KEY THINKERS/RESEARCHERS

Ivan Pavlov: through experiments with dogs, demonstrated that behavior could be conditioned.

Edward 0. Wilson: coined the term sociobiology and was its major advocate as an explanation of human
behavior.

Stephen Jay Gould: biologist who criticized sociobiology, offering instead explanations based on culture
rather than on genetics and evolution.

Harry Harlow: illustrated the harmful effects of social isolation through his experiments with rhesus
monkeys.

Jean Piaget: studied the stages of cognitive development that children go through in learning to think
logically about the world.

Lawrence Kohlberg: maintained that moral thinking developed through five to six distinctive stages.

Charles Horton Cooley: offered a theory of childhood development based on the looking-glass self—a
person’s sense of other people’s evaluation.

George Herbert Mead: proposed a theory of socialization based on the development of the me; saw
children’s relations to rules as moving through three stages: preparatory, play, and game.

Sigmund Freud: argued that society’s demand for civilized behavior constantly conflicted with the
individual’s basic instincts of sex and aggression.

Erik Erikson: offered a theory of childhood development based on developmental problems rooted both
in biological changes in the individual and in social expectations in the culture.