Psychologists - Spring 2012.doc

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Psychologists Review (by topic) – Spring 2012 – Mr. Massmann

*psychologists by unit of study as listed in College Board’s guidelines for Advanced Placement Psychology

I. History & Approaches

Calkins, Mary Whiton (1863-1930)

-studied psychology under William James

-denied a Ph.D. at Harvard, she established a psychological laboratory at Wellesley College -served as the first elected female president of the American Psychological Association (APA) Darwin, Charles (1809-1882)

-a British naturalist whose controversial and groundbreaking theory of evolution had a significant influence on the early development of psychology

-his theory of natural selection continues to influence the modern evolutionary perspective Dix, Dorthea (1802-1887)

-known as an American reformer who documented the deplorable conditions of how states cared for their insane poor

-helped persuade state legislatures to create the first generation of American mental hospitals Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939)

-believed he discovered the unconscious mind; a part of our mind over which we do not have conscious control that determines, in part, how we think and behave

-proposed that we must examine the unconscious mind through dream analysis, word association, and other psychoanalytic therapy techniques if we are to understand human thought and behavior -has been criticized for being unscientific and creating unverifiable theories

-placed special emphasis on how childhood experiences influenced adult personality Hall, G. Stanley (1844-1924)

-studied psychology under William James

-established America’s first psychology laboratory

-served as the first president of the American Psychological Association (APA) James, William (1842-1910)

-published The Principles of Psychology, the science’s first textbook

-Harvard professor who played major role in establishing psychology in the United States -emphasized studying the purpose, or function, of behavior and mental experiences -James-Lange theory of emotion follows a three-part sequence: perception of a stimulus,

physiological arousal, which then is interpreted as a specific emotion Pavlov, Ivan (1849-1936)

-performed pioneering conditioning experiments on dogs (salivating)

-these experiments led to the development of the classical conditioning model of learning Piaget, Jean (1896-1980) (Cognitive Developmental Theory)

-Swiss psychologist who focused on the rational, perceiving child who has the capacity to make sense of the world; developed a stage theory describing how infants, children, and adolescents use

distinctly different cognitive abilities to understand the world

-describes how children view the world through schemata, cognitive rules we use to interpret the world -normally we incorporate our experiences into these existing schemata in a process called assimilation -sometimes information doesn’t fit into or violates our schemata, so we must accommodate and change

our schemata. Rogers, Carl (1902-1987)

-rejected Freud’s pessimistic view of human nature

-offered optimistic view that people are innately good, positive, forward-moving, constructive, realistic, and trustworthy

-argued that “self-concept” is the cornerstone of a person’s personality

-if self-concept matches a person’s life experiences, those people usually have higher self-esteem and better mental health

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Skinner, B.F. (1904-1990)

-expanded the basic ideas of behaviorism to include the idea of reinforcement – environmental stimuli that either encourage or discourage certain responses

-helped establish and popularize operant conditioning model of learning -his intellectual influences lasted for decades

Washburn, Margaret Floy (1871-1939)

-she was the first American woman to be awarded a Ph.D. in psychology -she is best known for her experimental work in animal behavior Watson, John B. (1878-1958)

-declared that psychology must limit itself to observable phenomena, not unobservable concepts like the unconscious mind, if it is to be considered a science; he broke away from Wundt and early

psychologists

-wanted to establish behaviorism as the dominant paradigm of psychology

-behaviorists contend that psychologists should look at only behavior and causes of behavior – stimuli (environmental events) and responses (physical reactions) – and not concern themselves with

describing elements of consciousness Wertheimer, Max (1880-1943)

-Gestalt psychologist; argued against dividing human thought and behavior into discrete structures -Gestalt psychology tried to examine a person’s total experience because the way we experience the

world is more than just an accumulation of various perceptual experiences

-Gestalt theorists demonstrated that the whole experience is often more than just the sum of the parts of the experience

Wundt, Wilhelm (1832-1920)

-set up the first psychological laboratory in an apartment near the university at Leipzig, Germany -trained subjects in introspection; subjects were asked to accurately record their cognitive reactions to

simple stimuli

II. Research Methods – none

III. Biological Bases of Behavior

Broca, Paul (1824-1880) (Broca’s Area)

-French physician and anatomist who discovered the speech production center of brain -located in the lower left frontal lobe and responsible for controlling the muscles

involved in producing speech (today this area in left cerebral hemisphere is called Broca’s Area) -damage to this area might leave us unable to make the muscle movements needed for speech

Darwin, Charles (1809-1882)

-a British naturalist whose controversial and groundbreaking theory of evolution had a significant influence on the early development of psychology

-his theory of natural selection continues to influence the modern evolutionary perspective Gazzaniga, Michael (1939 - )

-continued Sperry’s research by advancing understanding of how the two cerebral hemispheres communicate with one another

Sperry, Roger (1913-1994)

-pioneered research with split-brain patients

-demonstrated that the brain’s right and left hemispheres have specialized functions Wernicke, Carl (1848-1905) (Wernicke’s Area)

-German neurologist and psychiatrist

-discovered that damage to an area in left temporal lobe caused deficits in language comprehension -interprets both written and spoken speech; damage to this area would affect our ability to understand

language

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IV. Sensation & Perception

Fechner, Gustav (1801-1887)

-German experimental psychologist who demonstrated that mental processes can be measured Hubel, David (1926- )

-Canadian neurophysiologist whose research on feature detectors helped demonstrate the presence of specialized neurons in the occipital lobe’s visual cortex that have the ability to respond to specific features of an image

Weber, Ernst (1795-1878) (Weber’s Law)

-German physician who discovered the just noticeable difference (JND) -Weber’s Law describes the difference thresholds for different senses

-the change needed is proportional to the original intensity of the stimulus; the more intense the stimulus is, the more it will need to change before we notice a difference

Wiesel, Torsten (1924- )

-Swedish neurophysiologist who collaborated with Hubel. Their joint work expanded the scientific knowledge of sensory processing and perception.

V. States of Consciousness

James, William (1842-1910)

-published The Principles of Psychology, the science’s first textbook

-Harvard professor who played major role in establishing psychology in the United States -emphasized studying the purpose, or function, of behavior and mental experiences -James-Lange theory of emotion follows a three-part sequence: perception of a stimulus,

physiological arousal, which then is interpreted as a specific emotion Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939) (Freudian Dream Interpretation)

-according to Freudian psychoanalysis, a method to uncover the repressed information in the unconscious mind; Freud said that dreams were wish fulfilling, meaning that we act out our unconscious

desires in our dreams; manifest content is the literal content of our dreams; latent content is the unconscious meaning of the manifest content

-the ego protects dreamers from the material in the unconscious mind(protected sleep) by presenting these repressed desires in the form of symbols

Hilgard, Ernest (1904-2001)

-renowned for his research on hypnosis and pain control

-theorized a hypnotized person experiences a special state of dissociation or divided consciousness -one stream of mental activity that responds to the hypnotist’s suggestions, while a second stream of

mental activity is also processing information that is unavailable to the consciousness of the hypnotized subject; he called this second dissociated stream of mental activity the

“hidden observer”

VI. Learning

Bandura, Albert (1925- )

-best known for his famous “Bobo doll” experiments illustrating the role of modeling in human behavior. -he contends that observational learning is responsible for most human behavior

Garcia, John (1917- )

-conducted pioneering research on taste aversion; discovered that when rats drank flavored water before becoming nauseated from a drug that produced gastrointestinal distress, they acquired a

conditioned taste aversion for the flavored water.

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Pavlov, Ivan (1849-1936)

-a Russian physiologist who inadvertently discovered a kind of learning while studying digestion in dogs -found that dogs learned to pair the sounds in the environment where they were fed with the food that

was given to them and began to salivate simply upon hearing the sounds

-deduced the basic principle of classical conditioning. People and animals can learn to associate neutral stimuli (ex: sounds) with stimuli that produce reflexive, involuntary responses (ex: food) and will

learn to respond similarly to the new stimulus as they did to the old one (ex: salivate). Rescorla, Robert (1940- )

-refined Pavlov’s principle that classical conditioning occurs simply because two stimuli are closely associated in time; Rescorla indicated that the conditioned stimulus must be a reliable signal that predicts the presentations of the unconditioned stimulus.

-his research indicated that the “animal behaves like a scientist, detecting causal relationships among events and using a range of information about those events to make the relevant inferences Skinner, B.F. (1904-1990)

-coined the term operant conditioning; best-known behaviorist psychologist

-invented a special contraption, aptly named a Skinner box, to use in his research of animal learning -a Skinner box usually has a way to deliver food to an animal and a lever to press or disk to peck in order

to get the food

-the food is called a reinforcer, and the process of giving the food is called reinforcement Thorndike, Edward (Thorndike’s Law of Effect)

-was one of the first people to research operant conditioning; explained this kind of learning through the law of effect; conducted the first systematic investigations of animal behavior.

-Law of Effect states that if the consequences of a behavior are pleasant, the stimulus-response (S-R) connection will be strengthened and the likelihood of the behavior will increase. However, if the consequences of a behavior are unpleasant, the S-R connection will weaken and the likelihood of

the behavior will decrease. Tolman, Edward (1898-1959)

-challenged Thorndike and Skinner’s belief that behavior is a complex chain of stimulus-response connections that is strengthened by a rewarding consequence.

-Tolman conducted a series of experiments demonstrating that rats formed a cognitive map or mental representation of a maze. They then used this prior learning to find food placed at the end of a

maze.

-Tolman concluded that learning involves the acquisition and use of knowledge rather than simply conditioned changes in outward behavior.

Watson, John B. (1878-1958)

-declared that psychology must limit itself to observable phenomena, not unobservable concepts like the unconscious mind, if it is to be considered a science; he broke away from Wundt and early

psychologists

-wanted to establish behaviorism as the dominant paradigm of psychology

-behaviorists contend that psychologists should look at only behavior and causes of behavior – stimuli (environmental events) and responses (physical reactions) – and not concern themselves with

describing elements of consciousness

VII. Cognition

Chomsky, Noam (1928- )

-renowned linguist who argues that young children possess an innate capacity to learn and produce speech

-notes that children in widely different cultures progress through the same stages of language development at about the same time

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Ebbinghaus, Hermann (1850-1909)

-German psychologist who conducted pioneering research on forgetting

-famous forgetting curve shows a rapid loss of memories of relatively meaningless information, followed by a very gradual decline of the remaining information

Kohler, Wolfgang (1887-1967)

-like Tolman, Kohler believed behaviorists underestimated animals’ cognitive processes and abilities -in an experiment, Kohler suspended bananas just outside the reach of a caged chimp named Sultan -unlike Skinner’s rats and pigeons, Sultan did not use trial-and-error to solve the problem

-he studied the situation, and in a flash of insight, used a stick to knock down the fruit -Kohler called this sudden understanding of a problem insight

Loftus, Elizabeth (1944- )

-influential but controversial cognitive psychologist

-research on the misinformation effect demonstrated that eyewitness testimony is often unreliable and can be altered by simply giving a witness incorrect post-event information

Miller, George A. (1920- )

-best known for his paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two”

-presented convincing evidence that the capacity of short-term memory is limited to seven items (plus or minus two) of information.

-the memory span depends on the category of chunks used; the span is around seven for digits, six for letters, and five for words

VIII. Motivation & Emotion

Cannon, Walter (1871-1945) and Philip Bard (1898-1977) -developed the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion

-demonstrated that similar physiological changes correspond with drastically different emotional states -suggests that the biological change and the cognitive awareness of the emotional state occur

simultaneously

James, William (1842-1910) and Carl Lange (1834-1900) -developed the James-Lange theory of emotion

-suggests we feel emotion because of biological changes caused by stress

-Example: when the big bad wolf jumps out of the woods, Little Red Riding Hood’s heart races. This physiological change causes her to feel afraid.

Kinsey, Alfred (1894-1956)

-renowned for his pioneering research on human sexuality

-although controversial, his extensive research provides data that is still used as a baseline for modern research

Maslow, Abraham (1908-1970) (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs)

-founder of humanistic psychology; focused on what constituted positive mental health -psychologist that pointed out that not all needs are created equal

-predicts which needs we will be motivated to satisfy first

-we will act to satisfy biological needs like survival and safety; then emotional needs like love and self-esteem; then we will want to attain life goals like satisfaction and self-actualization, a need

to fulfill our unique potential as a person Schachter, Stanley (1922-1997) (Two-Factor Theory of emotion)

-explains emotional experiences in a more complete way than either James-Lange or Cannon-Bard -suggests that both our physical responses and our cognitive labels (our mental interpretations) combine

to cause any particular emotional response.

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Selye, Hans (1907-1982)

-best known for his study on stress

-Selye’s three-stage general adaptation syndrome, stress begins with an alarm reaction when people confront a stress-producing event by mobilizing internal resources such as producing adrenaline,

to bring about the fight or flight response. If the stressor continues, the body enters a second stage of resistance characterized by heightened physiological arousal and a sudden outpouring of hormones. Long-term exposure to the stressor event eventually leads to a third stage of

exhaustion that depletes the body’s resources and leads to physical disorders, vulnerability to illness, and a complete collapse

IX. Developmental Psychology

Ainsworth, Mary (1913-1999)

-development psychologist who devised a research procedure called the Strange Situation to observe attachment relationships between infants and their mothers

-used labels of secure attachment and insecure attachment

-securely attached infants tend to be well-adjusted, form successful social relationships, and perform better at school

-insecurely attached infants tend to form shallow relationships, appear withdrawn, and sometimes display a strong need for affection

-best known for his famous “Bobo doll” experiments illustrating the role of modeling in human behavior -he contends that observational learning is responsible for most human behavior

Baumrind, Diana (1927- )

-best known for her work on parenting styles based on “parental responsiveness” and “parental demandingness”

-permissive parents = set few rules, make minimal demands, allow children to reach own decisions -authoritative parents = set firm rules, make reasonable demands, listen to child’s viewpoint while still

insisting on responsible behavior

-authoritarian parents = set rigid rules, enforce strict punishments, and rarely listen to child’s viewpoint Erikson, Erik (1902-1994)

-influential theory on social development; said as we progress from infancy to old age, we enter eight psychosocial stages of development

-each stage corresponds with physical changes taking place in a distinctive setting

-combination of physiological changes and new social environments creates psychosocial crisis -particularly interested in adolescents struggle to overcome “role confusion” and find an identity -coined the phrase “identity crisis” to describe adolescents struggle to create meaningful identity Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939)

-placed special emphasis on how childhood experiences influenced adult personality Gilligan, Carol (1936- )

-best known for her critique of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development

-wrote book In a Different Voice arguing the participants in Kohlberg’s studies were all male -said scoring method Kohlberg used was biased toward boys

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Harlow, Harry (1905-1981)

-developmental psychologist who conducted a famous series of experiments on rhesus monkeys -gave orphaned baby monkeys two artificial surrogate “mothers”

-a cloth “mother” provided no milk but offered a soft terrycloth cover -a wire “mother” provided milk but offered no contact comfort

-whenever the baby monkeys were frightened, they preferred the cloth mother for protection/comfort Kohlberg, Lawrence (1927-1987)

-American psychologist who used moral dilemmas to study moral reasoning -stages of moral development is milestone in developmental psychology Lorenz, Konrad (1903-1989)

-regarded as the founder of ethology, the comparative study of animal behavior (including humans) and their natural surroundings

-studied imprinting and aggression

-concluded that the mechanism inhibiting aggression works less well in humans than among other species Piaget, Jean (1896-1980) (Cognitive Developmental Theory)

-Swiss psychologist who focused on the rational, perceiving child who has the capacity to make sense of the world; developed a stage theory describing how infants, children, and adolescents use

distinctly different cognitive abilities to understand the world

-describes how children view the world through schemata, cognitive rules we use to interpret the world -normally we incorporate our experiences into these existing schemata in a process called assimilation -sometimes information doesn’t fit into or violates our schemata, so we must accommodate and change

our schemata. Vygotsky, Lev (1896-1934)

-pioneering Russian psychologist and author

-placed emphasis on how culture and social interactions with parents and other significant people influenced a child’s cognitive development.

-Vygotsky said children learn their culture’s habits of mind through a process he called internalization

X. Personality

Adler, Alfred (1870-1937)

-career in both Europe and the U.S.

-called a Neo-Freudian, he used psychiatry in social work and early childhood education

-introduced mental health concepts such as “inferiority feeling”, “life-style”, “striving for superiority”, and “social interest”

-he tried to help patients “see the power of self-determination” and “command the courage” to alter their interpretation of events and life experiences

-best known for his famous “Bobo doll” experiments illustrating the role of modeling in human behavior -he contends that observational learning is responsible for most human behavior

Costa, Paul (1942- ) and Robert McCrae (1949- )

-personality theorists best known for the Five-Factor Model of Personality (“Big-Five Model”)

-Big-Five Model identifies openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism as broad domains or dimensions of personality, and the basic structure behind all personality traits Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939)

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Jung, Carl (1875-1961)

-Neo-Freudian who developed the concept of the “collective unconscious”

-collective unconscious includes shared human experiences present in cultural myths such as the innocent child, the wise grandfather, or the rebellious son

-said humans were symbol-using beings Maslow, Abraham (1908-1970)

-founder of humanistic psychology; focused on what constituted positive mental health -psychologist that pointed out that not all needs are created equal

-predicts which needs we will be motivated to satisfy first

-we will act to satisfy biological needs like survival and safety; then emotional needs like love and self-esteem; then we will want to attain life goals like satisfaction and self-actualization, a need to fulfill our unique potential as a person

Rogers, Carl (1902-1987)

-Rogers believed that people are motivated to achieve their full potential or self-actualize

XI. Testing & Individual Differences

Binet, Alfred (1857-1911)

-French psychologist who invented the first usable intelligence test -made distinction between a child’s mental and chronological age Galton, Francis (1822-1911)

-multifaceted British psychologist who applied statistics to variations in human abilities -developed the statistical concept of “correlation”

-was the first to demonstrate that the “normal distribution” could be applied to intelligence Gardner, Howard (1943- )

-best known for his theory on multiple intelligences

-disagrees with Spearman on there being a single general intelligence

-he believes there are a number of intelligences including linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist, interpersonal, and intrapersonal

Spearman, Charles (1863-1945)

-British psychologist who observed individual’s scores on various tests of intellectual performance correlated with one another

-people who tend to do well on one test of intellectual ability also tend to do well on other similar tests -based on his observations, Spearman proposed that intelligence is a single, underlying factor, which he

termed “general intelligence” or the “g factor” Sternberg, Robert (1949- )

-American psychologist best known for triarchic theory of intelligence

-triarchic theory distinguishes between analytic, creative, and practical intelligences -he believes each of these intelligences are learned and may be developed and enhanced Terman, Louis (1877-1956)

-best known for inventing the Stanford-Binet IQ test

-computed a child’s intelligence quotient (IQ) by dividing mental age by chronological age and multiplying by 100

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Wechsler, David (1896-1981)

-American psychologist who developed a series of widely used intelligence tests

-instead of using Terman’s IQ approach, Wechsler determined how far a person’s score deviates from a bell-shaped normal distribution of scores; most intelligence tests now use this system

XII. Abnormal Behavior – none

XIII. Treatment of Abnormal Behavior

Beck, Aaron (1921- )

-regarded as the father of cognitive therapy

-his pioneering theories are widely used to treat clinical depression Ellis, Albert (1913-2007)

-grandfather of cognitive-behavioral therapy; used Rational-Emotive approach (estab. 1955) -called the “A-B-C model” – Activating event is linked through Belief to the emotional Consequences -today it is called Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT)

-worked with clients to realize some beliefs such as “everyone should treat me with respect”

-helped them see more rational views such as “I like people to treat me with respect, but realize some people may not”

-this leads to a reduction in negative emotions Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939)

-placed special emphasis on how childhood experiences influenced adult personality Jones, Mary Cover (1896-1987)

-conducted pioneering research in applying behavioral techniques to therapy -she is often called the “mother of behavior therapy”

Rogers, Carl (1902-1987)

-Rogers believed that people are motivated to achieve their full potential or self-actualize Skinner, B.F. (1904-1990)

-coined the term operant conditioning; best-known behaviorist psychologist

-invented a special contraption, aptly named a Skinner box, to use in his research of animal learning -a Skinner box usually has a way to deliver food to an animal and a lever to press or disk to peck in order

to get the food

-the food is called a reinforcer, and the process of giving the food is called reinforcement Wolpe, Joseph (1915-1997)

-South African psychologist who perfected a technique for treating anxiety-producing phobias that he named systematic desensitization

-he first taught client to maintain a state of deep relaxation, then he worked with client to create a hierarchy of anxiety-arousing situations and images

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XIV. Social Psychology

Asch, Solomon (1907-1996)

-widely recognized as one of the pioneers in developing social psychology as an academic discipline -his study of conformity provided a vivid demonstration of how individuals respond to the social pressures

and expectations of others Festinger, Leon (1919-1989)

-best known for formulating the theory of cognitive dissonance

-cognitive dissonance is the state of psychological tension and anxiety that occurs when an individual’s attitudes and behaviors are inconsistent

-although it is possible to reduce dissonance by changing either one’s behavior or one’s attitude, most people modify their attitudes

Milgram, Stanley (1933-1984)

-known for famous and controversial study on obedience to authority which is one of the largest research programs in the history of social psychology

-demonstrated that ordinary citizens were willing to obey an authority figure who instructed them to administer electric shocks to an innocent “learner”

-also brought into light the proper code of ethics that should be used in psychological research Zimbardo, Philip (1933- )

-textbook author and developer of PBS-TV series Discovering Psychology

-best known for his Stanford Prison Experiment (classic, but controversial)

-illustrated how the process of deindividuation led to the reduction of personal responsibility and the abuse of power