AP Psychology Major Figures in Psychology
Hubel & Wiesel
(David Hubel & Torsten Wiesel) Feature detectors in the brain; showed that individual neurons were specialized to respond to only certain features or aspects of the image
Ainsworth & Bolwby
(Mary Ainsworth & John Bowlby) Types of Attachment (e.g. Secure, Insecure, Avoidant, Resistant, Disorganized); Create the "Strange Situation" experiment
Costa & McCrae
(Paul Costa & Robert McCrae); Big 5 Personality model (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism)
McCrae & Costa
(Robert McCrae & Paul Costa) Big 5 Personality model (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism
Solomon Asch
(Social Psychology) Asch Conformity Experiment; Conformity
Elizabeth Kubler Ross
5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance)
Dorothea Dix
American reformer; fought to establish legal protection for individuals with mental illness; created state mental hospitals
Carl Jung
Analytical psychology; Collective unconscious; archetypes; introversion-extroversion
Edward Thorndike
Behaviorist; Law of Effect
B.F. Skinner
Behaviorist; Operant Conditioning; Skinner box (Operant Chamber); reinforcers & punishers
Ivan Pavlov
Classical Conditioning; Pavlov's dogs
Leon Festinger
Cognitive dissonance - state of psychological tension, anxiety, and discomfort that occurs when an individual's attitude and behavior are inconsistent, which motivates a change in attitude or behavior to reduce the discomfort
Aaron Beck
Cognitive restructuring, cognitive triad, and effective cognitive therapy He was a psychiatrist who developed an influential cognitive therapy based on the use of cognitive restructuring to replace irrational beliefs and negative thought processes that were causing maladaptive behaviors. His research was especially influential in the treatment of depression.
Michael Gazzaniga
Continuation Roger Sperry's work; Split brain research; right & left hemispheres
Francis Galton
Cousin of Darwin and pioneer in psychometrics who introduced the idea that intelligence was hereditary because intelligent individuals often had intelligent children; developed the measurement of correlation
Alfred Binet
Created the first intelligence test used to evaluate mental abilities; IQ
Carol Gilligan
Created theory of moral development in response to Kohlberg's theory which she believed was biased against women
Paul Broca
Discovered the area of the brain responsible for language (speech production): Broca's Area
Phineas Gage
Famous case: railroad worker who had a tamping iron shoot through his cheek, brain, and skull; left blinded but alive and even immediately alert; severe personality change
John Watson
Father of Behaviorism (observable, measurable behaviors); "Little Albert" (classical conditioning)
Wilhelm Wundt
Father of Psychology; developed first laboratory dedicated to psychological research in Germany
Margaret Floy Washburn
First woman to formally earn a PhD in Psychology; influenced the then emerging perspective of Behaviorism
William James
Functionalism; Wrote the first Psychology textbook; James-Lange Theory of Emotion (asserts that the individual's perception of his or her physical reaction creates emotions; the emotional experience occurs after the bodily change and as a result of it)
Wolfgang Kohler
Gestalt psychology - the whole is different than the sum of its parts
Carl Rogers
Humanist; Client-Centered therapy (person-centered therapy); individuals are capable and able to grow with guidance provided by a caring therapist; active listening; unconditional positive regard
Abraham Maslow
Humanist; Hierarchy of Needs; self-actualization; Motivation
Konrad Lorenz
Imprinting; critical period; attachment
Charles Spearman
Intelligence - g factor (an individual's overall ability) and several other specific abilities (s-factors); g factor - predictor of overall intelligence
Edward Tolman
Latent learning & cognitive maps He was a cognitive psychologist who was one of the first to investigate the role of cognitive processes in operant conditioning, challenging the viewpoint of strict behaviorists like B.F. Skinner. He conducted research on how cognition impacted learning in animals and developed the concept of latent learning and cognitive maps. He explored the thinking process that occurred between the stimulus-response patterns in animals by recording how long it took rates to master a maze under three different conditions over seventeen days worth of trials.
Ernest Hilgard
Learning, hypnosis, & pain
Noam Chomsky
Linguist; Believed in "nature"; Said humans have a biological predisposition; LAD (Language Acquisition Device)
Julian Rotter
Locus of control
Mary Cover Jones
Mary Cover Jones was christened "the mother of behavior therapy" by colleague and friend Joseph Wolpe, and has been portrayed throughout the psychological literature as a pioneer of behavior therapy because of her seminal work on the unconditioning of the fear reaction in infants. Her study of the three-year-old named Peter has probably been cited more extensively than any other aspect of her work.
George Miller
Memory; 7 is the magic number for short-term memory
Howard Gardner
Multiple intelligences (8)
Charles Darwin
Naturalist; "Nature"; Theory of Evolution; Natural Selection; Ideas influenced the perspective of Evolutionary Psychology
Alfred Adler
Neo-Freudian; developed the concept of the inferiority complex
Roger Sperry
Neuroscientist; split-brain; differences in hemispheric lateralization, especially with regard to language
John Locke
Nurture; tabula rasa (blank slate)
Stanley Milgram
Obedience; Shock experiment; Social Psychology
Albert Bandura
Observational learning - Modeling; "Bobo" Doll Experiment; Social Cognitive Theory = explains how personal characteristics, social interactions, and cognitive evaluations are involved in developing and individual's personality; Self-efficacy; Reciprocal Determinism
Diana Baumrind
Parenting Styles (Authoritarian, Authoritative, Permissive)
Phillipe Pinel
Paved the way for the medical model; humane treatment of mentally ill; illnesses had treatable causes
Jean Piaget
Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational)
Martin Seligman
Positive psychology; Studied learned helplessness in animals
Ernst Weber
Psychophysicist; Weber's Law
Gustav Fechner
Psychophysics (how physical stimuli-sensations-translate to psychological experiences-perceptions; Absolute threshold (minimum amount of intensity to detect stimulus)
Erik Erikson
Psychosocial Stages of Development; explains how individuals develop through social interaction with others across the lifespan (8 stages)
Albert Ellis
Rational-Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT): cognitive-behavioral therapy that involves the identification and replacement of irrational beliefs and the use of behavioral techniques to create new, more adaptive responses
David Rosenhan
Research the power and danger of labels; Pretending to hear voices, he and colleagues were admitted to various mental facilities with diagnosis of schizophrenia
Hans Selye
Researched chronic stress; General Adaptation Syndrome (alarm reaction, resistance, exhaustion)
Harry Harlow
Rhesus Monkey experiment; contact comfort; food or security?
Phillip Zimbardo
Social Psychology; Stanford Prison Experiment; the power of the situation; The Lucifer Effect
Lev Vygotsky
Sociocultural theory of cognitive development; internalized speech; zone of proximal development
Lawrence Kohlberg
Stages of Moral Development (pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional); not everyone progresses through all three
Louis Terman
Standford-Binet Intelligence test
G. Stanley Hall
Started first psychology lab in the U.S.; first American psychology journal; founded the APA (American Psychological Journal)
Edward Titchener
Structuralism; introspection
Mary Whiton-Calkins
Student of William James; developed an important technique for studying memory; denied a PhD from Harvard b/c she was a woman; first female president of the APA (American Psychological Association)
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Studied "forgetting"; techniques used to reduce forgetting; nonsense syllables; the forgetting curve
Joseph Wolpe
Systematic desensitization used in therapy
John Garcia
Taste aversions
Robert Sternberg
Tri-archic theory of Intelligence; (practical, analytical, creative)
Sigmund Freud
Unconscious; Psychoanalysis; Dream theory (manifest, latent); Theory of Personality (Id, Ego, Superego); Stages of Psychosexual Development (oral, anal, phallic, latent, genital)
David Wechsler
Wechsler intelligence test
Carl Wernicke
Wernicke's Area - in the left temporal lobe - responsible for language comprehension
Elizabeth Loftus
memory unreliable; misinformation effect; suggestion, for ex. the way a question is worded, can alter a person's memory
Alfred Kinsey
research increased public and scientific understanding of sexuality and behavior