AP Psych ppl

Alfred Adler

founded Individual Psychology- focuses on the individual as a whole

• "inferiority complex"- all humans feel weak/ helpless as children

• importance of birth order- first born normally leaders, middle/second competitive, ambition, often wants to surpass first-born.

Mary Ainsworth

Developmental psychology

"Strange Situation" experiment to study child-parent attachment styles (Secure, Anxious-Ambivalent, Avoidant).

Solomon Asch

pioneer of Social psychology studied conformity using the "Line Test" where participants often gave wrong answers to fit in with a group.

Albert Bandura

Social Learning Theory; "Bobo Doll" experiment showing that children learn aggression through observation and imitation.

Diana Baumrind

Developmental psychology; defined four parenting styles: Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive, and Uninvolved.

Aaron Beck

Father of Cognitive Therapy; focused on identifying and changing "cognitive distortions" to treat depression. How people perceive a situation more closely connected to their emotional and behavioral reaction than the situation itself.

Alfred Binet

Created the first practical Intelligence Test (Binet-Simon Scale) to identify children needing extra help in school.

Paul Broca

Neuroscience; discovered "Broca's Area" in the left frontal lobe, which is responsible for speech production.

Mary Whiton Calkins

First female president of the APA; pioneer in memory research paired-associate technique - studying memory by pairing items (like colors and numbers) to determine how association influences recall

-self-psychology- focus on the "conscious self" how it challenges behaviorist views of the time

Walter Cannon & Philip Bard

Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion; argues that physiological arousal and the experience of emotion happen simultaneously.

Noam Chomsky

Linguistics; proposed the "Language Acquisition Device" (LAD)- theoretical- innate mental capacity in humans that allows infants to acquire and produce language rapidly.

• theory of Universal Grammar- ability to acquire language is innately biological, with humans born possessing a hardwired, underlying set of structural rules common to all languages.

Charles Darwin

Evolutionary psychology; proposed natural selection and argued that behaviors can be adaptive for survival.

Dorothea Dix

Reformist who revolutionized the treatment of the mentally ill by advocating for the creation of state mental hospitals.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Studied memory and forgetting; created the "Forgetting Curve" - humans forget information rapidly often 755 within 24 hours soon after learning, with the decline leveling off over time

-"Spacing Effect"- info is better retained and recalled when study sessions are distributed over time rather than crammed together

Albert Ellis

Developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), a confrontational cognitive-behavioral therapy to challenge irrational beliefs. Replace irrational, self- defeating beliefs with rational ones to manage emotions and behaviors.

Erik Erikson

Stages of Psychosocial Development; proposed 8 stages of life, each centered around a specific crisis

1. trust vs. mistrust (0-18 months)

2. autonomy vs. shape and doubt (18 months- 3 yrs)

3. initiative vs. guilt (3-5yrs)

4. industry vs. inferiority (6-11yrs)

5. identity vs. confusion (12-18 yrs)

6. intimacy vs. isolation (18-40 yrs)

7. generatively vs. stagnation (40-65yrs)

8. integrity vs. despair (65+yrs)

Gustav Fechner

Founder of psychophysics; studied the relationship between physical stimuli and psychological sensation

-Fechner's Law- subjective sensation (perception) of a stimulus increases proportionally to the logarithm of its physical intensity, rather than linearly.

Leon Festinger

Social psychology; developed the theory of Cognitive Dissonance -mental tension when beliefs and actions don't align

Margaret Floyd Washburn

First woman to earn a PhD in psychology; known for work in animal behavior and motor theory.

Sigmund Freud

Founder of Psychoanalysis; focused on the unconscious mind, id/ego/superego, and psychosexual stages of development.

Francis Galton

Pioneer in eugenics and mental testing; first to use the phrase "nature vs. nurture" and developed correlation stats.

John Garcia & Robert Koelling

Studied Conditioned Taste Aversion (The Garcia Effect)- a learned avoidance of a specific food or drink that occurs when consumption is followed by sickness (nausea/vomiting)

Howard Gardner

Theory of Multiple Intelligences; proposed that intelligence is not a single factor

linguistic

-mathematical

-visual-spatial

-bodily-kinesthetic

-musical

-interpersonal

-intrapersonal

-naturalistic

G. Stanley Hall

First president of the APA; established the first psychology lab in the US and focused on child development.

Ernest Helgard

Hypnosis research; proposed

-"Dissociation Theory"- hypnosis splits consciousness into at least two simultaneous streams: a highly suggestible hypnotized self and a "hidden observer" that monitors experiences

-"Hidden Observer" -represents the part of the mind that remains aware, objective, and monitors the situation, even while the hypnotized part follows suggestions (e.g., ignoring pain).

William James

Functionalism; author of the first psych textbook; proposed the James-Lange Theory -proposes that emotions occur as a result of physiological reactions to events, rather than causing them. (e.g., "I am trembling, therefore I am afraid")

Carl Jung

Analytical Psychology; developed concepts of the

-Collective Unconscious- the deepest, inherited layer of the human psyche shared by all individuals, distinct from personal experience

-Archetypes- universal, inborn models of personality and symbolic images that reside in the collective unconscious, a shared reservoir of human experiences

-Introversion/Extroversion- Introverts focus inwardly, driven by subjective, internal experiences, while extraverts focus outwardly, driven by external objects, people, and environments.

Wolfgang Kohler

Gestalt psychology; studied "Insight Learning" in chimpanzees (the "Aha!" moment).

Elizabeth Loftus

Memory researcher; studied the "Misinformation Effect" -a memory phenomenon where exposure to false, misleading information after an event causes people to alter, distort, or misremember the original event and how eyewitness testimony can be manipulated or false.

Abraham Maslow

Humanistic psychology; created the "Hierarchy of Needs," culminating in Self-Actualization.

George Miller

Cognitive psychology; discovered "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" regarding short-term memory capacity.

Ivan Pavlov

Classical Conditioning; famous for experiments training dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell.

Jean Piaget

Cognitive Development Stages; Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational.

Carl Rogers

Humanistic psychology; developed Client-Centered Therapy emphasizing Unconditional Positive Regard- the act of accepting, valuing, and supporting a person entirely without judgment, regardless of their behavior or choices and Empathy.

Hermann Rorschach

Developed the Rorschach Inkblot Test, a projective personality test used to uncover unconscious thoughts.

Hans Selye

Stress research; defined General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) consisting of three stages that the body responds and adapt to stress: Alarm, Resistance, Exhaustion.

B.F. Skinner

Operant Conditioning; developed the "Skinner Box" to study how rewards and punishments shape behavior.

Edward Thorndike

Law of Effect; behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely (precursor to operant conditioning).

John B. Watson

Founder of Behaviorism; conducted the "Little Albert" experiment to show fear could be classically conditioned.

Carl Wernicke

Neuroscience; discovered "Wernicke's Area" in the left temporal lobe, responsible for language comprehension.

Wilhelm Wundt

The "Father of Psychology"; established the first psychology lab in Germany (1879) and used Introspection.

Yerkes & Dodson

Yerkes-Dodson Law; states that performance increases with arousal up to a point, after which it declines.