Psychology Time-Line

By ala.bourbour

  • Phineas Gage

    Phineas Gage suffered brain damage when an iron pole pierces his brain.His personality was changed but his intellect remained intact suggesting that an area of the brain plays a role in personality.

  • On the Origin of Species

    Darwin published his ideas in "On the Origin of Species", which proposed the principle of natural selection.

  • G. Stanley Hall received PhD

    G. Stanley Hall received first PhD degree in psychology in the United States.

  • The Bith Year of Psychology

    Wilhelm Wundt opens first experimental laboratory in psychology at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Credited with establishing psychology as an academic discipline.
    With the help of G. Stanley Hall he conducted the reaction Time experiment.

  • Sigmund Freud & the University of Vienna

    Sigmund Freud received his MD degree from the University of Vienna.

  • Hermann Ebbinghaus introduced the nonsense syllable as a means to study memory processes

    He was the first person to conduct scientific research on forgetting. He made up and memorized a list of 13 nonsense syllables and then assessed how many of them he could remember as time passed.

  • James-Lange Theory of Emotion

    Experience of emotion is awareness of physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli

  • William James and Funtionalism

    Its most prominent American advocates are William James and John Dewey, whose 1896 article "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" promotes functionalism.

  • Thorndike, Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in Animals.

    E. L. Thorndike established the power of consequences in determining voluntary behavior.

  • Norman Triplett, First Experiment in Social Psychology

    Cyclists raced faster when competing against other people, rather than a clock.

  • Charles Spearmann, "General Intelligence" Objectively Determined and Measured.

    He introduced the idea that intelligence captures a common genral anility that is reflected in performance on various cognitive tests,

  • Pavlov won the Nobel Prize

    Won the Nobel Prize for investigating the gastric function of dogs, through externalizing a salivary gland so he could collect, measure and analyze the saliva and what response it had to food under different condition.

  • Alfred Binet develops concept of mental age

    An individuals level of mental development

  • William Stern devised IQ

    Intelligence quotient

  • John E. Watson published ‘Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It’ marking the beginnings of Behavioral Psychology.

  • Hermann Rorschach developed the Rorschach Inkblot Test

    A famous projective test that uses an individual's perception of inkblots to determine his or her personality.

  • Kohler, The Mentality of Apes

    Observing the behavior of apes--the stick problem and the box problem-- does not involve trial and error or simple connections between stimuli and responses.
    Insight learning

  • Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud, published her first book expanding her father’s ideas in the treatment of children.

  • Tolman, Purposive Behavior in Animals and Man

    Tolman emphasized that the information value of conditioned stimulus is important as a signal or an expectatin that an unconditioned stimulus will follow.

  • Walter B. Cannon coined the term homeostasis and began research on the fight or flight phenomenon.

  • Henry Murray and Christiana Morgan, A Method of Investigating Fantasies: The Thematic Apperception Test.

    Is designed to elicit stories that reveal something about an individual's personality.

  • Skinner, The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis

    Skinner created the "Skinner Box" to study organisms under precisely controlled conditions so that they could examine the connection between the operant behavior and the specific consequences in minute detail.

  • John Dollard and his colleagues, Frustration and Aggression

    Proposed the frustration-aggression hypothesis, which states that frustration- the blocking of an individual's attempts to reach a goal- always lead to aggression.

  • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was developed

    fast became the most widely researched and widely accepted psychological assessment device.

  • Henry Murray's psychological profile of Adolf Hitler.

    It developed during WWII, which serves as a model for criminal profiling today.

  • Karl Lashley, In Search of the Engram. In Symposium of the Society for Experimental Biology.

    Studied on rats brains, memories are not stoed in a specific location in the brain.

  • Dollard & Miller, Drive-Reduction Theory

    the idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need

  • Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children

    He described 2 processes responsible for how people use and adapt their schemas: Assimilation adn Accomadation.
    Changed the way we think about the development of children's minds.

  • Thorozine (Tranquilizer) Invented

    State of Clinical psychology changed.
    For psychology treatment only.

  • Leon Festinger, A Theory of Social Comparison Processes

    Proposed a theory of social comparison positing that when individuals lack objective means to evaluate their opinions and abilities, they compare themselves with others.

  • George Miller, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus 2: Some limits on Our Capacity for Information Processing

    He examined the limited capacity of short-term memory.

  • Benjamin Whorf, Language, Thought and Creativity

    That language determines the way we think, a view that has been called the libguistic relatively hypothesis.

  • Harry Harlow, The Nature of Love. American Psychologist

    Harlow demonstrates the essential importance of warm contact.
    Studied on infant monkeys separated from their mothers.

  • Kohlberg, The Developmetn on Modes of Moral Thinking and Choice in the Years 10 to 16.

    Created a provactive theory of moral development. In his view, "Moral development consists of a sequence of qualitative changes in the way an individual thinks".

  • Fritz Heider, The Psycholgy of Interpersonal Relations, Attribution Theory

  • Berlyne, Arousal Theory

    Even when all our biological needs are met, we feel driven to experience stimulation.

  • Bekesy Won a Nobel Prize

    Bekesy won a Nobel Prize in 1961 for his research on the basilar membrane.
    He studied the effects of vibration applied at the oval window on the basilar membrane of human cadavers.

  • Bandura, Transmission of Aggression Through Imitation of Aggressive Models.

    Bobo Doll Study-- Observational Learning-- Children who had watched an aggressive adult model were more likely to behave aggressively when left alone. than were children who had observed a non-aggressive model.

  • Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person

    Which was a development in the humanistic perspective. Believed that we are all born with the raw ingeridents of a fulfillinf life. We simply need the right conditions to thrive.

  • Vogel and Bogen severed the corpus collosum of epilepsy patients (makor seizures)

  • Levvygotsky, Cognitive Development

    He recognized that cognitive development is an interpersonal process that happens in a cultural context. A chid is not simply learning to think about the world - he or she is learning to think about his or her own world.

  • Stanley Milgram's Obedience Program, Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority

  • Robert Zajonc, Social Faciliation

    improved performance of tasks in the presence of othersoccurs with simple or well-learned tasks but not with tasks that are difficult or not yet mastered

  • J. L. Freedman & S.C. Fraser, Compliance Without Pressure: The Foot-In-The-Door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Pschology

  • Hans Eysenck, The Biological Basis of Personality

    The first to describe the role of a particular brain syste, in personality. He developed an approach to extraversion/introversion based on the reticular activation system (RAC).

  • Daryl Bem, Sel-Perception: An Alternative explanation of Cognitive Dissonance Phenomena

    How behaviors influence attitudes, stating that individuals make inferences about their attitudes by perceiving their behavior.

  • Marty Seligman, Failure to Escape Traumatic Shock

    Learned helplessness. The experiment of shocking dogs in a box.

  • Leon Kamin, Attention-Like Processes in Classical Conditioning

    Kamin conditioned a rat by repeatedlt pairing a tone (CS) & a shock (US) until the tone alone produces fear (conditioned response). The experiment illustrates the importance of an organism's history and the information provided by a conditional stimulus in classical conditioning.

  • Erik Erikson, Indentity: Youth and Crisis

    Generated one of the most important developmental theories of the 20th century. Proposed 8 psychosocial stages of development from infany through late adulthood.
    Emphasize how a person's psychosocial life is embedded in and shaped by social relationships and challenges faced by the developing person.

  • John Darley and Bibb Latane, Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibllity.

    Conducted studies on the bystander effect. The tendency for an individual who observes an emergency to help less when other people are present than whem the observer is alone.

  • The Atkinson-Shiffrin Theory

    Human Memory: A proposed system and its contol processes.

  • John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss

    Continue in 1989, John Bowlby

  • Freud and Structures of Personality

    Freud described the 3 structures of personality, the id, the ego and the superego.

  • Philip Zimbardo, The Power and Pathology of Imprisonment.

    Stanford prison experiment, demonstrates the power of obedience.

  • Ernest Becker, The Birth and Death of Meaning

    Drew together theory and research from the social sciences to devise a grand theory of human life and culture. Our capacity for self-awareness evolved, so did the human ability to create and invest in culture.

  • Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature

    Maslow examines the role of "peak experiences" in the lives of individuals who seemed to exemplity the best in human life.

  • Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority

    Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority.

  • Leanord Hayflick, The Cellular Basis for Biological Aging

    He introduced the cellular-clock theory, which views that cells can divide a maximum of about 100 times abd that as we age, our cells become less capable od dividing.

  • Allan Hobson, Activation-Synthesis Theory, Dreams

    Studied how dreaming activity was linked to brain activity

  • Latane, The Psychology of Social Impact- Social Loafing

  • Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice

    Argues that "many girls seem to fear, most of all, being alone-without friends, family and relationships".
    Care perspective

  • Diener, The Satisfaction with Life Scale

    Diener and his students devised a self-report questionaire that measures how satisfied a person is with his/her life scale.

  • Jeffrey Gray, The Psychology of Fear and Stress

    Proposed a neuropsychology of personality, called reinforcement sesitivity theory, that has been the subject of much research. Posited that 2 neurological systems- the behavioral inhibition system (BTS), could be viewed as underlying personality.

  • John Bowlby, Secure and Insecure Attachment

    Bowlby theorized that the infant and the mother instintively form an attachment. Out early relationships with our caregivers are internalized so that they serve as our sense of self and the social world.

  • McAdams, Intimacy: The Need to be Close

    He introduced the concept of intimacy motivation
    The intimacy motive is an enduring concern for warm interpersonal encounters for their own sake.

  • Paul Ekman’s Theory of Emotions

    The Duchenne Smile: Emotional expressions and brain physiology

  • Robert White, Exploring Personality The Long Way: The Study of Lives

    Referred to the study of narratives as exploring personality .
    Personality Structure in the life course: Essay on Personology in the Murray Tradition.

  • Stanley Rapaport,Interview. U.S. News and World Report

    compared the brains of younger and older adults when they were engaged in the same tasks. The older adults' brains literally rewired themselves to compenstate for losses. He concluded that as brain age, they can shift responsibilitis for a given task from one region to another.

  • Lost in a Mall Study

    Loftus and Pickerell perform misinformation effect experiment, successfully planting a false memory of participant getting lost in a mall. A 5 year old and being rescued by an elderly person.

  • David Winter, The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders: With Profiles of Saddam Hussein and Bill Clinton

    Measuring the motives of political actors at a distance

  • Gottman, Secrets of Long Term Love

    followed married couples, as well as same-sex partners, to find out the secrets of long term love.

  • Dweck, Mindset

    Dweck studied first year pre-med majors taking their first chemistry class in college. Students with a growth mindset got higher grades than those with a fixed mindset.

  • Easton, Sleep Study

    conducts sleep study average American spends 7.5 hours in bed, but only gets 6.1 hours of sleep

  • Susanne Jaeggi & colleague, Improving Fluid Intelligence with Training on Working Memory.

    Found that undertaking complex memory tasks led to enhanced reasoning ability.

  • John B. Watson and the Experiment of Little Albert

    Conditioned emotional reactions in the Journal of Experimental Psychology