Psychology Vocab for the Year- People

Erik Erikson

A developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst, best known for formulating the Psychosocial Stages of Development which outlined personality development from birth to old age. Each of the eight stages is marked by a conflict which must be successfully resolved in order to attain a favorable outcome, which he called "virtues." He also coined the term Identity Crisis which describes when a person loses their sense of self. (1st stage: Trust vs. Mistrust, 2nd stage: autonomy vs. shame, 3rd stage: initiative vs, guilt, 4th stage: industry vs. inferiority, 5th stage: refers to adolescence. Identity vs. role confusion, 6th stage: young adulthood. Intimacy vs. isolation, 7th stage: midlife crisis. Generativity vs. Stagnation, 8th stage: Integrity vs. despair)

Robert Yerkes

A pioneer in the study both of human and primate intelligence and of the social behavior of gorillas and chimpanzees. Along with John D. Dodson, He developed the Yerkes-Dodson law relating arousal to performance (The law dictates that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point. When levels of arousal become too high, performance decreases). He also advocated eugenics. Under his urging, the APA began several programs devoted to the war effort in World War I. As chairman of the Committee on the Psychological Examination of Recruits, he developed the Army's Alpha and Beta Intelligence Tests, the first nonverbal group tests, which were given to over 1 million United States soldiers during the war. The test ultimately concluded that recent immigrants (especially those from Southern and Eastern Europe) scored considerably lower than older waves of immigration (from Northern Europe), and was used as one of the eugenic motivations for harsh immigration restriction.

Daniel Goleman

A psychologist and behavioral science journalist, later popularized the term Emotional Intelligence and developed related concepts in his influential book, Emotional Intelligence (1995). According to him, emotional intelligence is the largest single predictor of success in the workplace. The four major skills that make up emotional intelligence are: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management.

William James

A psychologist and philosopher, and was recognized for writing the Principles of Psychology, which is considered to be a monumental work in the history of psychology. He helped form the idea of functionalism, a school of psychology that focused on how mental and behavioral processes function- how they enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish. He developed the James-Lange Theory of Emotion, the theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli (key: one causes the other). His most famous example is that when we see a bear, we do not run because we are afraid. According to James, we see a bear and then we run, and that is why we are afraid. His explanation is that when exposed to a stimulus such as a bear, our nervous system reacts with an increased heart rate, a rush of adrenaline, or muscle tension, and our perception of those changes is what is referred to as emotion.

Hans Eysenck

A psychologist who developed personality theories that were based on genetics and temperament. He theorized that personality traits develop from innate genetic influences that are biological and inherited. Although he recognized the importance of the environment on behavior he believed that personality traits developed from mostly biological origins. He originally identified two areas of temperament: neuroticism and extroversion/introversion. Neuroticism is a temperament level that ranges from calm to nervous. Eysenck theorized that this aspect of personality was influenced by the sympathetic nervous system which is responsible for the 'fight or flight' response. People who were high in neuroticism levels have issues with anxiety and panic attacks. The extroversion and introversion area of temperament is a range between shyness and an outgoing nature.

Lawrence Kohlberg

According to the American psychologist, people develop through three levels of moral reasoning as needed by situations they encounter. 1. Pre-conventional Morality: development involves making decisions of morality based on the prospect of punishment - in other words, by trying to avoid getting punished. 2. Conventional Morality: a person perceives an absolute right and wrong and believes the law is the judge of morality. 3. Post Conventional Morality: they make moral choices based on social contracts, or unspoken agreements to behave a certain way, and when they can generalize ethical principals beyond their own interests. This is a more abstract type of reasoning and not one based on simple ideas such as trying to avoid punishment.

Phineas Gage

An American railroad worker who became famous in scientific fields due to an accident which blew a metal rod through his head destroying most of his left frontal lobe. His personality reportedly changed entirely after his accident (he became aggressive, rude, profane, and antisocial). His accident contributed understanding to how different brain regions work, the effects of brain damage on a person, and the frontal lobe's role in personality.

Solomon Asch

An American scientist who is known for His research in social psychology. His primary areas of research included impression formation, prestige and conformity and the nature of group pressure. He is most well known for his conformity experiments, in which he demonstrated the influence of group pressure on opinions. His conformity experiment was conducted using 123 male participants who were told that they would be part of an experiment in visual judgment. Each participant was put into a group with 5 to 7 confederates (people who knew the true aims of the experiment, but were introduced as participants to the naive "real" participant). The participants were shown a card with a line on it, followed by another card with 3 lines on it labeled a, b, and c. The participants were then asked to say which line matched the line on the first card in length. Each line question was called a "trial". The "real" participant answered last . For the first two trials, the subject would feel at ease in the experiment, as he and the other "participants" gave the obvious, correct answer. However, after the fourth trial, all of the confederates respond with the clearly wrong answer at certain points such that in 12 of the 18 trials they all said the wrong answer. The 12 trials in which the confederates answered incorrectly were considered the "critical trials". The participant could thus either ignore the majority and go with his own senses or he could go along with the majority and ignore the clearly obvious fact. The aim was to see whether the real participant would change his answer and respond the same way as the confederates or stick with the clearly obvious answer. He found that a considerable percentage followed the majority. He suggested that this procedure created a doubt in the participants' mind about the seemingly obvious answer.

Stanley Milgram

An American social psychologist, best known for his controversial experiment on obedience. He was influenced by the events of the Holocaust, specifically the trial of Adolf Eichmann, in developing this experiment. In this experiment, 26 out of 40 participants administered the full range of shocks up to 450 volts, the highest obedience rate Milgram found in his whole series. Thus, according to Milgram, the subject shifts responsibility to another person and does not blame himself for what happens. This resembles real-life incidents in which people see themselves as merely cogs in a machine, just "doing their job", allowing them to avoid responsibility for the consequences of their actions. The shocks themselves were fake; the participant who took the place as the "learner" in the experiment was in fact a paid actor who would simulate the effects of the shock depending on the voltage. Milgram became notorious for this tactic, and his experiment was soon classed as highly unethical as it caused stress to the participants in the study.

Elizabeth Loftus

An expert on Human Memory, and is well-known for her work on the Misinformation Effect and False Memories. The Misinformation Effect refers to how people's memories may be changed by what they are told. She demonstrated this in a study where subjects were shown footage of an automobile accident, and were later asked to estimate the speed of the collision. She found that the given estimates varied in proportion to the intensity of the verb used to describe the accident. Participants gave a higher speed estimate when they were asked at what speed the cars were going when they "smashed" into each other, rather than when they were asked at what speed the cars were going when they "hit" each other. The Misinformation Effect may cause False Memories. According to the misinformation effect, when we witness an event and then get some incorrect information about that event, we incorporate that incorrect information (misinformation) into our memory of the event.

Lewis Terman

Attempted to use Binet's original intelligence test but found that French school children age norms worked poorly with American school children, so he revised it, now known as the Stanford-Binet test (Because terman attended Stanford university). Unlike Binet and Theodore Simon, whose goal was to identify less able school children in order to aid them with the needed care required, Terman proposed using IQ tests to classify children and put them on the appropriate job-track. He believed IQ was inherited and was the strongest predictor of one's ultimate success in life.

Francis Galton

Believed intelligence comes from heredity not from the environment. He advocated eugenics (the control of reproduction to improve heredity). HE made the first attempt creating an objective test that measured intelligence and mental ability.

Benjamin Whorf

Came up with linguistic determinism: language determines the way we think.

David McClelland

He studied workplace motivation extensively and theorized that workers as well as their superiors have needs that influence their performance at work. One of these needs is Achievement Motivation - which can be defined as an individual's need to meet realistic goals, receive feedback and experience a sense of accomplishment.

Aaron Beck

Developed cognitive therapy, he suggested that our beliefs and perceptions influence our emotional responses to the world around us. According to cognitive therapy, our negative thought patterns (not unconscious conflicts or early life traumas as psychoanalysis suggests) cause depression, anxiety and some other mental disorders. Cognitive Therapy helps patients by making them aware of these beliefs, how they produce so many problems, and then working to change these dysfunctional beliefs.

Hermann Rorschach

Developed the Rorschach Inkblot test, a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning. It has been employed to detect underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly.

Martin Seligman

Developed the theory of learned helplessness. Seligman and colleagues discovered that the conditioning of dogs led to outcomes that were opposite to the predictions of B.F. Skinner's behaviorism, then a leading psychological theory.[5] Seligman's learned helplessness experiments have been criticized for their deliberate mistreatment of animals, specifically for inflicting electrical shocks upon dogs at random intervals, until the dogs reached a helpless state in which they did not escape the shocks even when given the opportunity to do so. Seligman developed the theory further, finding learned helplessness to be a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to act or behave helplessly in a particular situation — usually after experiencing some inability to avoid an adverse situation — even when it actually has the power to change its unpleasant or even harmful circumstance.

Gibson & Walk

Developed the visual cliff test to use with human infants and animals. A visual cliff involves an apparent, but not actual drop from one surface to another. This tool was originally developed to determine if infants had developed depth perception. A visual cliff is created by connecting a transparent glass surface to an opaque patterned surface. Later research has demonstrated that children as young as three-months are able to perceive the visual cliff. The issue is that children of this age do not yet fully realize that the consequence of going over this visual cliff is potentially falling. This realization only comes later when the child begins to crawl and gains real experience with taking tumbles.

Carol Gilligan

Developmental psychologist that challenged the universality of Kohlberg's moral developmental theory. Her complaint was against the male centered personality psychology of Freud and Erickson, and the male centered developmental psychology of Kohlberg. Her complaint is that it is not good psychology if it leaves out half of the human race. She then developed a theory of moral development for women.

Albert Ellis

Established Rational Emotive Therapy.

Socrates

He and Plato concluded mind is separate from body and continues after the body and that there is a presence of inborn knowledge.

Aristotle

He believed that knowledge grows from experiences stored in our memories, and agreed with Locke that the mind is a blank slate at birth.

Walter B. Cannon

He coined the term fight or flight response, and he developed the concept of homeostasis from the earlier idea of Claude Bernard. He also developed the Cannon-Bard theory, the theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers 1) physiological responses and 2) the subjective experience of emotion (key: at the same time, one does not cause the other)

Noam Chomsky

He contributed greatly to Cognitive psychology through language research. He challenged the Behaviorist view that language, like any other behavior, was learned through exposure to language in the environment. He theorized that all humans share an innate capability for language unlike any other species of animal and that our capacity for language was the same no matter what culture or environment we are exposed to. Evidence for this theory can be seen in a household with a baby and a kitten. Although both are exposed to human language from the time they are born, only the human child eventually develops the ability to speak. Chomsky coined this innate capacity for speech in humans the Language Acquisition Device (LAD).

Henry Murray

He developed a theory of personality that was organized in terms of motives, presses, and needs. Theories of personality based upon needs and motives suggest that our personalities are a reflection of behaviors controlled by needs. While some needs are temporary and changing, other needs are more deeply seated in our nature.According to Murray, these psychogenic needs function mostly on the unconscious level, but play a major role in our personality. (He identified two types, Primary needs: Biological demands and Secondary needs: psychological ex. nurturing.)

Charles Spearman

He developed factor analysis and believed their is a general intelligence. Formally stated, "g" is a statistical term that refers to the general intelligence factor that underlies all intelligent activity. He also noted that those who score high on one factor such as verbal intelligence, typically score higher than average on other factors as well.

Robert Sternberg

He developed the Triarchic Theory which attempts to explain how intelligence works in humans. He believed that intelligence was more complex than one all-encompassing general type of intelligence, which was the idea that dominated most of the previous intelligence theories. He proposed that intelligence was comprised of how well a person adapted to their changing environments and used their knowledge to shape the world around them. This was a more cognitive approach to intelligence theory than a behavioristic viewpoint. The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence gets its name from the three factors that he believed constructed a "successful intelligence." The three types if intelligence are; 1. Analytical Intelligence- problem solving 2. Creative Intelligence- demonstrated in reacting adaptively to novel situations and generating novel ideas 3. Practical Intelligence-required by every day tasks

Stanley Schachter

He developed the Two-Factor Theory of Emotion, which states that to experience emotion one must 1) be physically arouse and 2) cognitively label the arousal. For example, imagine playing a physically demanding game like basketball. As soon as you are done with the game (and you are hot, your heart is racing, etc., which is the state of arousal) someone gives you some bad news. In response, you get angry (label the emotion as anger), and feel that anger. According to him, you are probably going to be more angry in the aroused state than if you got the news in a less aroused state.

Raymond Cattell

He developed the concept of Source Traits are the building blocks or sources of human personality. He believed there are 16 of these source traits. For example, a person may be reserved or outgoing, serious or happy-go-lucky, and submissive or dominant. All these traits form part of an individual's personality. When you put the source traits together, the make up the Surface Traits, which are the traits we see and think of as personality.

Alfred Binet

He developed the first Intelligence Test in collaboration with Theodore Simon, known as the Binet-Simon Scale (which later became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test). The test was developed in order to identify children with learning disabilities so that they might be placed in a special class.

David Weschler

He developed the first Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, which is a group of tests that are designed for testing the intelligence quotient (IQ) of school age children.

William Sheldon

He devised the term somatotype (a classification of body type). He believed that all humans fit within 3 body types (mesomorph, ectomorph, and endomorph) to a certain degree. He defined particular somatotypes as a series of three numbers; each a rating of 1 through 7. An example of one somatotype is a 1-6-3, i.e. medium build, medium height, and underweight. Ectomorphic: characterized as linear, thin, fragile, lightly muscled, flat chested and delicate; described as cerebrotonic inclined to desire isolation, solitude and concealment; and being tense, anxious, restrained in posture and movement, introverted and secretive. Mesomorphic: characterized as hard, rugged, rectangular, athletically built with well developed muscles, thick skin and good posture; described as somatotonic inclined towards physical adventure and risk taking; and being vigorous, courageous, direct and dominant. Endomorphic: characterized as round and soft with under-developed muscles and having difficulty losing weight; described as viscerotonic enjoying food, people and affection; having slow reactions; and being disposed to complacency.

Edward Bradford Titchener

He established the school of structuralism and coined the word empathy (which is the ability to put oneself in another's shoes). Structuralism proposed that by defining, categorizing, and organizing aspects of the mind then mental processes could be understood. There was no interest in the unconscious or the subconscious mental processes - only the conscious mind was considered to be a viable subject of study. Introspection was used to explore the elemental structure of the human mind. Research participants were trained in identifying mental processes and presented with stimuli. They then used introspection to describe the sequence of mental processes. He theorized there were three facets that comprised conscious experiences: images, sensations, and feelings.

John B Watson

He is called the Father of Behaviorism, which emphasizes objective and observable data such as people's behavior and reactions, as opposed to internal process that cannot be observed like mental states, or thought processes. His most famous and controversial experiment is known as the Little Albert Experiment. Little Albert was an 11-month boy who was trained to fear a white rat by pairing it with a loud sound. In time, the child began to cry and show signs of distress upon seeing the white rat even without the accompanying sound. This fear was generalized to other furry objects like a rabbit, a dog, and a Santa Claus mask.

Tolman

He founded what is now a branch of psychology known as purposive behaviorism (it combines the objective study of behavior while also considering the purpose or goal of behavior). He also founded the concept known as latent learning. He is best known for his studies of learning in rats using mazes. In his studies of learning in rats, he sought to demonstrate that animals could learn facts about the world that they could subsequently use in a flexible manner, rather than simply learning automatic responses that were triggered off by environmental stimuli. He drew on Gestalt psychology to argue that animals could learn the connections between stimuli and did not need any explicit biologically significant event to make learning occur. This is known as latent learning. He introduced the concept of a cognitive map, a type of mental representation which serves an individual to acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday or metaphorical spatial environment. In his trials he observed that all of the rats in the place-learning maze learned to run the correct path within eight trials and that none of the response-learning rats learned that quickly, and some did not even learn it at all after seventy-two trials.

Harry Stack Sullivan

He insisted that personality is shaped almost entirely by the relationships we have with other people. Sullivan's principal contribution to personality theory was his conception of developmental stages.

John Locke

He introduced the concept of tabula rasa which is the belief that the mind is a 'blank slate' at birth and we are formed and develop from our own experiences with the environment. He was a devout believer in the 'nature' side of the nature versus nurture debate. This was one of the earliest ideas that is used for the basis of behaviorism. Locke believed that the experience that occurred in the early childhood years was the most important and influential on a person. He stressed the importance of rewards and punishments in social learning. Locke also introduced the concept of the social contract theory (an unwritten and implicit agreement between people in a group. It can be between members of a group or between citizens and leaders. It is a political and philosophical theory that states that in order to receive the benefits of being in a society we must give up some natural behaviors, desires, and freedoms). He was also a founder of empiricism, the view that knowledge comes from experience via the senses and flourishes through observation and experiment.

Robert Zajonc

He is a social psychologist who is known for his decades of work on a wide range of social and cognitive processes. He demonstrated the mere-exposure effect & social facilitation. He developed the Confluence Model , which provided a mathematical model of the effect of birth order and family size on IQ scores. This theory suggests that children are born into intellectual environments that affect intelligence—first born children are born into adults-only families, all others are born into mixed adult/child families. As families increase in size, the overall IQ of the family drops; children from larger families do have slightly lower IQs. The last child in the family is denied the opportunity to tutor younger children, and there is a slight "extra" detriment for being the youngest child in a family. He did a study to try and evaluate how couples who have been together for 25 years (i.e. married couples) begin to develop similar facial features, which seemed to be true. The explanation the scientists agreed on was empathy. Most married couples who have been together for 25 years or longer can identity with the other persons feelings. A lot of human emotions and feelings are expressed through the face, and when two people make similar facial expressions for 25 years it could result in similar wrinkle patterns. He also studied emotion, he argued that our emotion reactions can be quicker than our interpretations of the situation (ex. we jump at the sound of rustling leaves near by before our cortex decides where the sound is coming from and what made it.)

William Dement

He is a well known sleep researcher who founded the American Sleep Disorders Association. He used the EEG to monitor individual sleep cycles throughout the night which led to his discovery of the 5 sleep stages. He also developed the Multiple Latency Sleep Test which is a test used to measure daytime sleepiness.

Albert Bandura

He is best known for his Social Learning Theory, which states learning happens by observing others and modeling their behaviors. According to Social Learning Theory, If we see that other people get desirable outcomes by behaving in a certain manner, then we are more likely to behave in a similar way. According to Bandura, Social Learning occurs from a combination of environmental and psychological factors.

Leon Festinger

He is best known for his theory of cognitive dissonance. According to this theory, people experience tension or discomfort when their beliefs do not match their behaviors. People tend to seek consistency in their beliefs and perceptions. When there is a discrepancy between beliefs or behaviors, something must change in order to eliminate or reduce the dissonance. Festinger is also know for his social comparison theory, which describes the process through which people come to know themselves by evaluating their own attitudes, abilities and beliefs in comparison with others.

Ivan Pavlov

He is best known for his work describing the psychological phenomenon of Classical Conditioning. From his work studying digestion in dogs, he observed that the dogs would salivate at the mere sight of food. Pavlov originally discovered the idea of conditioning by accident - he noticed that dogs began to salivate even before they were presented with food. He later tested the concept using what became his most famous experiment. In that experiment he conditioning dogs to salivate in response to the sound of a bell. He did this by ringing a bell as he presented food, at which the dogs would respond by salivating. After several trials of the bell and food presented together, Pavlov rang the bell alone without presenting food and the dogs gave the usual salivary response. Salivation in response to the ringing of the bell is known as a "conditioned response". Pavlov's work lay the foundation for Behaviorism, which dominated the field of psychology from the 19th century until the first half of the 20th century.

David Rosenhan

He is best known for the Rosenhan experiment, a study challenging the validity of psychiatry diagnoses. The experiment arranged for eight individuals with no history of psychopathology to attempt admission into twelve psychiatric hospitals. All individuals were admitted with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Psychiatrists then attempted to treat the individuals using psychiatric medication.

Wilhelm Wundt

He is known as the "Founder of Modern Psychology" and the "Father of Experimental Psychology". He established the first laboratory in the world that was dedicated to Experimental Psychology, particularly investigations on the senses and perceptions. Studying structuralism, he used the method of Introspection to investigate psychological phenomena. This involved the subject's observation and reporting of his own inner thoughts and sensations, and was very difficult to master.

Herman von Helmholtz

He is known for his mathematics of the eye, theories of vision, ideas on the visual perception of space, color vision research, and on the sensation of tone, perception of sound, and empiricism.

Edward Thorndike

He is known for his work on Learning Theory. He studied how cats learned to escape from a puzzle box, which led him to conclude that the cats solved this problem through a gradual process of learning through trial and error, rather than by using insight. He proved this by plotting how long it took for the animals to escape, and showing that the animal escaped quicker with each trial, thereby producing a gradual learning curve. His work with animals led him to formulate the Law of Effect, which states that when a behavior is followed by a desirable consequence, it becomes associated with that situation so that the behavior becomes more likely to be performed when the same situation is encountered.

Phillip Zimbardo

He is known for leading the Stanford Prison Study, a controversial experiment which investigated the psychological effects of being a prisoner or prison guard. In the experiment, college students were randomly assigned to become prisoners or guards. During the course of the experiment, both the prisoners and guards rapidly internalized their roles (they started to become their roles), with the guards becoming sadistic, and the prisoners becoming passive and depressed. Originally designed as a two-week experiment, the duration was cut short after 6 days due to the emotional trauma experienced by the participants. The study demonstrated what he calls the Lucifer Effect - how good people can turn evil in response to the situation they are in, and not as a result of their real personalities.

Jean Piaget

He is most famous for his theories on cognitive development in children,. Early in his career he noticed that children think differently from adults. He theorized that children filter knowledge from their experiences and environment into groups called schemas which are cognitive frameworks that help us organize information. Piaget developed stages of cognitive development that children progress through at certain ages. There are four stages: 1. Sensorimotor phase (lasts from birth to 2 years of age and is when the baby's knowledge is limited to perceptions from their basic senses and motor activities) 2. Preoperational phase (lasts from age 2 to age 6. This phase is characterized by the learning of language, an absence of logical thought, and an inability to look at things from another person's perspective) 3. Concrete Operational phase (starts around age 7 and lasts until age 11. This is when children begin to use logic in their thinking but they still have difficulty with abstract ideas) 4. Formal Operational phase (begins at age 12 and lasts until adulthood. This is when children develop the ability to think about abstract concepts)

John Garcia

He is most known for his research on taste aversion learning. He began to study the reaction of the brain to ionizing radiation in a series of experiments on laboratory animals, mainly rats. He noticed that rats avoided drinking water from plastic bottles when in radiation chambers. He suspected that the rats associated the "plastic tasting" water with the sickness that radiation triggers. During the experiments rats were given one taste, sight, sound as a neutral stimulus. Later the rats would be exposed to radiation or drugs (the unconditioned stimulus), which would make the rats sick. Through these experiments, he discovered that if a rat became nauseated after presented with a new taste, even if the illness occurred several hours later, the rat would avoid that taste. This contradicted the belief that, for conditioning to occur, the unconditioned response (in this case, sickness) must immediately follow the conditioned stimulus-to-be (the taste). Secondly, Garcia discovered that the rats developed aversions to tastes, but not to sights or sounds, disproving the previously held theory that any perceivable stimulus (light, sound, taste, etc.) could become a conditioned stimulus for any unconditioned stimulus.[citation needed. His discovery, conditioned taste aversion, is considered a survival mechanism because it allows an organism to recognize foods that have previously been determined to be poisonous, hopefully allowing said organism to avoid sickness.

Wolpe

He is one of the most influential figures in Behavior Therapy. He perfected the idea of systematic desensitization, when the client is exposed to the anxiety-producing stimulus at a low level, and once no anxiety is present a stronger version of the anxiety-producing stimulus is given. This continues until the individual client no longer feels any anxiety towards the stimulus. There are three main steps in using systematic desensitization. The first step is to teach the client relaxation techniques.

Clark Hull

He sought to explain learning and motivation by scientific laws of behavior. Hull is known for his debates with Edward C. Tolman. He is also known for his work in drive theory.

Rene Descartes

He suggested that the body works like a machine, that it has material properties. The mind (or soul), on the other hand, was described as a nonmaterial and does not follow the laws of nature. Descartes argued that the mind interacts with the body at the pineal gland. This form of dualism or duality proposes that the mind controls the body, but that the body can also influence the otherwise rational mind, such as when people act out of passion. Most of the previous accounts of the relationship between mind and body had been uni-directional. (key: the mind and body are distinct, two separate entities).

Judith Langlois

Her research interests are social development and social information processing; infant development; the effects of individual characteristics (physical appearance, gender, age) on the differential socialization of males and females and on the development of social behavior; the origin of social stereotypes; the development of social competence.

Robert Rosenthal

His interests include self-fulfilling prophecies, which he explored in a well-known study of the Pygmalion Effect: the effect of teachers' expectations on students. His study showed that, if teachers were led to expect enhanced performance from children, then the children's performance was enhanced. This study supported the hypothesis that reality can be positively or negatively influenced by the expectations of others, called the observer-expectancy effect. He argued that biased expectancies could affect reality and create self-fulfilling prophecies

Kurt Lewin

Influenced by Gestalt psychology, Lewin developed a theory that emphasized the importance of individual personalities, interpersonal conflict and situational variables. Lewin's Field Theory proposed that behavior is the result of the individual and the environment. This theory had a major impact on social psychology, supporting the notion that our individual traits and the environment interact to cause behavior.

B.F. Skinner

Is best known for developing the theory of Operant Conditioning, which uses reinforces or consequences to change behavior. According to this theory, the rate at which a certain behavior occurs is determined not by what precedes it, but by the consequence that follows it. Studied using the Skinner Box.

Harry Harlow

Is known for his experiments on maternal separation and social isolation of rhesus monkeys. His work emphasized the importance of care-giving and companionship as vital to normal social and cognitive development. In his surrogate mother experiment, Harlow demonstrated the importance of contact comfort. He found that the baby monkeys preferred to cling to the terry cloth surrogate even when food was provided by the wire surrogate. In his social isolation experiments, he again separated baby rhesus monkeys from their mothers and subjected them to partial or total isolation of varying duration. He found that those who experienced partial isolation exhibited abnormal behaviors such as blank staring, going in circles, and self mutilation. Those who experienced total isolation exhibited severe psychological disturbance, and experienced emotional shock upon being released from isolation.

Konrad Lorenz

Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. Working with geese, he investigated the principle of imprinting, the process by which some nidifugous birds (i.e. birds that leave their nest early), bond with the first moving object that they see within the first hours of hatching. Although Lorenz did not discover the topic, he became widely known for his descriptions of imprinting as an instinctive emotional bond.

Gordon Allport

One of the founders of Personality Psychology. He is known for coming up with the Trait Theory of Personality, which categorizes traits or dispositions into three levels. A Cardinal Trait is a trait that defines and dominates one's personality and behavior. Central Traits refer to general characteristics that are present to some degree in almost everyone. Secondary Traits are characteristics that surface only in certain situations.

Anna Freud

One of the founders of psychoanalytic child psychology. She was influenced by her father, Sigmund Freud, but her work focused more on the importance of the Ego and its role in striving to strike a balance between the Id's desire for pleasure, and the Superego's moralistic demands. She introduced the concept of Developmental Lines, which emphasize the nature of child development as a continuous and a cumulative process, and the idea that it is possible to move forward (progress) or backwards (regress) along the continuum.

Kenneth Clark

Racism and segregation were the focus of his psychological work. He was dedicated to using social science to try to explain the effects of racism and segregation. Clark was extremely dedicated to community work, especially if it concerned the youth. He helped found and sponsor a number of youth community projects and programs. One of these projects was the Northside Center for Child Development. This program was aimed to work with poverty stricken children. Another program was the Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU). He was really concerned with the effects that racism was having on the self-image of the black youth. These centers served as testing grounds and a place where the youth could receive some type of therapy. One experiment they conducted involved the selection of two dolls, one black and one white. When children were told to "Give me to doll that looks bad" the black children choose the black doll (Notable, 1998). This was evidence that racial segregation was having a negative effect on the self-image of black children.

Mary Cover-Jones

She has become known as "the mother of behavior therapy" because of her early work on the unconditioning of the fear reaction in infants.Her study of the three-year-old named Peter, in which she tested a number of procedures to remove his fear of a white rabbit, has probably been cited more extensively than any other aspect of her work (became known as the Little Peter study). She developed a technique known as desensitization, used to cure phobias. A patient may be desensitized through the repeated introduction of a series of stimuli that approximate the phobia.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

She hypothesized the 5 stages of greif (lists the five emotional stages that a person potentially goes through when facing impending death or other catastrophic or life-changing experience). The hypothesis holds that these 5 stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, will be experienced by a person facing death or other life-altering situation, but that that each individual will not necessarily experience all five stages, or will experience them in the same order.

Karen Horney

She is known for developing Feminine Psychology. Her work has influenced how psychology views gender differences. She disagreed with Sigmund Freud's view of women, and countered his idea of penis envy, which refers to a girl's reaction upon realizing that she is different from boys, with her own idea of womb envy. She believed both men and women have a need to feel productive. Women are able to satisfy this need in two ways: by being a productive member of society through work, and interiorly by bearing children and giving birth. On the other hand, men can only accomplish this need through external ways, and so they compensate for their inability to bear children by focusing on achievements in their career. Her work on feminine psychology was useful in promoting equality between the genders.

Mary Ainsworth

She is known for her work in early emotional attachment with the Strange Situation design, as well as her work in the development of attachment theory. The Strange Situation Procedure is divided into eight episodes, lasting for three minutes each. In the first episode, the infant and his or her caregiver enter into a pleasant laboratory setting, with many toys. After one minute, a person unknown to the infant enters the room and slowly tries to make acquaintance. The caregiver leaves the child with the stranger for three minutes; and then returns. The caregiver departs for a second time, leaving the child alone for three minutes; it is then the stranger who enters, and offers to comfort the infant. Finally, the caregiver returns, and is instructed to pick up the child. As the episodes increase the stress of the infant by increments, the observer can watch the infant's movement between behavioural systems: the interplay of exploration and attachment behaviour, in the presence and in the absence of the parent. Anxious-avoidant insecure attachment: style will avoid or ignore the caregiver - showing little emotion when the caregiver departs or returns. The child will not explore very much regardless of who is there. Secure attachment: to its mother will explore freely while the caregiver is present, using her as a 'safe base' from which to explore. The child will engage with the stranger when the caregiver is present, and will be visibly upset when the caregiver departs but happy to see the caregiver on his or her return. Anxious-Ambivalent/Resistant: showed distress even before separation, and were clingy and difficult to comfort on the caregiver's return.

Carl Wernicke

Shortly after Paul Broca published his findings on language deficits caused by damage to what is now referred to as Broca's area, Wernicke began pursuing his own research into the effects of brain disease on speech and language. Wernicke noticed that not all language deficits were the result of damage to Broca's area. Rather he found that damage to the left posterior, superior temporal gyrus resulted in deficits in language comprehension. This region is now referred to as Wernicke's area, and the associated syndrome is known as receptive aphasia, for his discovery.

Langer & Rodin

Studied the effects of choice and enhanced personal responsibility for the aged. This study was on the effects of allowing personal decision making among nursing home residents (in the care of an institution of). "The ability to sustain a sense of personal control in old age may be greatly influenced by societal factors, and this in turn may affect one's physical well being" "more successful aging -- occurs when a individual feels a sense of usefulness and purpose". A feeling of helplessness may contribute to psychological withdrawal, disease, and death.

Little Albert

The "Little Albert" experiment was a famous psychology experiment conducted by behaviorist John B. Watson. Previously, Ivan Pavlov had conducted experiments demonstrating the conditioning process in dogs. Watson was interested in taking Pavlov's research further to show that emotional reactions could be classically conditioned in people. .The participant in the experiment was a child that Watson and Rayner called "Albert B.", but is known popularly today as Little Albert. Around the age of nine months, Watson and Rayner exposed the child to a series of stimuli including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks and burning newspapers and observed the boy's reactions. The boy initially showed no fear of any of the objects he was shown. The next time Albert was exposed the rat, Watson made a loud noise by hitting a metal pipe with a hammer. Naturally, the child began to cry after hearing the loud noise. After repeatedly pairing the white rat with the loud noise, Albert began to cry simply after seeing the rat. Neutral Stimulus: The white rat •Unconditioned Stimulus: The loud noise •Unconditioned Response: Fear •Conditioned Stimulus: The white rat •Conditioned Response: Fear

Abraham Maslow

The Father of Humanistic Psychology, a school of thought that focused on the potential of the individual and his need for growth and self-actualization. It is based on the fundamental belief that people are innately good, and that deviating from this natural tendency results in social and psychological problems. Also developed the Hierarchy of Needs, he suggested that needs are not all equally important, but exist in a hierarchy (shaped like a pyramid), with the most important, basic needs at the bottom. (Bottom: things necessary for daily survival Top: self actualization, which is the most wonderful thing a person can achieve, but is not necessary to sustain daily life.)

Darley & Latane

The bystander effect was first demonstrated in the laboratory by these two. These researchers launched a series of experiments that resulted in one of the strongest and most replicable effects in social psychology.[citation needed] In a typical experiment, the participant is either alone or among a group of other participants or confederates. An emergency situation is staged and researchers measure how long it takes the participants to intervene, if they intervene.

Gazzaniga and Sperry

The first to study split brains in humans, found that several patients who had undergone a complete calloscotomy suffered from split-brain syndrome. In patients with split-brain syndrome the right hemisphere, which controls the left hand and foot, acts independently of the left hemisphere and the person's ability to make rational decisions. This can give rise to a kind of split personality, in which the left hemisphere give orders that reflect the person's rational goals, whereas the right hemisphere issues conflicting demands that reveal hidden desires.

Alfred Adler

The founder of Individual Psychology, which emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual and the role of societal factors in shaping personality. He also developed the concept of the Inferiority Complex. Inferiority complex is a term used to describe people who compensate for feelings of inferiority (feeling like they're less than other people, not as good as others, worthless, etc.) by acting ways that make them appear superior. He is also known for emphasizing the importance of birth order in personality development.

Anna O.

The pseudonym of a patient of Josef Breuer, who published her case study in his book Studies on Hysteria, written in collaboration with Sigmund Freud. Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim. She was treated by Breuer for severe cough, paralysis of the extremities on the right side of her body, and disturbances of vision, hearing, and speech, as well as hallucination and loss of consciousness. She was diagnosed with hysteria. Her treatment marked the beginning of psychoanalysis.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

The psychologist commonly referred to as the Father of Memory. He was the first person to use nonsense syllables to determine how association with words can affect how well a person memorizes a list of items. Ebbinghaus discovered that repeating the learning procedure (studying the list of nonsense syllables) each day enabled him to remember more and more of the list the next morning. He called this phenomenon the learning curve. Once he had learned the entire list, Ebbinghaus decided to see how many days it took him to forget the entire list if he did not study. He discovered that he forgot syllables in the middle of the list more quickly than the first or most recent syllables. This he called the forgetting curve. This phenomenon of remembering the first items on his list became known as the primacy effect: things that are studied for longer periods of time stick around longer. The phenomenon of remembering the most recent items on his list became known as the recency effect: things that were freshest in his memory.

Holmes & Rahe

They examined the medical records of over 5,000 medical patients as a way to determine whether stressful events might cause illnesses. Patients were asked to tally a list of 43 life events based on a relative score. A positive correlation of 0.118 was found between their life events and their illnesses. Their results were published as the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), known more commonly as the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale. Subsequent validation has supported the links between stress and illness.

Masters & Johnson

They pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual disorders and dysfunctions. They recorded some of the first laboratory data on the anatomy and physiology of human sexual response based on direct observation of 382 women and 312 men in what they conservatively estimated to be "10,000 complete cycles of sexual response." Their findings, particularly on the nature of female sexual arousal and orgasm (showing that the physiology of orgasmic response was identical whether stimulation was clitoral or vaginal, and proving that some women were capable of being multiorgasmic), dispelled many long-standing misconceptions. As well as recording some of the first physiological data from the human body and sex organs during sexual excitation, they also framed their findings and conclusions in language that espoused sex as a healthy and natural activity that could be enjoyed as a source of pleasure and intimacy.

Rosenthal & Jacobson

They tested children at Oak School with an IQ test, the Tests of General Ability (TOGA) at the beginning of the school year. This test was used because teachers were likely to be unfamiliar with it, and because it is primarily non-verbal, and not dependent on skills learned in school (i.e., reading and writing). In order to create an expectancy, the teachers were informed that the test was the "Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition," which served as a measure of academic "blooming." Therefore, teachers were led to believe that certain students were entering a year of high achievement, and other students were not. In reality, the test had no such predictive validity. Eighteen teachers at the school were informed of the students in their classes who had obtained scores in the top 20% of this test. These students were ready to realize their potential, according to their test scores. What the teachers didn't know is that students were placed on these lists completely at random. There was no difference between these students and other students whose names were not on the lists. At the end of the school year, all students were once again tested with the same test (the TOGA). In this way, the change in IQ could be estimated. Results demonstrate a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy. Students believed to be on the verge of great academic success performed in accordance with these expectations; students not labeled this way did not. Later research has supported Rosenthal's original conclusion, that teacher expectations can have a substantial effect on students' scholastic performance

Ekman & Friesen

Through a series of studies, Ekman found a high agreement across members of diverse Western and Eastern literate cultures on selecting emotional labels that fit facial expressions. Expressions he found to be universal included those indicating anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Findings on contempt are less clear, though there is at least some preliminary evidence that this emotion and its expression are universally recognized. Ekman and Friesen then demonstrated that certain emotions were exhibited with very specific display rules, culture-specific prescriptions about who can show which emotions to whom and when. These display rules could explain how cultural differences may conceal the universal effect of expression.

Lev Vygotsky

Vygotsky's main work was in developmental psychology, and he proposed a theory of the development of higher cognitive functions in children that saw reasoning as emerging through practical activity in a social environment. Developed the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help. Vygotsky stated that a child follows an adult's example and gradually develops the ability to do certain tasks without help. Vygotsky and some other educators believe that the role of education is to give children experiences that are within their zones of proximal development, thereby encouraging and advancing their individual learning.

Ernst Weber

Weber's Law is related to the Just Noticeable Difference (also known as the difference threshold), which is the minimum difference in stimulation that a person can detect 50 percent of the time. But Ernst Weber noted that for people to really perceive a difference, the stimuli must differ by a constant "proportion" not a constant "amount". For example, if you are buying a new computer that costs $1,000 and you want to add more memory that increases the and the price $200 (a 20% increase), you might consider this too much additional money to spend. However, if you were buying a $300,000 house a $200 feature may seem like nothing.

Paul Ekman

a psychologist who has studied the relationship between emotions, facial expressions and overall body language. HE stated that emotions were universal and felt by people of all different cultures. Although there are some difference in expression of emotions across cultures, Ekman believed that there were basic similarities that could be classified. Ekman devised the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to categorize every type of facial expression. His research has been vital to lie detection.

Howard Gardner

an American developmental psychologist who developed the theory of multiple intelligences. Gardner proposed that people have different ways of processing stimuli and information and theorized that these different types of intelligence mostly work independently of each other. This goes against the concept of a generalized all-encompassing intelligence that can be measured as a whole. There are eight types of intelligence in the theory of multiple intelligences: mathematical/logical, spacial, kinesthetic (body movement like dancers and athletes), linguistic, musical, naturalistic (sensitive to the environment like a botanist or geologist), interpersonal (sensitive to others' feelings and moods like a counselor or teacher), and intrapersonal (introspective).

Hobson & McCarley

developed the activation synthesis theory of dreaming that said that dreams do not have meanings and are the result of the brain attempting to make sense of random neuronal firing in the cortex.

Charles Darwin

developed theories about evolution and natural selection and is credited with being the father of evolutionary theory.

Carl Jung

is best known as the founder of Analytic Psychology. This school of psychology shares similarities with Freud's psychoanalytic method in the emphasis it places on the role of the unconscious. However, Jung believed the unconscious contained more than our repressed thoughts and feelings. He differentiates between the "personal unconscious," which he recognizes as an important part of the normal psyche, and the "collective unconscious", which refers to innate psychological predispositions shared by all human beings throughout history. Jung also developed a theory of personality, which defines eight personality types based on the opposing attitudes of introversion and extroversion.

Carl Rogers

is well known for the creation of Client-Centered Therapy, this method of therapy emphasizes the person as the subject, rather than an object. Rogers believed that humans have a "Self-Actualizing" tendency - an innate drive that pushes the person to fulfill his potentials. A "Fully-Functioning Person" is an individual who is continually moving toward self-actualization. This type of person is open to life's experiences, has trust in himself, and is able to express his feelings and act independently. Rogers believed that the work of the therapist is to create a relationship with the client where he is able to experience Unconditional Positive Regard so that he may be able to grow and become a fully-functioning person.