Important people AP Psych

Mary Whiton Calkins

First female president of the American Psychological Association

William Masters and Virginia Johnson

Documented the human sexual response pattern: excitement, plateu, orgasm, resolution; conducted lab studies on men and women to determine the response cycle they go through during sex

Dorothea Dix

Pushed for the creation of asylums in America to treat mentally ill

G. Stanley Hall

Created first psychology research lab in the United States of America; became first president of the American Psychological Association

Margaret Floy Washburn

First woman to earn a Ph.D. in psychology; second female president of the American Psychological Association

Wilhelm Wundt

Father of psychology; set up the first psychological laboratory (Germany, 1879); studied conscious experience

Paul Broca

Discovered the area in the left frontal lobe that controls the muscles involved in the production of speech

Charles Darwin

Proposed theory of evolution through natural selection by means of "survival of the fittest", ideas led to evolutionary perspective

Roger Sperry

Neurologist who pioneered operations to sever the corpus callosum of people with severe epilepsy

Carl Wernicke

Discovered the area in the left temporal lobe which interprets spoken and written language

Sigmund Freud

Created psychoanalytic perspective; emphasized examination of unconscious mind (dream analysis, transference, free association); developed psychosexual stages and parts of the mind: id, ego, superego

William James

Created theory of functionalism; described mind as a stream of consciousness

Albert Bandura

Studied observational learning/modeling; conducted Bobo doll experiment; developed reciprocal determinism

Ivan Pavlov

Discovered classical conditioning; conducted the famous experiments on salivation of dogs

Martin Seligman

Discovered learned helplessness; conducted experiments in which dogs that could not escape electric shocks learned to act helpless even when given the ability to escape

B. F. Skinner

Behaviorist; conducted research on operant conditioning; researched animal learning using a self-named box; said that "free will is an illusion"

Edward L. Thorndike

Developed the law of effect; one of the first people to research operant conditioning; conducted experiments with cats in a puzzle box

Edward Tolman

Studied latent learning; performed experiments on rats in mazes to see how rewards affect time to complete a maze; suggested cognitive maps

John B. Watson

Father of behaviorism; conducted Little Albert experiment

Noam Chomsky

Nativist language theorist; believed humans are born with a language acquisition device; theorized that there is a critical period for learning language

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Hypothesized the forgetting curve by memorizing non-sense syllables; developed the serial-positioning effect

Wolfgang Kohler

Studied insight learning; observed chimpanzees as they generated sudden solutions to retrieve bananas that were out of reach

Elizabeth Loftus

Memory researcher; tested constructed memory; performed experiments on recall of car crash based on term used to describe the crash; misinformation effect

George A. Miller

Found short-term memory capacity to be seven, plus or minus two; described chunking as a way to expand capacity

Benjamin Whorf

Created the linguistic relativity hypothesis; theorized that language influences thought

Mary Ainsworth

Researched attachment styles; performed the "Strange Situation"; secure and insecure attachments

Diana Baumrind

Researched parent-child interactions; described parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, neglectful

Erik Erikson

Neo-Freudian; thought personality was influenced by experiences with others; created eight psychosocial stages with social conflicts; identity crisis

Carol Gilligan

Critic of Kohlberg; pointed out that Kohlberg based stages on only males; believed males have a more absolute view of morality while females have a more situational view

Harry Harlow

Showed the importance of physical comfort in the formation of attachment with parents; conducted the wire or cloth monkey experiment; found that tactile stimulation is more important than nourishment in explaining attachment

Lawrence Kohlberg

Created stages of moral development: preconventional, conventional, postconventional; used the Heinz dilemma

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Developed the stages of death and grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance

Jean Piaget

Developed stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational; described how children viewed the world through schemas; accommodation and assimilation

Alfred Adler

Neo-Freudian; believed that people are motivated by inferiority (fear of failure) and superiority (desire to achieve); studied birth order; compensation

Karen Horney

Neo-Freudian; suggested that women are envious of men due to social advantages NOT penis envy; suggested womb envy

Carl Jung

Neo-Freudian; proposed personal unconscious and collective unconscious; described archetypes

Abraham Maslow

Humanist; developed the hierarchy of needs and self-actualization

Carl Rogers

Believed humans require unconditional positive regard, empathy, and genuineness; developed client-centered therapy to treat psychological disorders; incongruence and congruence

Howard Gardner

Believed in multiple intelligences; named nine different intelligences

Charles Spearman

Argued that intelligence could be explained by a single factor (g); used factor analysis to theorize general intelligece

Robert Sternberg

Triarchic theory of intelligence (creative, analytical, practical); triangular theory of love (passion, intimacy, commitment)

Solomon Asch

Social psychologist; conducted the line experiment; found that people conformed one-third of the time

Stanley Milgram

Social psychologist; conducted the shock experiment; found that people are obedient two-thirds of the time

Muzafer Sherif

Social psychologist; conducted the Robbers Cave experiment; discovered superordinate goals unite formerly antagonistic groups

Phillip Zimbardo

Social psychologist; conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment; found that role-playing and situations can lead to deindividuation