AP Psych Important People

Jean Piaget

Swiss psychologist who studied the growth of children's capacity to think in abstract, logical terms, and of such categories as time, space, number, causality, and permanency, describing an invariable sequence of stages from birth through adolescence

Charles Spearman

British psychologist who developed commonly used statistical measures and the statistical measures known as factor analysis. His studies on the nature of human abilities led to his "two-factor" theory of intelligence. Whereas most psychologists believed that mental abilities were demonstrated by various independent factors. He concluded that general intelligence "g" was a single factor that was correlated with specific abilities, "s," to varying degrees. His work became the theoretical justification for intelligence testing.

Carl Rogers

American psychologist who attended the University of Wisconsin, and believed that the mental condition of virtually all patients, whom he referred to as clients, can be improved, given an appropriate environment. Central to this environment is a close personal relationship between client and therapist. His use of the term "client" rather than "patient" expresses his rejection of the traditionally authoritarian relationship between therapist and client, and his views of them as equals. The client determines the general direction of therapy, while the therapist seeks to increase the client's insightful self-understanding through informal clarifying questions. A hallmark of his method involves the therapist echoing or reflecting the clients' remarks

Edward Thorndike

American educational psychologist who studied trial-and error learning, using first chickens and then cats. Observing the behavior of cats, attempting to escape from enclosed "puzzle boxes," he noted that responses that produced satisfaction-escape from the box and subsequent feeding- were "stamped in" and more likely to be repeated in the future, while responses that led to the failure, and thus dissatisfaction, tended to be "stamped out." He termed this observation the law of effect

Wilhelm Wundt

German psychologist and philosopher who founded experimental psychology. He evolved from a physiologist to a psychologist and showed the methods of natural science could be used in psychology

Howard Gardner

American psychologist who has focused most of his research on the nature of human intelligence, the nature of and development of abilities in the arts and how they relate to and effect intelligence, and on educational processes. He is the creator of the theory of multiple intelligence. Drawing on research in neuropsychology, he proposes that there are seven distinct types of intelligence, each based on different areas of the brain. Thus intelligence is not one general factor that underlines different abilities- the predominant belief upon which most intelligence tests had been based.

Paul Pierre Broca

French medical doctor and anthropologist known for his role in the discovery of specialized functions in different areas of the brain. In 1861, he was able to show, using post-mortem analysis of patients who had lost the ability to speak, that such loss was associated with damage to a specific area of the brain. This area, located toward the front of the brains left hemisphere, was eventually named after him. His findings addressed questions concerning the ability to produce speech and the evolution of language

Albert Bandura

American psychologist who has been the single most important figure in building a solid empirical foundation for the concept of learning through modeling, or imitation. His work, focusing particularly on the nature of aggression, suggests that modeling plays a highly significant role in determining thoughts, feelings, and behavior. He claimed that anything that can be learned by direct experience could also be learned by modeling.

Lawrence Kohlberg

American psychologist who is best known for his work in the development of moral reasoning in children. He conducted a long-term study in which he recorded the responses of boys aged seven through adolescence to hypothetical dilemmas requiring a moral choice. The most famous sample question is whether the husband of a critically ill woman is justification in stealing a drug that could save her life if the pharmacist is charging much more than he can afford to pay. Based on results of his study, he concluded that children and adults progress through six stages in the development of moral reasoning

Mary Ainsworth

American psychologist who concluded that there are qualitatively distinct patterns of attachment that evolve between infants and their mothers over the opening years of life. Although a majority of these patterns are marked by comfort and security, some are tense and conflicted. She found evidence suggesting that these relationships were related to the level of responsiveness that mothers showed toward their infants from the earliest months. She devised a system for assessing individual difference in infants' reactions to a series of separations and reunions with their mothers. This method, the "Strange Situation," has become one of the most widely used procedures in the child development research

Ivan Pavlov

Russian psychologist who observed that normal healthy dogs would salivate upon seeing their keeper, apparently in anticipation of being fed. This led him, through a systematic series of experiments, to formulate the principles of the conditioned response, which he believed could be applied to humans as well as animal

Erik Erikson

German-born American psychoanalyst best known for his work with children and adolescents. Much of his work is concerned with the formation of individual identity, and social influences on child development. He differs from more traditional Freudians by assigning a significantly greater importance to development after the first few years of life. He is also noted for illumination of his concept of the adolescent "identity crisis," a term which he coined. His theory of personality covers the entire human lifespan, which he divided into eight distinct stages, each with its own task and crisis

Abraham Maslow

American psychologist who received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Rejecting the determinism of both the psychoanalytic and behaviorist approaches, his theory of motivation emphasized developing one's full potential. Instead of basing his psychological model on people with mental and emotional problems, he used as his point of reference a collection of exceptionally dynamic and successful historical and contemporary figures whom he considered "selfactualizers," including Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Addams, Albert Einstein, and Eleanor Roosevelt. In addition to drawing up a list of the common traits of self-actualized individuals, he placed self-actualization at the peak of his hierarchy of human motivations, the concept for which he is best known today

Hermann Ebbinghaus

German psychologist whose work resulted in the development of scientifically reliable experimental methods for the qualitative measurement of wrote learning and memory. Using himself as both sole experimenter and subject, he embarked on an arduous process that involved repeatedly testing his memorization of nonsense words devised to eliminate variables caused by prior familiarity with the material being memorized. He created 2,300 one syllable constant-vowel-constant combinations, and recorded the average amount of time it took him to memorize these lists perfectly. The results of his work showed the existence of a regular forgetting curve, which is best characterized by a step initial decline in memory.

Alfred Adler

Austria-born psychologist considered to be a neo-Freudian. His major disagreement with Freud centered on Freud's heavy emphasis on the role of sexuality in personality formation. After splitting form Freud, his psychology focused on the individual as a social rather than sexual being. He saw the individual striving toward perfection and overcoming feelings of inferiority, a concept that would later be popularized as the "inferiority complex."

David Wechsler

American experimental and clinical psychologist who developed the first standardized adult intelligence test. These widely used series of intelligence are divided into two sections

John B. Watson

American psychologist who is best known as the founder of behaviorism. The significance of childhood and child-study for behaviorism is summed up in his most famous statement

Noam Chomsky

American linguist who established a relationship between linguistic and psychology. He argued that linguistics should be understood as part of cognitive psychology. He opposed the traditional learning theory basis of language acquisition. In doing so, he expressed a view that differed from the behaviorist view of the mind as a tabula rasa (blank slate). His theories were diametrically opposed to the ideas of B. F. Skinner, the foremost proponent of behaviorism. In his views, certain aspects of linguistic knowledge and ability are the product of a universal innate ability, or "language acquisition device," that enables each normal child to construct a systematic grammar and generate phrases

Carl Jung

Swiss psychiatric and neo-Freudian best known for his contribution that individuals can be categorized according to general attitudinal types as either introverted or extroverted. He also posited the existence of a collective unconscious, which gathers together the experiences of previous generations and even animal ancestors, preserving traces of humanity's evolutionary development over time. The collective unconscious is a repository of shared images and symbols, called archetypes, that emerge in dreams, myths, and other forms. These include such common themes as birth, rebirth, death, the hero, the earth mother, and the demon.

Robert Yerkes

American psychologist who worked on a law that states that for ever task there is an optimum level of motivation, and that motivation that is too strong can actually interfere with the ability to perform a difficult task.

Konrad Lorenz

Austrian behaviorist and early in the field of ethology, the comparative study of animal behavior, his observations -particularly of graylag geese - led to important discoveries in animal behavior. Perhaps his most influential determination was that behavior, like physical traits, evolves by natural selection. He developed the concept of imprinting. Imprinting occurs in many species, most noticeably in geese and ducks, when - within a short, genetically set time frame - an animal will accept a foster mother in the place of its biological mother, even if that foster mother is different species.

B.F. Skinner

American psychologist and advocate of behaviorism, his most successful and well- known apparatus, known as the operant chamber, was a cage in which a laboratory rat could, by pressing on a bar, activate a mechanism that would drop a food pellet into the cage. Another device recorded each press of the bar, producing a permanent record of results without the presence of a tester. He analyzed the rats' bar-pressing behavior by varying his patterns of reinforcement (feeding) to learn their responses to different schedules. Using this box to study how rats "operated on" their environment led him to formulate the principle to operate conditioning

Charles Darwin

British naturalist whose theory postulates that all species on earth change over time, and that process is governed by the principle of natural selection. These principles hold that in struggle for existence, some individuals, because of advantageous biological adaptation, are better able to occupy effectively a given ecological niche and therefore will produce more offspring than individuals who are less able. This line of thinking has provided the basis for the field of evolutionary

psychology

Lewis Terman

American psychologist whose notable work was concentrated in the area of intelligence testing and the comprehensive study of intellectually gifted children. He published the first important individual intelligence test to be used in the United States, the Stanford-Binet Intelligence scales. This test was an American revision and expansion of the Binet - Simon intelligence test, which had been developed in France

Stanley Milgram

American experimental social psychologist known for his innovative experimental techniques, he carried out influential and controversial experiments that demonstrated that blind obedience to authority could override moral conscience. His early studies on conformity were the first experiments to compare to behavioral differences between people from different parts of the world. His most surprising finding was that 65% of his subjects would inflict what they believed to painful electrical shocks on other, simply because they were told to do so

Hans Eysenck

German born British psychologist known for popularizing the terms "introvert" and "extrovert." He came up with a series of personality "dimensions" that include introversion/extroversion and neuroticism/stability. His later research produced a third dimension of psychoticism

William James

American philosopher and psychologist who published The Principle of Psychology, he taught the first psychological laboratory in the United States. His book was a seminal work in the field of psychology, and served as a basis for a school of thought known as functionalism

Albert Ellis

American psychologist who developed rational-emotive therapy (RET), which was based on the idea that psychological problems are caused by self-defeating thoughts (such as "I must be loved or approved by everyone" and "If I don't find the perfect solution to this problem, a catastrophe will result"). Once such thoughts are changes, emotional and behavioral changes will follow. The therapist's task is to help the client recognize illogical and self-destructive ways of think and replace them with healthier, more positive ones. He believed that that therapist should continually challenge the client's illogical and self-destructive ideas in a dynamic and provocative manner.

Joseph Wolpe

American psychiatrist who made significant contributions to behavior therapy, and is probably best known for his work in the areas of desensitization and assertiveness training, both of which have become important elements in behavioral therapy. He reasoned that much of our behavior, both good and bad, is learned - thus, there is no relaxation techniques and gradually rehearsing stressful situation, until the patient is finally able to handle the fear - inducing objects.

Karen Horney

German-born American neo-Freudian who stressed the importance of social relationships, especially the parent-child relationship in the development of personality, She believed that disturbances in human relationships, not sexual conflicts, were the cause of psychological problems. Such problems arise from the attempt to deal with basic anxiety, which she described as "the feeling a child has of being isolated and helpless in the world." She also sharply disagreed with Freud's interpretation of female development, especially his notion that women suffer from penis envy. What women envy in men, she claimed, is not their penis, but their superior status in society. In fact, she contended that men often suffer from womb envy, envying women's capacity to bear children

Solomon Asch

American psychologist who devised a "line test" conformity experiment showing that approximately three-fourths of subjects tested knowingly and incorrect answer at least once in order to conform to the group. This study helped show the power of unanimity of opinion, as even one dissenter decreased the incidence of conformity markedly. Individuals are much more likely to diverge from a group when there is at least one other person to share the disapproval of the group

Phineas Gage

American railroad foreman who was injured in a freak accident near Cavendish, Vermont on September 13, 1848, and since has been written into virtually every introductory psychology textbook as a landmark case in our understanding of the brain's role in behavior. Although an iron rod blew through his head like a javelin and landed some 50 feet away, miraculously, he survived. His intelligence, memory, speech, and ability to learn new information seemed intact, however, there was a profound change in his personality. The previously friendly, competent, and responsible man became stubborn, ill tempered, profane, and unreasonable

Carl Wernicke

German neuroanatomist, pathologist, and psychiatrist who made fundamental discoveries about brain function. In 1873, he studied a patient who had suffered a stroke. Although the man was able to speak and his hearing was unimpaired, he could barely understand what was said to him. Nor could he understand written works. After this man died, he found a lesion in the rear parietal/ temporal region of the brain, was involved in speech comprehension. He named this syndrome sensory aphasia, although now this type of aphasia is names after him, along with the affected brain area dealing with speech comprehension.

Leon Festinger

American psychologist who developed the concept of cognitive dissonance. He found that the level of cognitive dissonance would decrease as the incentive to comply with the conflict. Where little or no incentive was involved, people needed to justify or rationalize their actions, and often changed their opinion to match their actions.

Martin Seligman

American psychologist who designed a simple experiment to demonstrate the phenomena of learned helplessness. He arranged dogs into groups of three. The first dog received shocks that it could escape by pushing a panel with its nose. The second dog was "yoked" to the first and received the same number of shocks. However, nothing the second dog did could stop the shock - they stopped only if the first dog pushed the panel. The third dog was the control, and got no shocks at all. The first and third dogs quickly learned to jump over the barrier when the floor became electrified. But the second dog, the one that had learned that nothing it did would stop the shock, made no effort to jump over the barrier. The dog that had developed the cognitive expectation that its behavior had no effect on the environment, it had become passive and learned it was helpless

Elizabeth Loftus

American psychologist who is one of the most widely recognized authorities on eyewitness testimony and the reconstructive nature of human memory. She has not only conducted extensive research in this area, but has also testified in many highprofile court cases. Her and her colleagues have demonstrated that both the wording of a question and misleading information can lead to inaccurate reports (memories).

Karl Lashley

American psychological psychologist who set out to find a memory trace, or engram - the brain changes associated with the formation of a long-term memory. Guiding his research was his belief that memory was localized, meaning that a particular memory was stored in a specific brain area. Over the course of his career, he systematically removed different sections for the cortex in trained rats. No matter which part of the cortex he removed, the rats were still able to run the maze. At the end of his professional career, he concluded that memories are not localized in specific locations but instead are distributed, or stored, throughout the brain

Alfred Binet

French psychologist, who in 1905, with the help of the Theodore Simon, created the first intelligence test to aid the French government in establishing a program to provide special education for mentally retarded children. Test revisions introduced the concept of mental age. In 1916, the American psychologist Lewis Terman used the intelligence test as a basis foe the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, the best-known and most researched intelligence test in the United States

Hans Selye

Canadian endocrinologist whose pioneering scientific investigations confirmed the idea that prolonged stress could be physically harmful. Most of his research was done with rats that were exposed to prolonged stressors, such as an electric shock, extreme heat or cold, or forced exercise. Regardless of the condition that he used to produce prolonged stress, he found the same pattern of physical changes in the rats. He discovered that if the bodily "wear and tear" of the stressproducing event continued, the effects became evident in three progressive stages. He called these stages the general adaptation syndrome (alarm, resistance, exhaustion)

Stanley Schachter

American psychologist whose theory on emotion emphasized the interaction of cognitive labels and psychological arousal. To test his theory he made male volunteers injected with epinephrine, which produces sympathetic nervous system arousal

Michael Gazzaniga

American psychologist who has conducted split-brain research with the epileptic patients who have had their corpus callosum severed. In his research, he used a special projection screen where visual information to the left where visual information to the right of the midpoint is projected to the person's left hemisphere, and visual information to the left of the midpoint is projected to the right hemisphere. One the basis of his research, we know that - in most people - the left hemisphere is superior in language abilities, speech, reading, and writing. In the contrast, the right hemisphere is more involved in nonverbal emotional expression and visual-spatial tasks.

Benjamin Whorf

American researcher who claimed that language actually determines how we think, a process called linguistic determinism. He noted, for example, that Inuit Eskimos have several different words for "snow" and proposed that this feature of their language should lead to greater perceptual ability to discriminate among varieties of snow.

Harry Harlow

American psychologist and University of Wisconsin professor who demonstrated the importance of contact comfort through the use of rhesus monkeys in his Madison, Wisconsin laboratory. He demonstrated, that when frightened, these monkeys preferred the comfort of a terrycloth mother to a chicken wire mother, even though the chicken wire mother was capable of feeding and he terrycloth mother was not. His work was instrumental in showing the importance of touching, contact, and parental bonds in attachment

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

American researcher who interviewed terminally ill patients and proposed that the dying go through five stages. These five stages include

Paul Eckman

American psychologist who analyzed the facial muscles utilized in producing facial expressions that characterize the basic emotions of happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, and disgust. He concluded that facial expressions for the basic emotions are innate and probably hard-wired into the brain

Sigmund Freud

Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. He constructed a comprehensive theory on the structure of the psyche, which he viewed as divided into three parts. The id, corresponding to the unconscious, is concerned with the satisfaction of primitive desires and with self-preservation. It operates according to the pleasure principle and outside the realm of social rules or moral dictates. The ego, associated with reason, controls the forces of the id to bring it into line with the reality principle and make socialization possible, and channels the forces of the id into acceptable activities. The critical, moral superego - our conscience - developed in early childhood, monitors and censors the ego, turning external values into internalized, self-imposed rules with which to inhibit the is. He viewed individual behavior as the result of the interaction among these three components of the psyche

Edward C. Tolman

American psychologist who studied the importance of cognition in learning, and challenged the prevailing behaviorist model that a reward must be presented in order for an organism to learn. He believed that rats running through a maze were capable of constructing a cognitive map of the maze - a mental representation of its layout. He concluded that learning involves the acquisition of knowledge rather than simple changes in outward behavior. To describe learning that is not immediately demonstrated in overt behavior, he coined the term latent learning

Ernst Heinrich Weber

German physiologist who studied the just noticeable difference, and now has one of the oldest laws of fractions in psychology named after him. This law holds that for each sense, the size of the just noticeable difference is a constant proportion of the size of the initial stimulus. So, whether we can detect a change in the strength of a stimulus depends on the intensity of the original stimulus. This law underscores that our psychological experience of sensation is relative. There is no simple, one-to-one correspondence between the objective characteristics of a physical stimulus and our psychological experience of it

Robert Sternberg

American psychologist who believed that a complete theory of intelligence involved three different types of intelligence. His triarachic theory of intelligence consisted of

Kitty Genovese

28-year-old New York woman was murdered on Friday, March 13, 1964, and has since been written into nearly every introductory psychology textbook as a classic case of bystander intervention. Police investigators learned that a total of 38 people had witnessed her murder - a murder that involved three separate attacks over a period of 35 minutes. Although 38 people witnessed the murder, none called the police

Philip Zimbardo

American psychologist who conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment. Advanced Placement Psychology students might best know this psychologist as the narrator of a video series titled Discovering Psychology