Important Psychologists Flashcards
Socrates
first to ponder abstractly
Plato
truth beyond physical world
Aristotle
truth in physical world
Rene Descartes
I think, therefore I am. Mind is separate from the body
John Locke
Upon entering the world, mind is tabula rasa (blank slate)
Thomas Hobbes
Humans = machines
Kant
responds to Hobbes: our minds are active, not passive
Anton Mesmer
hypnotism (mesmerized)
Franz Joseph Gall
phrenology
Charles Darwin
Reproductive fitness: number of offspring that live to be old enough to reproduce; Animals will act to increase their reproductive fitness; If decreases reproductive fitness, called altruism
Theory of kin: suggests that animals act to increase their inclusive fitness rather than their reproductive fitness
Actions take into account number offspring plus number relatives who survive to reproductive age
Sir Frances Galton
first to use stats; created correlational coefficient; eugenics
Gustav Fechner
first experiment with mathematical conclusions
Johannes Muller
postulated existence of specific “nerve energies”
Wilhelm Wundt
student of Muller; founder of psych; first official laboratory
Herbert Spencer
father of psychology of adaptation; different races elevated because of number of associations their brains could make
William James
father of experimental psych; stream of consciousness; functionalist (contrasted with structuralist ideas of discrete conscious elements)
Hermann von Helholtz
natural scientist who studied sensation; work with hearing and color vision is foundation for modern perception research
Stanley Hall
American’s first PhD in Psych from Harvard; founded APA
John Dewey
work was foundation of functionalism; attempted to synthesize psychology and philosophy; reflex arc: animals are not responding to discrete stimuli; constantly adapting to their environment
Edward Titchener
founder of structrualism; focused on an analysis of human consciousness; attempted to objectively describe discrete sensations; method dissolved after his death
James Cattell
studied with Hall; thought psych should be more scientific; opened labs at Penn and Columbia
1Dorothea Lynde Dix
spearheaded 19th century movement to provide better care for mentally ill through hospitalization
Pavlov
classical conditioning
John B. Watson
behavioralism
Thorndike
law of effect; precursor to operant conditioning
Skinner
operant conditioning
Wertheimer/Kohler/Koffka
Gestalt
Adler
colleague of Freud; eventually broke to create own individual psychology; motivated by inferiority; choleric (dominant)/phlegmatic (dependent)/melancholic (withdrawn)/sanguine (healthy)
Carl Jung
Freud’s most beloved student; believed too much emphasis on libido; collective unconscious; archetypes
Clark Hull
mechanistic behavioral ideas; performance = drive x habit; we do what we need to do and we do what has worked best in the past
Konrad Lorenz
ethology/imprinting
Carl Rogers
client-centered therapy; humanistic; unconditional positive regard
Maslow
hierarchy of needs; humanistic
Victor Frankl
existential psychology; logotherapy – focuses on a person’s will to meaning
Aaron Beck
cognitive therapeutic techniques; problems arise from maladaptive ways of thinking about the world
J.J. Gibson
studied texture gradients; variations in perceived surface text as a function of the distance from the observer; as the distance increases, so does the perceived density
George Berkeley
Perception: overlap (interposition); relative size; linear perspective
Hubel and Wiesel
found a neural basis for feature detection theory; suggest that certain cells in the cortex are maximally sensitive to certain features of stimuli; won Nobel Prize in 1981 - used single-cell recording to detect microelectrode - so mall can’t be seen with an ordinary microscope; can measure responses of a single cell
Herman Ebbinghaus
method of savings; forgetting curve
George Sperling
partial report procedure; iconic memory
Collins and Loftus
proposed spreading activation model - shorter distance between words, closer they are in memory (looks like a web)
Smith, Shoben, Rips
semantic feature-common model (loop up)
Craik and Lockart
Depth of processing or levels of processing theory; physical, acoustal; semantic
Paivlo
Dual-code hypothesis; visual or verbal (abstract)
Sir Frederick Bartlett
memory = reconstructive
Elizabeth Loftus
eye witness memory
George Miller
STM = 7 +/- 2
Ulric Neisser
coined term icon for brief visual memory; icon lasts for one second; backward masking
Karl Lashley
memories stored diffusely in the brain
Donald Hebb
memory involves changes of synapses and neural pathways, making a memory tree. ER Kandel confirmed with sea slugs
ER Kandel
mapped memory tree in sea slug; won Nobel Prize
Guilford
divergent thinking
Collins and Quillian
assert that people make decisions about the relationships between things by searching their cognitive semantic hierarchies
Chomsky
Language aquisition device; structure surface vs. deep/abstract structure
Vygotsky
zone of proximal development
Kim
fMRI; bilingual adults who learned second language as adults use left frontal lobe (involved in working memory); extra effort; those who were bilingual as children do not (automatic)
Roger Brown
researched areas of social, developmental, and linguistic psychology. Found that children’s understanding of grammatical rules develops as they make hypotheses about how syntax works and then self-correct with experience
Katherine Nelso
language really begins to develop with the onset of active speech rather than during the first year of only listening
William Labov
ebonics
Charles Osgood
semantics; created semantic differential charts; works with similar connotations for cultures or subcultures
Eleanor Rosch
tested wharfian hypothesis; studied Dani (remote tribe in Papua New Guinea); only use two words for color but perceive a lot of variation
Terman and Wechsler
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale: most widely used; verbal comprehension; perceptual reasoning; working memory; processing speed; children’s = WISC-R
William Stern
developed idea of IQ; used to be mental age/chronological age; not compare a person to average of other people their same age
Spearman
G factor
Thurstone
Intelligence consists of 7 primary mental capacities; fundamental abilities that are the components of intelligence and are distinct from other capacities
Catell and Horn
fluid and crystalized intelligence
Carroll
Three stratum of cognitive ability; synthesis of earlier ideas; most widely accepted theory; 3 striate hierarchy: G; 8 cognitive abilities; narrower/related abilities
Lewis Terman
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale
Gregor Mendel
initiated study of genetics
RC Tryon
maze-bright and maze-dull rats
Lennenberg, Relebsky, Nichols
babbling begins at the same age for hearing children and deaf children with any kind of parents
Petitto and Marentette
deaf children with parents using sign language babble with their hands
Noam Chomsky
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Freud
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Erikson
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Thomas and Chess
Studied tempermant: individual’s pattern of responding to environment – somewhat inheritable; emerges in infancy, stable over time, pervasive across situations
Proposed three categories of infant emotional and behavioral style
- Easy: positive; easily adapts
- Slow to warm up: withdraws; then adapts
- Difficult: negative; withdraws
Wolff
3 types of crying:
1. Hunger cry 2. Anger cry 3. Pain cry – even non-parents react with heart rate acceleration to pain cry
Social smiling: at first, any face; 5 mos, only familiar faces
Fear response: at first undifferentiated to increasingly specific (notable changes after one year)
Harlow
Wire monkey vs. cloth monkey
Bowlby
Studied children brought up in institutions where needs met but not a lot of contact – more timid
Identified phases of attachment process:
- First weeks: infant reacts identically to every smiling face
- 3 mos: able to discern familiar and unfamiliar faces
- 6 mos: seeks out and responds to mom
- 9-12 mos: stranger anxiety
- 2nd year: separation anxiety
- 3rd year: okay
Ainsworth
“strange situation” to study attachment style
- A. insecure-avoidant
- B. resistant
- C. secure
Lorenz
imprinting: rapid formation of an attachment bond between and organism and an object in the environment
- critical periods conducive to this
- others critique
Carol Gilligan
Critiqued Kholberg’s Theory of Moral Developemt: children raised to develop gendered perceptions of morality; girls adopt an interpersonal orientation that is neither more nor less mature than rule-bound men
Kholberg’s Theory of Moral Development
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Diana Baumrind
- authoritarian: high standards/cold
- authoritative: high standards/warm
- permissive
- authoritative = most well-adjusted
Rachel Gelman
showed that Piaget might have underestimated the cognitive ability of preschoolers
Piaget’s theory of Moral Development
a. 4-7 years; imitates rule-following behavior; doesn’t question that rules exist
b. 7-11 years: understands rules and follows them
c. 12+ years: applies abstract thinking to rules; can change rules if all parties agree
John Watson
behavioralist approach to development asserted that children were passively molded by the environment and that their behavior emerges through imitation of their parents
Arnold Gessell
believed nature only provided blue-print for development through maturation; environment or nurture filled in details
Ian Pavlov
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Wolfgang Kohler
cofounder of Gestalt; sometimes learn from trial and error, but sometimes insight
Edward Tolman
cognitive maps; if familiar path is blocked, rates able to use cognitive maps to come up with an alternative route
Preparedness: inborn tendency to associate certain stimuli with certain consequences (illness with something we ate)
Biological constraints: animals inborn predispositions to learn different things in different ways
Instinctual drift: can’t teach animals to do anything; eventually instincts override
Niko Tinbergen
introduced experimental methods - enabling construction of controlled conditions
Karl von Frisch
honeybees able to communicate direction and distance to food source through a complex dance
EO Wilson
sociobiology – behavior due to a complex and dynamic interplay between genetics and environment
Neil Miller
proposed the approach-avoidance conflict. This conflict refers to the state one feels when a certain goal has both pros and cons. Typically, the further one is from the goal, the more one focuses on the pros.
George Kelly
set aside traditional ideas re: motivation, drive, unconscious, emotions, and reinforcement
Instead: individual as scientist – devise and test predictions about the behavior of significant people in our lives
Anxious person: has trouble doing this
Psychotherapy helps to develop this capacity
In their attempt to understand the world, people develop their own personal constructs; use these constructs to evaluate the world; pairs of opposites: fair/unfair; smart/dumb/exciting/dull
People’s behavior determines how they interpret the world
Carl Rogers
client-centered therapy/person-centered therapy/nondirective therapy
Unconditional positive regard
People not slaves to unconscious (psychoanalysts) nor subject to faulty learning
Victor Frankl
survivor of Nazi concentration camps
- Mental illness stems from meaningless life
Raymond Cattell
- identified 16 different traits to account for the underlying factors that determine personality
Hans Eysenck
tried to use scientific methodology to test Jung’s division of introversion/extroversion
“Confirmed”
- introversion vs. extroversion
- emotional stability vs. neuroticism
- psychoticism
Paul Costa and Robert McCrae
big 5
- Openness to experience
- Conscientiousness
- Emotional stability (or neuroticism)
- Agreeableness
- iNtroversion/extroversion
Gordon Allport
- cardinal – organize life around (only some)
- central – major characteristics (everyone)
- secondary – limited (everyone)
functional autonomy: a given activity or form of behavior may become an end/goal itself; allows for many types of motives
distinguished between idiographic approach to personality and nomothetic
- idiographic (morphogenic): case studies
- nomothetic (dimensional): commonalities among groups
Allport thought we should pursue idiographic and avoid nomothetic
David McClelland
identified a personality trait referred to as the need for achievement (nAch)
Avoid high risk (fear of failure) and low risks (no achievement)
Stop striving toward goals if outcome seems unlikely
Herman Witkin
Field independence: capacity to make specific responses to perceived specific stimuli
Field dependence: more diffuse response to a perceived mass of somewhat undifferentiated stimuli
Classified people according to their degree of field dependence
Ex: people who are field dependent will be more influenced by opinions of others
Julian Rotter
Internal locus of control: believe that they can control their own destiny
External locus of control: situational influence – luck or task ease used to explain success
Sandra Bem
Androgyny
Masculine and feminine must be distinct if someone can have both
Walter Mischel
Criticized explaining personality via type/trait
Believed human behavior largely determined by the power of the situation (Stanford Prison Experiment)
Kay Deaux
found that women’s successes at stereotypical “male” tasks are attributed to luck, while men’s successes are attributed to skill
Sandra Bem
studied androgeny; created that Bem Sex Role Inventory
Matina Horner
suggested that females shunned masculine-type successes not because of fear of failure or lack of interested, but because they feared success and its negative repercussions, such as resentment and rejection
Alice Eagly
found an interaction between gender and social status with regard to how easily an individual might be influence or swayed
Eleanor Macoby and Carol Jacklin
scrutinized studies of sex differences and found that relatively few existed that could not be explained away by simple social learning
Most consistent difference: women – verbal; men – spatial/visual
Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman
studied Type A personality
Grant Dahlstrom
linked Type A to heart disease
Henry Murray
developed the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT); consists of ambiguous story cards; tell story; project their own “needs”
Zajonc
Birth order; mere exposure hypothesis
Fritz Heider
balance theory: imbalance occurs when someone agrees with someone he/she dislikes or disagrees with someone he/she likes; will shift to find balance
Carl Hovland
attitude change as a process of communicating a message with the intent to persuade someone
Communication of persuasion has three component parts:
• Communicator
• Communication
• Situation
Petty and Cacioppo’s
Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion:
Two routes to persuasion: (1) central route; (2) peripheral route
Central route: care deeply about the issue; will follow the argument closely and mentally evaluate them by coming up with counterarguments of your own
Strong arguments will change our minds more often than weak ones
Peripheral route: don’t care; can’t follow; distracted
Strength of argument doesn’t matter; situation does matter
William McGuire
uses analogy of inoculation to explain how people are able to resist persuasion
Presenting someone with refuted counterarguments enables them to practice defending their beliefs (like a measles shot)
McGuire proved this was effective with cultural truisms (those not inoculated were susceptible to attack)
Stanley Schacter
found that greater anxiety leads to a greater desire to affiliate. A situation that provokes little anxiety typically does not lead to a desire to affiliate.
Both anxiety and a need to compare oneself with other people may play roles in determining both when and with whom we affiliate.
John Darley and Bibb Latane
bystander effect
Batson
empathy-altruism model:
Seeing another in distress can provoke distress or empathy; if empathy, more likely to help
Frantz Heider
attribution theory; believes we are all amateur psychologists who attempt to discover causes and effects in events
Heider divided causes into two main groups: (1) situational; (2) dispositional
Dispositional: Relate to the person – attitudes/beliefs/personality/etc.
Situational: External; relate to surrounding – threats/money/social norms/peer pressure, etc.
Thomas Newcomb
Influence of group norms – Republican students at Bennington College became more liberal each year because of overall liberal environment
Edward Hall
Proxemics: the student of how individuals space themselves in relation to others
Richard Lazarus
studied stress and coping. Differentiated between problem-focused coping (which is changing the stressor) and emotion-focused coping (which is changing the response to the stressor
J. Rodin and E. Langer
choice/agency; show that nursing home residents who have plants to care for have better health and lower mortality rates
Stuart Valins
studied environmental influences on behavior. Architecture matters. Student in long-corridor dorms feel more stressed and withdrawn than students in suite-style dorms.
M. Rokeach
studied racial bias and similarity of beliefs. People prefer to be with like-minded people more than like-skinned people. Also, racial bias decreases as attitude similarity increases
M. Fischbein and I. Ajzen
are known for their theory of reasoned action. States that people’s behavior in a given situation is determined by their attitude about the situation and social norms
Hazel Markus
known for cross-cultural research; compares behavioral norms in cultures that value independence versus cultures that value interdependence
Elaine Hatfield
studies different types of love
Passionate love: intense longing for the union with another and a state of profound physical arousal
Paul Ekman
emotions
6 basic emotions: mad, sad, scared, happy, surprise, disgust
Based on cross-cultural research; participants from different cultures able to name these emotions based on facial expressions
FACS coding: Facial Action Coding System
Harold Kelly
hot/cold description of a person (reproduced Asch’s findings); attributions we make ourselves and others tend to be correct
Ellen Langer
illusion of control: belief that you can control things that you actually have no influence on. This is the driving force behind lottery/gambling/superstition
Norman Triplett
first official social psychology experiment
Kurt Lewin
founder of social psych; applied Gestalt ideas to social behavior; conceived of field theory, which is the total of influences upon individual behavior
A person’s life-space is the collection of forces on an individual
Valence, vector, and barrier are forces in the life-space
Richard Nisbett
showed that we lack awareness for why we do what we do
Morton Deutsch
prisoner’s dilemma
Henry Landsberger
coined the term the Hawthorne effect – people’s performance changes when they’re observed
