| Term | Definition |
| Mary Whiton Calkins | first female president of the American Psychological Association (APA) |
| Charles Darwin | proposed the theory of evolution; the goal of human behavior is to ensure survival and reproduction |
| Dorthea Dix | social reformer for imprisoned, poorly treated, mentally ill; worked to establish state hospitals; part of the medical model |
| Sigmund Freud | founded the psychoanalytic perspective; developed the five stages of psychosexual development, in each of which a possible fixation can occur |
| G. Stanley Hall | established the first psychology lab in the US at Johns Hopkins University |
| William James | developed functionalism, which challenged Titchener's structuralism; looked at how human mental processes worked in the real world; with Carl Lange, developed the James-Lange theory of emotion |
| Ivan Pavlov | developed classical conditioning while studying digestion in dogs |
| Jean Piaget | created the cognitive development model (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, formal operational) |
| Carl Rogers | one of the founders of the humanist branch of psychology; developed the person-centered theory based on self-concepts; emphasized client-centered therapy |
| Abraham Maslow | one of the founders of the humanist branch of psychology; created the hierarchy of needs; stressed the importance of self-actualization |
| B.F. Skinner | developed operant, or instrumental, conditioning |
| Mary Floy Washburn | first woman in America to receive a Ph.D. in psychology |
| John B. Watson | founder of behavioralism; classically conditioned Little Albert |
| Paul Broca | identified the area of the brain responsible for language; damage to the area results in expressive aphasia, or the inability to produce language |
| Michael Gazzaniga | studied patients of split-brain surgery (cutting of the corpus callosum); noticed no serious effects after surgeries |
| Roger Sperry | studied how the different hemispheres operate independent of each other |
| Carl Wernicke | identified the area of the brain responsible for understanding language; damage to the area results in receptive aphasia |
| Gustav Fechner | defined absolute threshold and the just noticeable difference |
| David Hubel | along with Weisel, discovered feature detectors |
| Torston Weisel | along with Hubel, discovered feature detectors |
| Earnest Hilgard | created the dissociation theory of hypnosis, stating hypnosis causes us to divide our consciousness into a hidden observer and a consciousness prone to suggestibility |
| Albert Bandura | social learning theory; observational learning (modeling); conducted the Bo-Bo doll experiment |
| John Garcia | coined learned taste aversion |
| Robert Rescorla | developed the contingency model, proposing that in order for learning to take place, an organism must be able to predict that their behavior will result in an outcome; behavioral psychologist who studied classical conditioning |
| Edward Thorndike | created the Law of Effect: behaviors followed by positive consequences are strengthened, those followed by negative consequences are diminished |
| Edward Toleman | created cognitive maps, or mental representations of the environment; determined cognitive maps proved latent learning |
| Wolfgang Kohler | discovered insight learning by studying chimpanzees |
| Noam Chomsky | theorized about the language acquisition device, overgeneralization, and a critical learning period for language |
| Herman Ebbinghaus | proposed the concept of a forgetting curve using nonsense syllables; concluded that most forgetting occurs within an hour |
| Elizabeth Loftus | felt eye witness accounts weren't necessarily accurate due to investigator influences and falsey implanted memories |
| George Miller | theorized that short term memory's capacity for most people is "magic number plus or minus 2;" suggested chunking for memorizing |
| Alfred Kinsey | studied sexual orientation and estimated 10% of the population in the early 1900s were homosexual |
| Stanley Schachter | along with Singer, created the Schachter-Singer two factor theory of emotion, stating emotion is experienced after a cognitive label is applied to stimuli |
| Hans Seyle | theorized of General Adaptive Syndrome, which include three stages to stress reaction: Alarm, Resistance, and Exhaustion |
| Mary Ainsworth | conducted the strange-situation experiment to determine the types of attachment between a mother and child; secure, anxious-ambivalent, and anxious-avoidant attachments were found to exist |
| Albert Bandura | developed the social learning theory, or the social-cognitive perspective; we learn by imitating models (observational learning); believed in reciprocal determinism as a factor of personality; self efficacy |
| Diana Baumrind | identified three parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive |
| Eric Erickson | developed the eight stages of psychosocial development, each of which contains a possible conflict |
| Carol Gilligan | disagreed with Kohlberg due to supposed male/female differences in morality; said females made moral decisions based more on social relationships |
| Harry Harlow | emphasized the importance of physical contact by studying monkeys |
| Konrad Lorenz | studied attachment with imprinting of goslings; felt there was a critical period for attachment |
| Lawrence Kohlberg | proposed three stages of moral development |
| Jean Piaget | proposed four stages of cognitive development |
| Lev Vygotsky | proposed the zone of proximal development theory; he felt social interaction, in the form of people who provide children with cognitive growth opportunities, was important for cognitive development to occur |
| Alfred Adler | believed striving for superiority was the main goal of life, not sex; inferiority motivates us to acquire new skills; studied the effects of birth order |
| Paul Costa and Robert McCrae | proposed the trait theory using the Five-Factor Model: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extroversion |
| Carl Jung | felt the unconscious incorporated both personal and collective unconscious; archetypes are ancestral memories that show up as symbols in many different cultures |
| Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon | published the first intelligence test designed to help children in school; expressed intelligence in terms of mental age |
| Francis Galton | published Hereditary Genius; believed intelligence was hereditary |
| Howard Gardener | proposed eight different measures of intelligence |
| Charles Spearman | believed intelligence had two factors, an s factor (specific mental abilities) and a common underlying g factor (general intelligence) |
| Robert Sternberg | developed the triarchic theory of intelligence, stating that intelligence is either analytical, creative, or practical |
| Louis Terman | revised Binet's test for use in the US; calculated intelligence using the formula MA/CA x 100 |
| David Weschler | first to devise a test to measure intelligence in adults; established the use of the bell curve |
| Rosenhan | conducted a study showing the power of labeling on people with psychological disorders |
| Aaron Beck | emphasized cognitive therapy; the goal is to teach clients new ways of thinking and to change illogical beliefs |
| Albert Ellis | developed rational emotive behavioral therapy, which purpose is to change the catastrophizing belief that leads to negative consequences |
| Mary Carver Jones | first to successfully use classical conditioning to recondition a child to overcome a fear |
| Joseph Wolpe | used the counterconditioning technique of systematic desensitization |
| Solomon Asch | performed experiments on the effects of conformity |
| Leon Festinger | developed the theory of cognitive dissonance |
| Elton Mayo | a key figure in the branch of industrial/organizational psychology; discovered the Hawthorne Effect |
| Stanley Milgram | performed a controversial experiment on obedience using shock |
| Robert Rosenthal | identified the Pygmalion Effect among students and teachers |
| Philip Zombardo | conducted a study on the power of situations and roles by simulating a prison environment |
| Muzafer Sherif | conducted the Robbers' Cave Study and determined the best way to unite different groups was by imposing superordinate goals |
