INFLUENTIAL PSYCHOLOGISTS

Psychologists who have had a major impact on who we approach Psychology

WILHELM WUNDTFather of experimental

psychologyFounder of the first lab

dedicated to psychologyBorn 1832, Died 1920 ‘Founded’

Structuralism – “to fully understand the nature of conscious experience such experience must be broken down into it’s simplest parts” (Liebert, 2006)

B.F. SKINNER Stated it was more useful to

study observable behaviour than the mind directly

Proposed the theory of Operant Conditioning

Used rats and pigeons to study this

Introduced the term ‘reinforcement’

Token Economy Behaviour is reinforced with a

token which is later exchanged for a reward

From his theories, behaviour modification was developed

JOHN B WATSON Worked under the discipline of

Behaviourism Famous for his Little Albert

study With the help of graduate assistant

Rosalie Rayner

Conditioning and behaviour modification techniques which are still used today are founded in Behaviourism

Opposed introspection Psychology must be purely

objective, its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behaviour

"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select--doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.“–John B. Watson, Behaviorism, 1930

SIGMUND FREUD The founder of psychoanalysis Proposed ideas of the id

(primal), ego (the ‘I’) and superego (moral compass)

Freudian slip – reveals unconscious desires/thoughts

Consciousness – conscious mind, preconscious (ordinary memory) and unconscious (reservoir of thoughts and feelings)

Psychosexual development (oral stage, anal stage, phallic stage, latent period, genital stage)

WILLIAM JAMESOpposed structuralism,

proposed Functionalism

James focused on the wholeness of an event, taking into the impact of the environment on behaviour

Proposed the stream of consciousness

The conscious experience of an individual regarded as a continuous, flowing series of images and ideas running through the mind.

JEAN PIAGETBelieved wrong answers

gave just as much insight as correct answers in IQ tests

Proposed a theory for development through stages

Demonstrated that children thought in drastically different manners to adults

Underpinned by: Schemas Equilibrium, assimilation and

accommodation 4 Stages of Development

IVAN PAVLOVFamous for Pavlov’s dog

study Introduced Classical

ConditioningPrinciples of CC is used

to treat many phobias and for animal training

Video link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL4eVFlz3gc

PIERRE PAUL BROCABroca did research into

the part of the brain known as Broca’s area (named after him) which is located in the frontal lobe

The Broca’s area is responsible for creating speech in a sequential and meaningful way

Damage to the Broca’s area can result in Broca’s aphasia -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2IiMEbMnPM

Video showing Broca’s aphasia

WILDER PENFIELDMapped many parts of

the brain using electrical stimulation

Linked parts of the brain with controlling certain parts of the body as well as certain emotions, feelings etc.

Linked the temporal lobe with memory

ROGER SPERRY Roger Sperry investigated the functions of separated

hemispheres of the human brain. Split brain study: He cut the corpus callosum to (a

treatment for severe epilepsy) He found in his study that when he displayed an image

to only one eye, and then the other, the subject would not recognise having seen it before. Hemispheres seem to be unaware of each other.

HERMANN EBBINGHAUSWas the first to

experimentally study memory

Discovered the forgetting curve, learning curve, and the serial position effect

Forgetting curve: without revisiting information, it will eventually be forgotten. The stronger the memory, the longer it is recalled.

Learning curve: slow begging, then steep learning curve, which plateaus out near mastery

Serial position effect: you will remember things at the start and end of a list but not as readily in the middle of the list

HOWARD GARDNER Proposed the theory of

Multiple Intelligences Linguistic Logical-mathematical Musical Bodily-kinaesthetic Spatial Interpersonal Intrapersonal Naturalistic

Posited that we have an/some ideal intelligences, but can develop all intelligences

Not well accepted by psychologists, but very well accepted by educators

SOLOMON ASCH Performed studies in social

psychology looking at the impact of group pressure ( specifically conformity) based on various influences, such as:

Group size Presence of a partner Written/spoken responses

Famous Conformity study Subjects were presented with three

lines, and they went around a table saying which was the longer line. The confederates would say the shortest line was the longest, and it was examined if people would change their answer to a clearly wrong one.

PHILIP ZIMBARDO Performed extremely

influential, and unethical, studies in social psychology

Most famous was the Stanford Prison experiment which aimed to test the hypothesis that the inherent personality traits of prisoners and guards are the chief cause of abusive behaviour in prison

This got out of hand, and it was found that when you were assigned a role, you acted according to what you expected you, in that role, should do