Social Psychology Timeline

  • First American Ph.D.

    G. Stanley Hall becomes the first American to earn a Ph.D. in psychology
  • Birth of Psychology

    Birth of Psychology, Wilhelm Wundt founded the first formal laboratory for psychology and was the first person to ever call himself a psychologist
  • Classical conditioning

    Ivan Pavlov conducted an experiment to show that associations from repeated pairings of stimuli can train behaviors
  • Forming of the APA

    Hall forms the American Psychological Association
  • Text of Social Psychology

    McDougall expanded on Charles Darwin's view with the evolutionary perspective in his published book
  • The Sociocultural Perspective

    Edward Alsworth Ross argued that social behavior is caused by social groups rather than the individual
  • Social Facilitation

    Allport developed the idea that the presence of others influences our behavior in a certain way
  • Looking Glass Self

    Charles Horton Cooley came up with this concept that stated that our self images are heavily influenced by others' perceptions of us
  • Balance Theory

    Fritz Heider developed this theory that states that we need cognitive balance to achieve harmony and if we are off balance then we need to change something in order to restore it
  • Operant conditioning

    B.F. Skinner conducted an experiment on how a punishment and reward system can train one's behavior
  • Conformity experiment

    Solomon Asch conducted an experiment on group pressure to conform
  • Hierarchy of Needs

    Abraham Maslow developed this theory that we have 5 levels of needs ranging from nourishment as the most important and basic of needs to self actualization as the least important and a more luxury need.
  • Robber's Cave experiment

    Muzafer Sherif conducted this experiment to test aggression of competing groups over limited resources
  • Cognitive Dissonance Theory

    Festinger developed the idea that anything that causes inconsistencies in our beliefs will cause discomfort that will motivate us to either ignore the new ones completely or change our original beliefs to fit them
  • Dramaturgic Metaphor

    Erving Goffman developed this and it stated that most social interaction can be looked at as a play with actresses, actors, and roles
  • Initiation rites experiment

    Aronson and Mills conducted this experiment to see the effect of initiation rites and how it affects group evaluation
  • Misattribution of Arousal

    Schacter and Singer enacted an experiment on this concept and found that the cause of psychological arousal can be attributed to anything that you interpret it as even if it is incorrect
  • Desire for Approval

    Strickland & Crowne conducted an experiment on this with personality and scores and found that high need for approval correlated highly with yielding to the group consensus
  • Milgram Experiment

    Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment on the conflict between listening to authority figures and a person's conscience
  • Social Learning Theory

    Albert Bandura conducted the "bobo doll" experiment that introduced the idea that behavior in the social world can be modeled
  • W.D. Hamilton

    W.D. Hamilton developed the idea that individuals are designed to perform actions in order to help their genes survive rather than themselves
  • Physical Attractiveness experiment

    Walster et al showcased the impact of this through pairings of students that were made based on their ratings of how much they liked the partner solely on physical attractiveness
  • Person-situation Debate

    Walter Mischel published a book on the idea that there are no individual personalities of people, only situational influences
  • Power of familiarity

    Zajonc conducted an experiment that showcased that repeated exposure to a stimulus can easily cause increased liking
  • Cognitive response model

    Anthony Greenwald created this model that explained that the most important information we can get is from the responses of the subject
  • Symbolic interactionism

    Herbert Blumer developed this theory that stated that interaction has a role in the formations of meanings of individuals
  • Reinforcement Affect Model

    Byrne and Clore created this model to explain how we like and dislike others through positive or negative associations
  • Reciprocal Aid

    Robert Trivers pointed out that through helping someone, you both receive benefits
  • Stanford Prison Experiment

    Experiment for research on the effects of a prison environment on both the roles of prison guard and prisoner
  • Prosocial labels

    Kraut conducted an experiment on this and labeled adults as charitable, which eventually made them more willing to donate to charities
  • Opinion Conformity Experiment

    Mark Zanna and Susan Pack conducted this experiment on conformity of opinion to attractive others of the opposing sex
  • Theory of reasoned action

    Fishbein & Ajzen developed this theory that stated that attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control influence behavior through behavioral intentions
  • Self fulfilling prophecy experiment

    Snyder and Tanke discovered that women appear more charming over the telephone due to self fulfilling prophecies
  • Personal norms

    According to Shalom Schwartz, inner standards of behavior are formed through the link between internalized beliefs and values
  • Low-ball-technique

    Cialdini developed this technique that essentially means you trap the person in a commitment and raise the price of the service or product after
  • Labeling Effects

    Joan Grusec and her colleagues conducted an experiment where they gave labels to children and found that this increased their prosocial behavior even three weeks later
  • Conditions that we will help friends

    Abraham Tesser and Jonathan Smith conducted a study on this and found that we will help friends only if the success they gain will not harm how we view ourselves
  • Reactance Theory

    Brehm and Brehm developed this theory that states that we tend to want something more when we are restricted from access to it
  • Kinship Demography

    Sherman found that humans share this same pattern where they tend to help those who share genes with their ancestry
  • Personal Relevance

    Sivacek & Crano performed a study on this and found that people are much more likely to volunteer to do something if they felt that it was relevant to them on a personal level
  • Strong personal norm influence

    Schwartz & Howard conducted research on how personal norms influence behavior and found that high personal norms correlated with helpful behaviors strongly
  • Effects of self focus

    Frederick Gibbons and Robert Wicklund conducted a study on this and found that presence of a mirror decreased the helpfulness of subjects who thought they had scored poorly on a test, but it increased the helpfulness of those who thought they had done fine and who, consequently, had no absorbing self-concern to distract them from helping issues
  • Commitment influence

    Schwartzwald, Bizman, & Raz conducted an experiment on commitment and found that more people who committed to something in advance kept their word than those who didn't make the commitment in advance.
  • Defining Friendship

    Bukowski, Davis, and Todd defined the features of friendship
  • Instilled beliefs survey

    Galaskiewicz conducted a survey on this of U.S. corporations and found that self interest was a large factor in influencing them to donate money to charities
  • Sternberg's Triangular Model of Love

    Sternberg's made the triangular model of love that defined the main characteristics of love
  • Thats-not-all technique experiment

    Jerry Burger conducted an experiment on showcasing the power of this technique to increase sales
  • Dual process models of persuasion

    Petty and Cacioppo developed these in order to explain the ways that people are able to be persuaded
  • The heritability of individual differences

    Rushton found that identical twins are actually more alike in their helping patterns than non identical
  • End of Person-situation Debate

    David Funder published an article on how the debate is dead
  • Reactance against Authorities

    Dowd conducted an experiment on how strong reactance can be; strong enough to ignore advice from authorities and experts
  • Cross-cultural Altruism

    Leung found that different cultures, such as Japan and China help their own groups more than America helps their own
  • Bait-and-switch technique

    Robert Joule, Fabienne Gouilloux, and Florent Weber called this the lure technique and it involves trapping through commitment and, subsequently, changing the original arrangement to be more expensive or to something else unrelated
  • Reasons givers give for giving

    Hodgkinson and Weitzman conducted a study on this and found that the main reasons for helping others were for personal values and religious beliefs
  • Similarities sales technique

    Burn and Turner discovered that we are more influenced and attracted to people who are similar to us, especially when they are made prominent. We are more likely to comply with their requests.
  • Link in love

    Acker and Davis found a close link between deep intimacy and passion and commitment
  • Attractiveness influences in other situations

    Reingen & Kernan conducted an experiment on how many donations more attractive people get over others and found that they got almost double in one case
  • Reducing ability to counterargue

    Gilbert, Tafarodi, & Malone conducted an experiment on this by overburdening cognitive capacity of the subjects, which made them much more susceptible to persuasion
  • Socioanalytic theory of personality

    Hogan created this perspective and it suggested that agreeableness may have been vitally important to our ancestors survival
  • Attractiveness of Political Candidates

    Budesheim & DePaola conducted an experiment on how physical attractiveness of political candidates affects the amount of votes they get and found that the more attractive one is, the more votes they get
  • Self verification

    Beth Stark and Kay Deaux conducted a study on this and found that many people volunteer mainly to preserve and verify their self images
  • Humans' kinship

    Cunningham found that humans also have kinship demography
  • Effect of Prosocial action

    Elizabeth Midlarsky and Robin Nemeroff found that rescuers of Holocaust victims still had increasing of self esteem even after 50 years
  • Degree of family relatedness

    Cunningham did research on this and found that people were much more willing to help immediate family members and much less to nonrelatives
  • Features of Love

    Arthur Aron and Lori Westbay subjected 68 love features to factor analysis and sorted them into separate groups
  • Importance of group membership

    Deborah Terry and Michael Hogg conducted an experiment on importance of group membership and found that it is very necessary to guide people's behavior. If they don't identify enough with the group, it is likely they won't comply with demands of the group.
  • Beyond pleasure and pain

    Higgins suggested that people take a hedonistic approach to life and seek pleasure and avoid pain
  • Using Reciprocity

    Fehr, Gachter, & Kirchsteiger found that helping others greatly benefits the helper by giving them a material advantage to assist in furthering along their genes
  • Disrupt-then-reframe technique experiment

    Davis & Knowles conducted an experiment on this technique by changing the wording of the initial sale pitch to sound better comparatively
  • Transference experiment

    Chen and Anderson conducted an experiment on this and found that we treat people who remind us of someone important to us like that person, whether the feelings are positive or negative
  • Twin cooperation

    Segal conducted an experiment on this and found that identical twins are much more cooperative to benefit each other than non identical were
  • Expanded sense of "we"

    DeBruine L.M. determined the effects of facial resemblance to one's family genes and how those who are similar are more likely to receive help
  • Extending the "we"

    Burnstein proposed that people who grew up with generous parents who opened their homes to everyone should be altruistic and extend their "we" to all humans
  • Helping in modern society

    Bello did a poll in the US on how many people donate or volunteer their time to charity and found that about 80% of adults did this
  • The influence of social class on prosocial behavior

    Piff found that the higher social class one is, the less likely they will be giving and vice versa for those who are of lower social class
  • Surrogate family

    Lieberman & Lobel found that humans as well as animals react to people who weren't family that they grew up around as family members