests to identify if school children needed additional help in their education

B.F. Skinner

• Observable behavior is to be the proper subject of psychology 

• “Skinner Box” with observing rats behavior

Carolyn Lewis Attneave

• First Native American woman in the U.S. to earn psychology degree

• Founded one of North America’s largest Indian Centers, the Boston Indian Council

• Founded the Network of Indian Psychologists newsletter 

The Clark Family (Kenneth Bancroft and Mamie Phipps)

• Doll experiment

• Segregation was psychologically damaging and caused internalized racism

Edward Titchner

• Structuralism; structure of the mind

Efrain Sanchez Hidalgo

• First Puerto Rican to receive a Ph.D in psychology in the U.S.

• Research on the symbiotic relationships between friends

Evelyn Hooker

• “The adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual”

• Showed no significant differences in psychological adjustment between homosexual and heterosexual men

• Her research helped de-pathologize homosexuality and contributed to the decision by the APA to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Francis Cecil Sumner

• The father of Black psychology

• First African American to receive a Ph.D in psychology

• Established the psychology department at Howard University to train African American psychologists

G. Stanley Hall

• One of the people identified with “functionalism” 

• Founded the first psychological laboratory in America in 1883

• Created the first journal of psychology in America is 1887

• Founded the APA in 1892

• Interested in the process of adaptation and human development

• Wrote extensively on child development and education

Gerardo Marin

• Professor at USF

• Deeply committed to the creation of multicultural educational environments, cultural exchange, and the pursuit of justice for oppressed people in the United States and around the world

• Authored more than 135 publications about Hispanic/Latino people and minority groups

Ignacio Martin-Baro

• Jesuit social activist

• Research and community work spoke directly to the oppression of marginalized communities

• Argued that psychological theories were unequipped to explain mental health challenges or establish norms for people living in extreme circumstances

• Work is fundamental to many disciplines

  • Liberation, community, family, and relational psychologies

Inez Beverly Prosser

• First African American woman to receive her Ph.D in psychology

• Studied the academic development of African American children in integrated and segregated schools

• Argued that racism had a damaging effect on the academic achievement of African American children 

James McKeen Cattell

• One of the people identified with functionalism

• His interests turned to the assessment of individual differences

• Believed that mental abilities (AKA intelligence) were inherited and could be measured using mental tests. Encouraged people with superior intelligence to reproduce

Jing Qicheng

• Known for his efforts to global psychology, bringing gaps between the East and West

• Helped bring foreign ideas to China, even when such ideas were not politically popular

John Garcia (“The Garcia Effect”)

• Conducted biopsychological research using animal models

• described conditioned taste aversion

• Through his research it changed the way psychologists thought about associative learning by showing that conditioning does not depend exclusively on naturally occurring stimuli and responses; rather, people can learn new associations with dangerous stimuli

John Watson

• Founded the school of behaviorism

Jose Ingenieros

• Impacted many academic disciplines; psychology, criminology, philosophy, and sociology

• His impact is largely attributable to his prolific writing

• Describes sociological struggles that take place between highly accomplished men and less accomplished men

Joseph White

• Carried on the legacy of Dr. Francis Cecil Sumner by founding the Association of Black Psychologists, the Black Studies Program at SFSU and the California Educational Opportunity Program

• The ‘godfather’ of Black psychology

Leta S. Hollingworth

• A pioneer in research on the psychology of sex differences

• Found that menstruation did not negatively impact a women’s cognitive or motor abilities

Logan Wright

• Father of pediatric psychology

• Advocated for the use of behavioral interventions in pediatric care

• Dedicated his life to enhancing the medical care of children

Margaret Floy Washburn

• First woman in America to earn a Ph.D in psychology and the second woman to be elected president of the APA

• Titchener’s first doctoral student

Martha Bernal

• First latina to earn a Ph.D in psychology in the U.S., contributed to ethnic minority and multicultural psychology, co-founding the National Hispanic Psychological Association.

• Helped advance the use of learning theory and methods in the treatment and assessment of children exhibiting maladaptive behaviors

Matsumoto Matataro

• One of the most influential psychologists in Japan

• Founded the Japanese Journal of Psychology and Japanese Psychological Association

• An experimental psychologist and was interested in topics such as mental movement and intelligence

Melanie Klein

• Developed the famous technique known as “play therapy”. One of the first psychoanalysts to push back on Freudian theories while still embracing the basic tenets of psychoanalysis

• Introduced object relations theory describing a mother-infant relationship and identified two previously unrecognized development stages

  • Paranoid-schizoid position

  • Depressive position

Motora Yujiro

• Introduced experimental psychology to japan

• Studied topics on reaction time and sensation

Pan Shu

• One of the first Chinese psychologists 

• Many of his contemporaries deemed psychology too abstract, he embraced psychology as existing between the natural and social sciences and championed its growth in China

• Continued to write about psychology in secret

Santiago Ramon y Cajal

• Father of modern neuroscience who published over 100 articles in multiple languages about the structure of the nervous system

• Received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine

• Established the neuron doctrine, which explained the existence of synaptic gaps between neurons and paved the way for great developments in clinical, neurobiological, and comparative psychology

Wilhelm Wundt

• German physician, physiologists, and philosopher who established the filed of experimental psychology by serving as a strong promoter of the idea that psychology could be an experiment field and by providing classes, textbooks, and labs for training students

• “Father of Psychology” who focused on introspection (identifying elements of consciousness scientifically 

William James

• One of the men identified with functionalism

• Wrote the most influential and important book in the field of psychology, Principles of Psychology.

• Proposed that consciousness is ongoing and continuous; it cannot be isolated and reduced to elements. Consciousness helped us adapt to our environment in such ways as allowing us to make choices and have personal responsibility over those choices 

Yang Kuo-Shu

• One of the men identified with functionalism

• Wrote the most influential and important book in the field of psychology, Principles of Psychology.

• Proposed that consciousness is ongoing and continuous; it cannot be isolated and reduced to elements. Consciousness helped us adapt to our environment in such ways as allowing us to make choices and have personal responsibility over those choices 

•  founder of indigenized Chinese psychology, where psychology is rooted in the values of Chinese cultures

• Argued that Western psychology was not well-suited to describing the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of peoples from non-Western societies. 

• Wrote many papers about unique phenomena in Eastern societies such as fate, respect for ancestors, connections, and respect/status.