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Psychology GRE > Important Psychologists > Flashcards

Important Psychologists Flashcards

1
Q

Socrates

A

first to ponder abstractly

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2
Q

Plato

A

truth beyond physical world

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3
Q

Aristotle

A

truth in physical world

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4
Q

Rene Descartes

A

I think, therefore I am. Mind is separate from the body

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5
Q

John Locke

A

Upon entering the world, mind is tabula rasa (blank slate)

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6
Q

Thomas Hobbes

A

Humans = machines

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7
Q

Kant

A

responds to Hobbes: our minds are active, not passive

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8
Q

Anton Mesmer

A

hypnotism (mesmerized)

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9
Q

Franz Joseph Gall

A

phrenology

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10
Q

Charles Darwin

A

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

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11
Q

Sir Frances Galton

A

first to use stats; created correlational coefficient; eugenics

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12
Q

Gustav Fechner

A

first experiment with mathematical conclusions

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13
Q

Johannes Muller

A

postulated existence of specific “nerve energies”

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14
Q

Wilhelm Wundt

A

student of Muller; founder of psych; first official laboratory

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15
Q

Herbert Spencer

A

father of psychology of adaptation; different races elevated because of number of associations their brains could make

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16
Q

William James

A

father of experimental psych; stream of consciousness; functionalist (contrasted with structuralist ideas of discrete conscious elements)

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17
Q

Hermann von Helholtz

A

natural scientist who studied sensation; work with hearing and color vision is foundation for modern perception research

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18
Q

Stanley Hall

A

American’s first PhD in Psych from Harvard; founded APA

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19
Q

John Dewey

A

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

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20
Q

Edward Titchener

A

founder of structrualism; focused on an analysis of human consciousness; attempted to objectively describe discrete sensations; method dissolved after his death

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21
Q

James Cattell

A

studied with Hall; thought psych should be more scientific; opened labs at Penn and Columbia

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22
Q

1Dorothea Lynde Dix

A

spearheaded 19th century movement to provide better care for mentally ill through hospitalization

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23
Q

Pavlov

A

classical conditioning

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24
Q

John B. Watson

A

behavioralism

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25
Q

Thorndike

A

law of effect; precursor to operant conditioning

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26
Q

Skinner

A

operant conditioning

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27
Q

Wertheimer/Kohler/Koffka

A

Gestalt

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28
Q

Adler

A

colleague of Freud; eventually broke to create own individual psychology; motivated by inferiority; choleric (dominant)/phlegmatic (dependent)/melancholic (withdrawn)/sanguine (healthy)

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29
Q

Carl Jung

A

Freud’s most beloved student; believed too much emphasis on libido; collective unconscious; archetypes

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30
Q

Clark Hull

A

mechanistic behavioral ideas; performance = drive x habit; we do what we need to do and we do what has worked best in the past

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31
Q

Konrad Lorenz

A

ethology/imprinting

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32
Q

Carl Rogers

A

client-centered therapy; humanistic; unconditional positive regard

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33
Q

Maslow

A

hierarchy of needs; humanistic

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34
Q

Victor Frankl

A

existential psychology; logotherapy – focuses on a person’s will to meaning

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35
Q

Aaron Beck

A

cognitive therapeutic techniques; problems arise from maladaptive ways of thinking about the world

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36
Q

J.J. Gibson

A

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

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37
Q

George Berkeley

A

Perception: overlap (interposition); relative size; linear perspective

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38
Q

Hubel and Wiesel

A

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

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39
Q

Herman Ebbinghaus

A

method of savings; forgetting curve

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40
Q

George Sperling

A

partial report procedure; iconic memory

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41
Q

Collins and Loftus

A

proposed spreading activation model - shorter distance between words, closer they are in memory (looks like a web)

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42
Q

Smith, Shoben, Rips

A

semantic feature-common model (loop up)

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43
Q

Craik and Lockart

A

Depth of processing or levels of processing theory; physical, acoustal; semantic

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44
Q

Paivlo

A

Dual-code hypothesis; visual or verbal (abstract)

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45
Q

Sir Frederick Bartlett

A

memory = reconstructive

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46
Q

Elizabeth Loftus

A

eye witness memory

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47
Q

George Miller

A

STM = 7 +/- 2

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48
Q

Ulric Neisser

A

coined term icon for brief visual memory; icon lasts for one second; backward masking

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49
Q

Karl Lashley

A

memories stored diffusely in the brain

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50
Q

Donald Hebb

A

memory involves changes of synapses and neural pathways, making a memory tree. ER Kandel confirmed with sea slugs

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51
Q

ER Kandel

A

mapped memory tree in sea slug; won Nobel Prize

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52
Q

Guilford

A

divergent thinking

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53
Q

Collins and Quillian

A

assert that people make decisions about the relationships between things by searching their cognitive semantic hierarchies

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54
Q

Chomsky

A

Language aquisition device; structure surface vs. deep/abstract structure

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55
Q

Vygotsky

A

zone of proximal development

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56
Q

Kim

A

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)

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57
Q

Roger Brown

A

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

58
Q

Katherine Nelso

A

language really begins to develop with the onset of active speech rather than during the first year of only listening

59
Q

William Labov

A

ebonics

60
Q

Charles Osgood

A

semantics; created semantic differential charts; works with similar connotations for cultures or subcultures

61
Q

Eleanor Rosch

A

tested wharfian hypothesis; studied Dani (remote tribe in Papua New Guinea); only use two words for color but perceive a lot of variation

62
Q

Terman and Wechsler

A

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale: most widely used; verbal comprehension; perceptual reasoning; working memory; processing speed; children’s = WISC-R

63
Q

William Stern

A

developed idea of IQ; used to be mental age/chronological age; not compare a person to average of other people their same age

64
Q

Spearman

A

G factor

65
Q

Thurstone

A

Intelligence consists of 7 primary mental capacities; fundamental abilities that are the components of intelligence and are distinct from other capacities

66
Q

Catell and Horn

A

fluid and crystalized intelligence

67
Q

Carroll

A

Three stratum of cognitive ability; synthesis of earlier ideas; most widely accepted theory; 3 striate hierarchy: G; 8 cognitive abilities; narrower/related abilities

68
Q

Lewis Terman

A

Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale

69
Q

Gregor Mendel

A

initiated study of genetics

70
Q

RC Tryon

A

maze-bright and maze-dull rats

71
Q

Lennenberg, Relebsky, Nichols

A

babbling begins at the same age for hearing children and deaf children with any kind of parents

72
Q

Petitto and Marentette

A

deaf children with parents using sign language babble with their hands

73
Q

Noam Chomsky

A

Add

74
Q

Freud

A

Add

75
Q

Erikson

A

Add

76
Q

Thomas and Chess

A

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

    1. Easy: positive; easily adapts
    1. Slow to warm up: withdraws; then adapts
    1. Difficult: negative; withdraws
77
Q

Wolff

A

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)

78
Q

Harlow

A

Wire monkey vs. cloth monkey

79
Q

Bowlby

A

Studied children brought up in institutions where needs met but not a lot of contact – more timid

Identified phases of attachment process:

  1. First weeks: infant reacts identically to every smiling face
  2. 3 mos: able to discern familiar and unfamiliar faces
  3. 6 mos: seeks out and responds to mom
  4. 9-12 mos: stranger anxiety
  5. 2nd year: separation anxiety
  6. 3rd year: okay
80
Q

Ainsworth

A

“strange situation” to study attachment style

  • A. insecure-avoidant
  • B. resistant
  • C. secure
81
Q

Lorenz

A

imprinting: rapid formation of an attachment bond between and organism and an object in the environment
- critical periods conducive to this
- others critique

82
Q

Carol Gilligan

A

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

83
Q

Kholberg’s Theory of Moral Development

A

Add

84
Q

Diana Baumrind

A
  • authoritarian: high standards/cold
  • authoritative: high standards/warm
  • permissive
  • authoritative = most well-adjusted
85
Q

Rachel Gelman

A

showed that Piaget might have underestimated the cognitive ability of preschoolers

86
Q

Piaget’s theory of Moral Development

A

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

87
Q

John Watson

A

behavioralist approach to development asserted that children were passively molded by the environment and that their behavior emerges through imitation of their parents

88
Q

Arnold Gessell

A

believed nature only provided blue-print for development through maturation; environment or nurture filled in details

89
Q

Ian Pavlov

A

Add

90
Q

Wolfgang Kohler

A

cofounder of Gestalt; sometimes learn from trial and error, but sometimes insight

91
Q

Edward Tolman

A

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

92
Q

Niko Tinbergen

A

introduced experimental methods - enabling construction of controlled conditions

93
Q

Karl von Frisch

A

honeybees able to communicate direction and distance to food source through a complex dance

94
Q

EO Wilson

A

sociobiology – behavior due to a complex and dynamic interplay between genetics and environment

95
Q

Neil Miller

A

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.

96
Q

George Kelly

A

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

97
Q

Carl Rogers

A

client-centered therapy/person-centered therapy/nondirective therapy

Unconditional positive regard

People not slaves to unconscious (psychoanalysts) nor subject to faulty learning

98
Q

Victor Frankl

A

survivor of Nazi concentration camps

- Mental illness stems from meaningless life

99
Q

Raymond Cattell

A
  • identified 16 different traits to account for the underlying factors that determine personality
100
Q

Hans Eysenck

A

tried to use scientific methodology to test Jung’s division of introversion/extroversion

“Confirmed”

  1. introversion vs. extroversion
  2. emotional stability vs. neuroticism
  3. psychoticism
101
Q

Paul Costa and Robert McCrae

A

big 5

  1. Openness to experience
  2. Conscientiousness
  3. Emotional stability (or neuroticism)
  4. Agreeableness
  5. iNtroversion/extroversion
102
Q

Gordon Allport

A
  1. cardinal – organize life around (only some)
  2. central – major characteristics (everyone)
  3. 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

  1. idiographic (morphogenic): case studies
  2. nomothetic (dimensional): commonalities among groups

Allport thought we should pursue idiographic and avoid nomothetic

103
Q

David McClelland

A

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

104
Q

Herman Witkin

A

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

105
Q

Julian Rotter

A

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

106
Q

Sandra Bem

A

Androgyny

Masculine and feminine must be distinct if someone can have both

107
Q

Walter Mischel

A

Criticized explaining personality via type/trait

Believed human behavior largely determined by the power of the situation (Stanford Prison Experiment)

108
Q

Kay Deaux

A

found that women’s successes at stereotypical “male” tasks are attributed to luck, while men’s successes are attributed to skill

109
Q

Sandra Bem

A

studied androgeny; created that Bem Sex Role Inventory

110
Q

Matina Horner

A

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

111
Q

Alice Eagly

A

found an interaction between gender and social status with regard to how easily an individual might be influence or swayed

112
Q

Eleanor Macoby and Carol Jacklin

A

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

113
Q

Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman

A

studied Type A personality

114
Q

Grant Dahlstrom

A

linked Type A to heart disease

115
Q

Henry Murray

A

developed the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT); consists of ambiguous story cards; tell story; project their own “needs”

116
Q

Zajonc

A

Birth order; mere exposure hypothesis

117
Q

Fritz Heider

A

balance theory: imbalance occurs when someone agrees with someone he/she dislikes or disagrees with someone he/she likes; will shift to find balance

118
Q

Carl Hovland

A

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

119
Q

Petty and Cacioppo’s

A

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

120
Q

William McGuire

A

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)

121
Q

Stanley Schacter

A

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.

122
Q

John Darley and Bibb Latane

A

bystander effect

123
Q

Batson

A

empathy-altruism model:

Seeing another in distress can provoke distress or empathy; if empathy, more likely to help

124
Q

Frantz Heider

A

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.

125
Q

Thomas Newcomb

A

Influence of group norms – Republican students at Bennington College became more liberal each year because of overall liberal environment

126
Q

Edward Hall

A

Proxemics: the student of how individuals space themselves in relation to others

127
Q

Richard Lazarus

A

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

128
Q

J. Rodin and E. Langer

A

choice/agency; show that nursing home residents who have plants to care for have better health and lower mortality rates

129
Q

Stuart Valins

A

studied environmental influences on behavior. Architecture matters. Student in long-corridor dorms feel more stressed and withdrawn than students in suite-style dorms.

130
Q

M. Rokeach

A

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

131
Q

M. Fischbein and I. Ajzen

A

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

132
Q

Hazel Markus

A

known for cross-cultural research; compares behavioral norms in cultures that value independence versus cultures that value interdependence

133
Q

Elaine Hatfield

A

studies different types of love

Passionate love: intense longing for the union with another and a state of profound physical arousal

134
Q

Paul Ekman

A

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

135
Q

Harold Kelly

A

hot/cold description of a person (reproduced Asch’s findings); attributions we make ourselves and others tend to be correct

136
Q

Ellen Langer

A

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

137
Q

Norman Triplett

A

first official social psychology experiment

138
Q

Kurt Lewin

A

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

139
Q

Richard Nisbett

A

showed that we lack awareness for why we do what we do

140
Q

Morton Deutsch

A

prisoner’s dilemma

141
Q

Henry Landsberger

A

coined the term the Hawthorne effect – people’s performance changes when they’re observed

Psychology GRE (10 decks)

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