| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Aaron Beck | pioneer in Cognitive Therapy. Suggested negative beliefs cause depression. |
| Abraham Maslow | humanistic psychology; hierarchy of needs-needs at a lower level dominate an individual's motivation as long as they are unsatisfied; self-actualization, transcendence |
| Albert Bandura | pioneer in observational learning (AKA social learning), stated that people profit from the mistakes/successes of others; Studies: Bobo Dolls-adults demonstrated 'appropriate' play with dolls, children mimicked play |
| Albert Ellis | pioneer in Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET), focuses on altering client's patterns of irrational thinking to reduce maladaptive behavior and emotions |
| Alfred Adler | neo-Freudian, psychodynamic; Contributions: inferiority complex, organ inferiority; Studies: birth order influences personality |
| Alfred Binet | pioneer in intelligence (IQ) tests, designed a test to identify slow learners in need of help-not applicable in the U.S. because it was too culture-bound (French) |
| Anna Freud | child psychoanalysis; emphasized importance of the ego and its constant struggle |
| Anna O. | Austrian-Jewish woman (real name: Bertha Pappenheim) diagnosed with hysteria, treated by Josef 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 hallucinations and loss of consciousness. Her treatment is regarded as marking the beginning of psychoanalysis. |
| Benjamin Whorf | language; his hypothesis is that language determines the way we think |
| B.F. Skinner | behaviorism; pioneer in operant conditioning; behavior is based on an organism's reinforcement history; worked with pigeons |
| Carl Jung | neo-Freudian, analytic psychology; archetypes; collective unconscious; libido is all types of energy, not just sexual; dream studies/interpretation |
| Carl Rogers | humanistic psychology; Contributions: founded client-centered therapy, theory that emphasizes the unique quality of humans especially their freedom and potential for personal growth, unconditional positive regard, |
| Carol Gilligan | moral development studies to follow up Kohlberg. She studied girls and women and found that they did not score as high on his six stage scale because they focused more on relationships rather than laws and principles. Their reasoning was merely different, not better or worse |
| Charles Darwin | biologist; developed theory of evolution; transmutation of species, natural selection, evolution by common descent; "The Origin of Species" catalogs his voyage on The Beagle |
| Charles Spearman | intelligence; found that specific mental talents were highly correlated, concluded that all cognitive abilities showed a common core which he labeled 'g' (general ability) |
| Clark Hull | motivation theory, drive reduction; maintained that the goal of all motivated behavior is the reduction or alleviation of a drive state, mechanism through which reinforcement operates |
| Daniel Goleman | emotional intelligence |
| Darley & Latane | social psychology; bystander apathy, diffusion of responsibility |
| David McClelland | achievement motivation; developed scoring system for TAT's use in assessing achievement motivation |
| David Rosenhan | did study in which healthy patients were admitted to psychiatric hospitals and diagnoses with schizophrenia; showed that once you are diagnosed with a disorder, the label, even when behavior indicates otherwise, is hard to overcome in a mental health setting |
| David Weschler | established an intelligence test especially for adults (WAIS); also WISC and WPPSI |
| Hermann Ebbinghaus | memory; studied memorization of meaningless words |
| Edward Thorndike | behaviorism; Law of Effect-relationship between behavior and consequence |
| Ekman & Friesen | Universal Emotions (based upon facial expressions); Study Basics: Constants across culture in the face and emotion |
| Elizabeth Kübler-Ross | developmental psychology; wrote "On Death and Dying": 5 stages the terminally ill go through when facing death (1. denial, 2. anger, 3. bargaining, 4. depression, 5. acceptance) |
| Elizabeth Loftus | cognition and memory; studied repressed memories and false memories; showed how easily memories could be changed and falsely created by techniques such as leading questions and illustrating the inaccuracy in eyewitness testimony |
| Erik Erikson | neo-Freudian, humanistic; 8 psychosocial stages of development: theory shows how people evolve through the life span. Each stage is marked by a psychological crisis that involves confronting "Who am I?" |
| Ernst Weber | perception; identified just-noticeable-difference (JND) that eventually becomes Weber's law |
| Francis Galton | differential psychology AKA "London School" of Experimental Psychology; Contributions: behavioral genetics, maintains that personality & ability depend almost entirely on genetic inheritance; compared identical & fraternal twins, hereditary differences in intellectual ability |
| Gazzaniga or Sperry | neuroscience/biopsychology; studied split brain patients |
| Gibson & Walk | developmental psychology; "visual cliff" studies with infants |
| Gordon Allport | trait theory of personality; 3 levels of traits: cardinal, central, and secondary |
| Harry Harlow | development, contact comfort, attachment; experimented with baby rhesus monkeys and presented them with cloth or wire "mothers;" showed that the monkeys became attached to the cloth mothers because of contact comfort |
| Harry Stack Sullivan | interpersonal psychoanalysis; groundwork for enmeshed relationships, developed the Self-System, a configuration of personality traits |
| Henry Murray | personality assessment; created the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) with Christina Morgan, stated that the need to achieve varied in strength in different people and influenced their tendency to approach and evaluate their own performances |
| Hermann Rorschach | developed one of the first projective tests, the Inkblot test which consists of 10 standardized inkblots where the subject tells a story, the observer then derives aspects of the personality from the subject's commentary |
| Hans Eysenck | personality theorist; asserted that personality is largely determined by genes, used introversion/extroversion |
| Hobson & McCarley | sleep/dreams/consciousness; pioneers of Activation-Synthesis Theory of dreams; sleep studies that indicate the brain creates dream states, not information processing or Freudian interpretations |
| Holmes & Rahe | stress and coping; used "social readjustment scale" to measure stress |
| Howard Gardner | devised theory of multiple intelligences: logical-mathematic, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, linguistic, musical, interpersonal, naturalistic |
| Ivan Pavlov | discovered classical conditioning; trained dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell |
| Jean Piaget | cognitive psychology; created a 4-stage theory of cognitive development, said that two basic processes work in tandem to achieve cognitive growth (assimilation and accommodation) |
| John B Watson | behaviorism; emphasis on external behaviors of people and their reactions on a given situation; famous for Little Albert study in which baby was taught to fear a white rat |
| Judith Langlois | developmental psychology;: social development & processing, effects of appearance on behavior, origin of social stereotypes, sex/love/intimacy, facial expression |
| Karen Horney | neo-Freudian, psychodynamic; criticized Freud, stated that personality is molded by current fears and impulses, rather than being determined solely by childhood experiences and instincts, neurotic trends; concept of "basic anxiety" |
| Karl Wernicke | "Wernicke's area"; discovered area of left temporal lobe that involved language understanding: person damaged in this area uses correct words but they do not make sense |
| Kenneth Clark | social psychology; research evidence of internalized racism caused by stigmatization; doll experiments-black children chose white dolls |
| Kurt Lewin | social psychology; German refugee who escaped Nazis, proved the democratic style of leadership is the most productive; studied effects of 3 leadership styles on children completing activities |
| Langer & Rodin | Social Psychology; Helping behavior, personal responsibility; studied the effects of enhanced personal responsibility and helping behavior |
| Lawrence Kohlberg | moral development; presented boys moral dilemmas and studied their responses and reasoning processes in making moral decisions. Most famous moral dilemma is "Heinz" who has an ill wife and cannot afford the medication. Should he steal the medication and why? |
| Leon Festinger | social cognition, cognitive dissonance; Study Basics: Studied and demonstrated cognitive dissonance |
| Lev Vygotsky | child development; investigated how culture & interpersonal communication guide development; zone of proximal development; play research |
| Lewis Terman | revised Binet's IQ test and established norms for American children; tested group of young geniuses and followed in a longitudinal study that lasted beyond his own lifetime to show that high IQ does not necessarily lead to wonderful things in life |
| Little Albert | subject in John Watson's experiment, proved classical conditioning principles, especially the generalization of fear |
| Konrad Lorenz | ethology (animal behavior); studied imprinting and critical periods in geese |
| Martin Seligman | learning; Positive Psychology; learned helplessness theory of depression; Studies: Dogs demonstrating learned helplessness |
| Mary Ainsworth | developmental psychology; compared effects of maternal separation, devised patterns of attachment; "The Strange Situation": observation of parent/child attachment |
| Mary Cover-Jones | behaviorism/learning; pioneer in systematic desensitization, maintained that fear could be unlearned |
| Masters & Johnson | motivation; human sexual response—studied how both men and women respond to and in relation to sexual behavior |
| Noam Chomsky | language development; disagreed with Skinner about language acquisition, stated there is an infinite # of sentences in a language, humans have an inborn native ability to develop language |
| Paul Ekman | emotion; found that facial expressions are universal |
| Phillip Zimbardo | social psychology; Stanford Prison Study; college students were randomly assigned to roles of prisoners or guards in a study that looked at who social situations influence behavior; showed that peoples' behavior depends to a large extent on the roles they are asked to play |
| Phineas Gage | Vermont railroad worker who survived a severe brain injury that changed his personality and behavior; his accident gave information on the brain and which parts are involved with emotional reasoning |
| Raymond Cattell | intelligence: fluid & crystal intelligence; personality testing: 16 Personality Factors (16PF personality test) |
| Robert Rosenthal | social psychology; focus on nonverbal communication, self-fulfilling prophecies; Studies: Pygmalion Effect-effect of teacher's expectations on students |
| Robert Sternberg | intelligence; devised the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (academic problem-solving, practical, and creative) |
| Robert Yerkes | intelligence, comparative; Yerkes-Dodson law: level of arousal as related to performance |
| Robert Zajonc | motivation; believes that we invent explanations to label feelings |
| Rosenhan | Psychopathology and Social Psychology; effects of labeling; Rosenhan and colleagues checked selves into mental hospitals with symptoms of hearing voices say "empty, dull and thud." Diagnosed with schizophrenia. After entered, acted normally. Never "cleared" of diagnosis. Roles and labels in treating people differently. |
| Rosenthal & Jacobson | Intelligence and learning, self-fulfilling prophecy; Study Basics: Researchers misled teachers into believing that certain students had higher IQs. Teachers changed own behaviors and effectively raised the IQ of the randomly chosen students |
| Solomon Asch | conformity; showed that social pressure can make a person say something that is obviously incorrect ; in a famous study in which participants were shown cards with lines of different lengths and were asked to say which line matched the line on the first card in length |
| Stanley Milgram | obedience to authority; had participants administer what they believed were dangerous electrical shocks to other participants; wanted to see if Germans were an aberration or if all people were capable of committing evil actions |
| Stanley Schachter | emotion; stated that in order to experience emotions, a person must be physically aroused and know the emotion before you experience it |
| Tolman | cognition; studied rats and discovered the "cognitive map" in rats and humans |
| Walter B. Cannon | motivation; believed that gastric activity as in empty stomach, was the sole basis for hunger; did research that inserted balloons in stomachs |
| William James | founder of functionalism; studied how humans use perception to function in our environment |
| William Sheldon | personality; theory that linked personality to physique on the grounds that both are governed by genetic endowment: endomorphic (large), mesomorphic (average), and ectomorphic (skinny) |
| Wilhelm Wundt | structuralism; in 1879 founded first psychology laboratory in world at University of Leipzig; introspection, basic units of experience |
| Wolpe | learning; systematic desensitization |
| Zajonc & Markus | intelligence and development; discovered that first born and only children tend to have higher IQs than latter born children |
| John Locke | 17th century English philosopher. Wrote that the mind was a "blank slate" or "tabula rasa"; that is, people are born without innate ideas. We are completely shaped by our environment . |
| René Descartes | 17t century French philosopher. Famously known for writing "cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"). Wrote about concept of dualism. |
| Socrates | Ancient Greek philosopher. Promoted introspection by saying, "Know thyself." |
| Aristotle | Ancient Greek philosopher. Wrote "Peri Psyches" ("About the Mind"). |
| William Dement | Sleep researcher who discovered and coined the phrase "rapid eye movement" (REM) sleep. |
| John Garcia | Researched taste aversion. Showed that when rats ate a novel substance before being nauseated by a drug or radiation, they developed a conditioned taste aversion for the substance. |
| Edward Bradford Titchener | Student of Wilhelm Wundt; founder of Structuralist school of psychology. |
| Herman von Helmholtz | Theorist who both aided in the development of the trichromatic theory of color perception and Place theory of pitch perception. |
Combine with other sets
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace