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Sir Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) is a nineteenth- century English mathmatician and scientist who wanted to understand how heredity influences a person's abilities, character, and behavior. The data Galton used were based on his study of biographies. He went on to invent procedures for directly testing the abilities and characteristics of a wide range of people. His theories and techniques became central aspects of the new science. In 1883 he published a book. -
Wilhem Wundt
In 1879, Wilhem Wundt ( 1832-1920) started his laboratory of psychology. Wundt is acknowledged as establishing psychology as a seperate formal field of study. He was a structionalist, which means that he was interested in the basic elements of human experiance. He developed a method of self-observation called introspection to collect information about the mind. Wundt advanced our understanding of the mind and attracted many students who carried on the tradition of psychological research. -
Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov (1839-1936) charted a new course for psychological investigation. Pavlov rang a fork each time he gave a dog some meat. The dog would normally salivate when the powder reached its mouth. After Pavlov repeated the procedure several times, the dog would salivate as soon as it heard the ringing. The conditioned reflex was a response(salivation) provoked by a stimulus. The concept was used by others as a new tool to explain how certain acts among other were the result of learning. -
William James
William James (1842-1910) taught the first class in psychology at Harvard University in 1875. It took him 12 years to write the first textbook of psychology (1890). James speculated that thinking, feeling, learning, and remembering- all activities of the mind- serve one major function: to help us servive as a species. He focused on the funtions and purposes of the conscious mind and the goals or functions or purposes of behaviors. -
Sigmund Freud
SIgmund Freud (1856-1939) was a physician who practiced in Vienna until 1938. He was more interested in the unconscious mind. Freud used a new method for indirectly studying unconscious processes; known as free association. Freud's role, psychoanalyst, was to be objective. He sat and listened and then interpreted the associations. Freud believed that dreams are expressions of the most primitive unconscious urges. To learn more about the urges, he used dream analysis. -
Mary Whiton Calkins
Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930) a female poineer in psychology, that contributed greatly to the field of psychology despite numerous obstacles. In the 1800s, north American universities didn't accept women into Ph.D programs. But, Harvard William James admitted Calkins into his graduate seminar. All the students in the seminar protested against Calkins, so James tutored her alone. Calkins later on served as a full professor of psychology at Wellesley college. -
John B. Watson
John B. Watson (1878-1958) said that psychology should concern itself only with the observable facts of behavior. Watson further maintained that all behavior, even instinctive behavior, is the result of conditioning and occurs because the appropriate stimulus is present in the enviroment. -
B.F Skinner
B.F Skinner (1904-1990) was the one who introduced the concept of reinforcement. He attempted to show how his laboratory techniques might be applied to society as a whole. In his novel Walden two (1948), he portrayed his idea of Utopia.
