ultrastudies.tumblr.

com

AP PSYCHOLOGY PEOPLE INDEX

Person Contribution

History and Approaches

Wilhem Wundt Conducted the very first psychology experiment in
which he sought to measure “atoms of the mind”.
Edward Brantford Titchener Wilhem Wundt’s student that introduced
structuralism.
Mary Whiton Calkins First female APA president. She should have
received a PhD from Harvard, but she didn’t get it.
Charles Darwin Known for his theory of natural selection—genes
responsible for behaviour that is conducive for
survival will be passed down.
Dorothea Dix Advocated for humane treatment of those suffering
from psychological disorders.
Sigmund Freud Theory of psychoanalysis revolutionized psychology
by suggesting our minds can be affected by things it
doesn’t know it’s affected by!
G. Stanley Hall First president of the American Psychological
Association (APA) and pioneered the study of child
development.
William James Introduced functionalism and wrote the first
psychology textbook.
Ivan Pavlov Pioneered the study of learning.
Jean Piaget Influential observer of children.
Carl Rogers Humanist psychologist.
B.F. Skinner Behaviorist that studied operant conditioning—
known for his operant chambers.
Margaret Floy Washburn First woman to receive a PhD in psychology and the
second female APA president.
John B. Watson Staunch behaviourist that believed psychology
should limit itself to observable behaviours.
Biological Bases of Behaviour
Franz Joseph Gall Pioneered phrenology, which has been discredited,
but was successful in showing that function is
localized.
Paul Broca Broca’s area (left frontal lobe) is responsible for the
production of language—damage to it causes
people to be unable to form words, but they are
still able to sing and understand speech.
Michael Gazzaniga Conducted split brain research—cut the corpus
Roger Sperry callosum of animals and were able to study brain
lateralization (and cross-wiring).
 ultrastudies.tumblr.com

Carl Wernicke Wernicke’s area (left temporal lobe) is responsible

for the comprehension of language—destruction to
it results in people speaking meaningless words, as
well as affecting their ability to understand
language.
Sensation and Perception
Ernst Weber Found that the difference threshold increases
Gustav Fechner logarithmically with the magnitude of the stimulus.
Eleanor Gibson Created the visual cliff experiments and found that
depth perception is innate.
Ewald Hering Established opponent process theory of colour
vision, which says that colours are created by firing
combinations of opposite pairs.
David Hubel Discovered that some neurons in the brain respond
Torsten Wiesel to very specific visual elements, called feature
detectors.
States of Consciousness
William James Interested in studying consciousness but did not
have the technology to do so.
Sigmund Freud Believed much of our behaviour is rooted in the
unconscious (id, ego, superego) and hypothesized
the wish-fulfillment theory for why we dream—
dreams are symbols for repressed thoughts.
Ernest Hilgard Dissociation theory of hypnosis—hypnosis is a split
between consciousness, and a hidden observer
remains passively aware of what the hypnotized
person is doing.
Learning
Albert Bandura Studied observational learning, specifically,
examined modelling in forming his social-learning
theory. Created the Bobo doll experiment.
John Garcia Discovered that animals learn taste aversions very
easily (Garcia effect).
Ivan Pavlov Pioneered the study of learning by accidentally
discovering dogs would salivate to the sound of a
bell that signalled a meal—discovered operant
conditioning.
Robert Rescorla Revised the Pavlovian model of classical
conditioning (contiguity model) to his contingency
model of classical conditioning—the strength of the
conditioning depends on how well the stimulus
predicts response.
B.F. Skinner Expanded behaviorism to include reinforcement and
punishment.
Edward Thorndike Law of effect found that pleasant behaviour is likely
to reoccur and unpleasant behaviour will not—
 ultrastudies.tumblr.com

foundation for operant conditioning. Cats took less

time over a series of trials to escape a puzzle box.
Edward Tolman Studied latent learning and found that rats ran
faster through a maze once they were rewarded
compared to when they were not offered a reward.
John B. Watson Along with Rosalie Rayner, built upon Pavlov’s work
in classical conditioning by applying it to a human in
the Little Albert experiment (aversive conditioning).
Cognition
Noam Chomsky Linguist who believed in Universal Grammar: all
languages share basic elements, and all humans are
born predisposed to learn language (but there’s a
critical period for doing so).
Hermann Ebbinghaus In studying memory, found that the time it takes to
remember material decreases with the number of
times the material was learned (learning curve) and
that forgetting plateaus at a certain point
(forgetting curve).
Wolfgang Kohler Studied insight learning—conducted an experiment
with chimpanzees trying to reach a banana.
Elizabeth Loftus Found that misinformation and leading questions
may lead to constructed memories with false
information. People report higher speeds if asked
when two cars “smashed” rather than if they “hit”.
George A. Miller Short term memory can hold about seven items
(plus or minus two) at a given time.
Motivation and Emotion
William James Along with Carl Lange, believed that emotion is an
awareness of our physiological responses to stimuli:
arousal comes before emotion.
Alfred Kinsey Studied sexual orientation and was an early adopter
of scientifically studying sex—what people say they
do and what they actually do are often very
different.
William Masters Got volunteers to have sex in a lab and discovered
Virginia Johnson the 4-stage sexual response cycle: excitement,
plateau, orgasm, and resolution.
Abraham Maslow People are motivated to fulfill needs that have
priority over others—created a hierarchy of needs.
Stanley Schacter Along with Jerome Singer, created a two-factor
theory of emotion. They believed that emotion is a
combination of physical arousal and a cognitive
label of that arousal—demonstrated by the
spillover effect in which arousal from one emotion
can “spill over” to another emotion.
Hans Selye Created General Adaptation Syndrome to study
animals’ responses to stress: alarm, resistance,
exhaustion.
 ultrastudies.tumblr.com

Developmental Psychology
Mary Ainsworth Created the strange situation experiment to study
types of attachment: secure, insecure-avoidant, and
insecure-ambivalent
Albert Bandura Created social-learning theory: children can learn
through modelling (Bobo Doll experiment)
Diana Baumrind Identified different parenting styles: authoritarian,
authoritative, permissive.
Erik Erikson Created a psychosocial stage theory: trust versus
mistrust, autonomy versus shame and doubt,
initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority,
identity versus role confusion, intimacy versus
isolation, generativity versus stagnation, integrity
versus despair
Sigmund Freud Created a psychosexual stage theory: oral, anal,
phallic, latency, and genital stages
Carol Gilligan Studied gender differences in moral development
because Kohlberg only studied males. Girls tend to
be more situational in their judgement; boys are
more absolute. (Modern research does not totally
support this.)
Harry Harlow Dispelled the belief that attachment is merely a
matter of sticking to a food source—found that
touch is extremely important as well. Monkeys
overwhelmingly preferred “cloth mother” to “wire
mother”.
Lawrence Kohlberg Studied morality and created a morality stage
theory: preconventional (do good to avoid
punishment or get rewarded), conventional (do
things to obey rules), and postconventional
(universal, ethical principles). )
Konrad Lorenz Some infant animals (not humans) imprint on
animals/objects they see during a critical period
after birth.
Jean Piaget Realized that children think differently, not less than
adults—created a cognitive development stage
theory (sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete
operational, formal operational)
Lev Vygotsky Scaffolding theory of development—emphasized
the influence of language and the social
environment. For example, when parents tell their
children “no”, they are giving them a self-control
tool.
Personality
Alfred Adler Neo-Freudian who came up with the idea of the
inferiority complex and the idea that birth order can
shape personality.
 ultrastudies.tumblr.com

Albert Bandura Created the triadic reciprocality (reciprocal

determinism) theory of personality, in which
personality is shaped by the person, the
environment, and the person’s behaviour in a
feedback loop. Personality may also be affected by a
person’s sense of self-efficacy: those with a high
sense of self-efficacy are optimistic about their
abilities; people with a low sense of self-efficacy feel
powerless.
Paul Costa Trait theorists that came up with the idea of the
Robert McCrae “Big Five”: openness, conscientiousness,
extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism
(acronym: OCEAN).
Sigmund Freud Believed personality arises from trying to resolve
conflicts between the id, ego, and superego, and
that people have two instincts: Eros and Thanatos.
Personality is formed during childhood as people
progress through his psychosexual stages: oral,
anal, phallic, latency, and genital. Also described the
Oedipus complex, fixations, and a variety of defense
mechanisms.
Carl Jung Said we have a collective unconscious derived from
our species’ universal experiences (form
archetypes). The personal unconscious creates
complexes, or memories a person wants to avoid.
Abraham Maslow Developed a hierarchy of needs and studied
successful individuals to find what common traits
enabled their success (presumably to self-
actualization and self-transcendence).
Carl Rogers Had a “self-theory” (person-centered perspective)
wherein he believed people are born good and will
bloom as long as their environment is accepting,
genuine, and empathetic. Had people compare their
ideal-self versus their actual-self.
Testing and Individual Differences
Alfred Binet Created an IQ test to assess which (French) children
needed extra help. With Theodore Simon, he
developed the idea of mental age, but feared it
would be used to label and limit children rather
than getting kids the help they needed.
Francis Galton Pioneered the study of intelligence—applied
statistical concepts to collect/analyze data (good),
but believed intelligence is inherited and that smart
people could breed a master race (bad).
Howard Gardner Proposed a multiple-intelligences theory of eight
different mental abilities: linguistic, logical-
mathematical, musical, spatial, movement,
 ultrastudies.tumblr.com

intrapersonal, interpersonal, and naturalist. His

theory is supported by savant syndrome.
Charles Spearman Believed intelligence is a single factor: the g-factor
(for general intelligence).
Robert Sternberg Has a triarchic theory of intelligence: analytical,
creative, and practical.
Louis Terman Studied gifted children, and changed the Binet-
Simon test so it could be applied to Americans
(Stanford-Binet IQ test). To Binet’s likely horror, the
American government used the test to evaluate
immigrants/army recruits, and sterilized about
60,000 people.
William Stern 𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑔𝑒
𝐼𝑄 = × 100
𝑐ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑔𝑒
David Weschler The Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) is now
the most common intelligence test. It gives an
overall score, a verbal score, and a performance
score. Its mean is 100 and standard deviation is 15.
There is now also the WISC (children) and WPPSI
(preschool/primary school).
Abnormal Psychology
David Rosenhan Conducted a study about the influence of labels—
sent researchers to a variety of mental hospitals
claiming to be hearing voices. Once admitted and
diagnosed, the symptoms, but clinicians found roots
of their “problems” in their (healthy, normal) life
histories. Also found the conditions inside mental
institutions were very poor. When challenged by
the institutions to send fake patients again, they did
manage to find the “fakes”—except Rosenhan
didn’t send anybody.
Martin Seligman Learned helplessness—dogs who were unable to
control getting shocked in one phase of the
experiment acted helpless in the second phase;
people who feel unable to change their situations
may become depressed.
Treatment of Psychological Disorders
Aaron Beck Depression involves a cognitive triad (negative
thoughts about themselves, worlds, and futures), so
he created cognitive therapy, which aims to make
thinking more positive.
Albert Ellis Created Rational-Emotive Behaviour Therapy
(REBT), a type of CBT where dysfunctional thoughts
are exposed, confronted, and challenged.
Sigmund Freud His psychoanalysis was one of the first psychological
therapies—he believed people had to resolve id,
ego, and superego conflicts in order to dispel the
 ultrastudies.tumblr.com

root causes of psychological disorders. His

techniques include free-association and dream
analysis; common phenomena that result are
resistance and transference.
Mary Cover Jones Developed counter-conditioning, which is a form of
behaviour therapy. It uses the principles of classical
conditioning to create new responses to stimuli that
are triggering unwanted behaviours.
Carl Rogers Created client-centered therapy, a non-directive
approach in which the therapist actively listens but
doesn’t judge, showing acceptance, genuineness,
empathy, and unconditional positive regard.
B.F. Skinner Operant conditioning principles can be applied for
specific behaviours. Behaviour modification involves
reinforcing desired behaviours and punishing
undesired behaviour (basically operant conditioning
on people). One example is the token economy.
Joseph Wolpe Developed exposure therapies and systematic
desensitization (reconditioning). The client is taught
progressive relaxation, and is confronted with
anxiety-inducing stimuli (gradually moving up the
anxiety hierarchy). Anxiety and relaxation are
incompatible, and relaxation trumps anxiety.
Social Psychology
Solomon Asch Conducted a study on conformity—found that
people were willing to go along with an obviously
incorrect answer to a simple perceptual test.
Leon Festinger Theorized cognitive dissonance: people want to
have consistent attitudes and behaviours, so when
the two don’t match up, we unconsciously resolve
that tension by changing one of them.
Muzafer Sherif Robber’s Cave experiment—tested what it would
take for rivals to cooperate and found that
superordinate goals can turn rivals into friends.
Stanley Milgram Studied obedience and conducted a study in which a
participant (“teacher”) was directed to shock a
“learner” if they gave incorrect answers to
questions. If the participant hesitated, they were
prodded by the researchers to continue, even
though the learner was in apparent agony, and
eventually fell still. 66% of the participants thought
they delivered the maximum amount of shock.
Philip Zimbardo Stanford Prison experiment—discovered the
magnitude of the power of a situation and how
people adapt to a prescribed role. The “acting” of
prisoners versus guards became all too real; the
experiment was cut short.