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