1902-1977 Aleksander Luria's research on normal versus abnormal brain function was critically important in the understanding of how to approach brain injuries. Through his work, much was learned about the impact of head injuries, brain tumors, and the effects of mental retardation. He also studied brain activity among children in an attempt to understand how to minimize abnormal behavior. L…
Most widely known for her work in the psychology of sex differences, Eleanor Maccoby has achieved a distinguished career as an educator as well. She spent eight years in the 1950s as a lecturer and research associate in social relations at Harvard University. Later, she joined the faculty at Stanford University and eventually became chairman of the psychology department. Eleanor Emmons was born Ma…
Most episodes of mania—elation without reasonable cause or justification—are followed in short order by depression; together they represent the opposites described as bipolar disorder. Manic episodes are characterized by intense feelings of energy and enthusiasm, uncharacteristic self-confidence, continuous talking, and little need for sleep. People experiencing a manic period tend t…
Cannabis, in the form of marijuana, hashish (a dried resinous material that seeps from cannabis leaves and is more potent than marijuana), or other cannabinoids, is probably the most often used illegal substance in the world. In the United States, marijuana use became widespread among young people in the 1960s. By 1979, 68 percent of young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 had experimented with…
There are many different approaches to marriage counseling, which may be used alone or combined with other methods by the therapist. Among the oldest is the psychodynamic approach, which attributes problems within a marriage to the unresolved conflicts and needs of each spouse. Each client's personal history and underlying motivations are central to this mode of therapy. Therapists using th…
A central figure in humanistic psychology and in the human potential movement, Abraham Maslow is known especially for his theory of motivation. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Wisconsin in 1934. Maslow then began medical studies, which he discontinued within a year, after which he was offered a postdoctoral research fellowsh…
William Masters was born in Cleveland, Ohio, grew up in Kansas City, and did his undergraduate work at Hamilton College. He received his M.D. degree in 1943 from the University of Rochester School of Medicine, where he assisted in the laboratory research of George Washington Corner, who was studying and comparing the reproductive systems of animals and humans. Masters's interest in the stud…
Rollo May was one of the most influential American psychologists of the twentieth century. He helped to introduce European existential psychoanalysis to an American audience. He was a founder of humanistic psychology, with its focus on the individual, as opposed to the behaviorist psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis that was prevalent in the 1940s and 1950s. May's writings were both prac…
William McDougall was an experimental psychologist and theorist of wide-ranging interests. Above all, he believed in a holistic psychology that utilized every available tool for understanding the human psyche. He was the first to formulate a theory of human instinctual behavior, and he influenced the development of the new field of social psychology. Born in 1871, in Lancashire, England, the secon…
Margaret Mead was born in Philadelphia to a family of educators. In her youth, her main influences were her mother and maternal grandmother, both of whom had raised families and also pursued careers. Mead's formal education before entering college was sporadic, and she was mainly educated at home by her grandmother. An unhappy year at DePauw University turned Mead against coeducation, and s…
HEIGHTS IN CENTIMETERS OF FIFTEEN CHILDREN ARE: 124, 137, 144, 136, 157, 129, 130, 131, 125, 128, 133, 133, 129 Sum equals 1995; divide by 15 to get the mean of 133. In statistics, the mean refers to the value that results when all the scores in a data set are added together and the total is divided by the number of scores in the data set. In the example, the mean for a set of fifteen data points …
Psychologists rely heavily on measurements for very different purposes, ranging from clinical diagnoses based on test scores to the effects of an independent variable on a dependent variable in an experiment. Several different issues arise when considering measurement. One consideration is whether the measurement shows reliability and validity. Reliability refers to consistency: if the results of …
In statistics, the median represents the middle value in a group of measurements. It is a commonly used indicator of what measurement is typical or normal for a group. The median is joined by the mean and the mode to create a grouping called measures of central tendency. Although the mean is used more frequently than the median, the median is still an important measure of central tendency because …
According to reports the average American household has the television on for about seven hours a day. It is also reported that young people are increasingly turning to the Internet as a form of escape and information-gathering. The movie industry spends billions of dollars on new films every year. Advertising currently has more outlets, like television, billborads, magazines, radio, the Internet,…
Paul Everett Meehl, born on January 3, 1920, is a renowned expert in various aspects of clinical psychology. He earned his A.B. from the University of Minnesota in 1941, where he remained throughout his entire professional career. In 1945 he was awarded his doctorate from the same institution. His career as a faculty member at Minnesota has included his position as chair of the Department of Psych…
The term "melancholia" is derived from the Greek words melas, meaning black, and chole, meaning bile, and is a vestige of the ancient belief that a person's health and temperament are determined by the relative proportions of the four cardinal humors, or body fluids, which are blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile), and melancholy (black bile). The central feature of melancholic …
The brain's capacity to remember remains one of the least understood areas of science. What is understood is that memory is a process that occurs constantly and in varying stages. The memory process occurs in three stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Conditions present during each of these stages affect the quality of the memory, and breakdowns at any of these points can cause memory …
French psychologist and educator Alfred Binet theorized that a child who appears to have limited mental abilities is able to perform on a level characteristic of younger children; conversely, a child who appears to be gifted is able to perform on the level of older children. In 1905 Binet, in collaboration with Thèophile Simon, developed a scale on which mental age could be compared to the …
After decades of concentrating on mental illness and emotional disorders, many psychologists during the 1950s turned their focus toward the promotion of mental health. Attempts to prevent mental illness joined the emphasis on treatment methods, and promotion of "self-help" in many cases replaced the dependence on professionals and drug therapies. American psychologist Gordon Allport …
Beginning in the Middle Ages, mental hospitals were basically prisons. By the end of the eighteenth century, the term asylum was used, and some reforms were being implemented when the notion was introduced that psychological disturbances, like physical ailments, could be viewed as diseases requiring treatment rather than crimes calling for imprisonment. By the late 1800s, reactions against conditi…
Many mental hospitals are modernizing their treatment methods, including this one with patients participating in dance therapy. (Photo Researchers, Inc. Reproduced with permission.) Mental illness is a serious public health problem. According to the World Health Organization and the Harvard School of Public Health, mental illness accounts for nearly 11 percent of total worldwide disease bur…
Mental images are created by the brain from memories, imagination, or a combination of both. In the 1990s, scientists were gaining knowledge of how the brain forms these visual pictures without input from the eyes. According to researchers at Harvard University, the brain may generate these mental pictures in the area of the brain responsible for vision. Stephen Kosslyn, a psychologist, used posit…
The term mental retardation is commonly used to refer to people with an intelligence quotient (IQ) below70. An IQ of 80-130 is considered the normal range, and 100 is considered average. According to the definition in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), a mentally retarded person is significantly limited in at least two of the following areas: …
The Merrill-Palmer scales of mental tests are intelligence test for children aged 18 months to four years, which can be used to supplement or substitute for the Stanford-Binet test. Its 19 subtests cover language skills, motor skills, manual dexterity, and matching ability. They require both oral responses and tasks involving a variety of materials including pegboards, formboards, cubes, Kohs desi…
The word "mesmerize" means to hold one's attention as though that person were in a trance. Such was the popularity of Franz Mesmer, whose unorthodox methods of treating illness were highly popular with his patients. Those methods were criticized and ultimately dismissed by his contemporaries, and he lived out his days in obscurity. Yet his initial fame was the result of his su…
Metapsychology describes the effort to construct or to postulate a systematic and comprehensive set of general principles encompassing all of psychology, specifically including elements that are theoretical in addition to elements that are considered to have been empirically demonstrated; also known as nomothetic psychology. In classical Freudian psychoanalytical theory, the term metapsychology is…
Adolph Meyer was born in Niederweningen, Switzerland, and received an extensive medical education in neurology in Zurich, obtaining his M.D. in 1892. He emigrated to the United States in the same year. Beginning in 1893, Meyer worked for several hospitals, including a state hospital in Kankakee, Illinois, as a pathologist, and the New York State Hospital Service Pathological Institute, where he wa…
In Erik Erikson's influential scheme of human development, middle age is the period in which an individual is presented with the developmental task of choosing between ego stagnation (self-interest) and generativity, the capacity to care for others and make a positive contribution to society by being productive in work, parenting, or other activities. Carl Jung characterized the middle year…
Stanley Milgram (1933-1984), an American experimental psychologist at Yale University, conducted a series of experiments on conformity and obedience to authority. In these experiments, Milgram recruited subjects—ordinary citizens—through newspaper advertisements offering four dollars for one hour's participation in a "study of memory." When the subject arrived at…
Stanley Milgram carried out influential and controversial experiments that demonstrated that blind obedience to authority could override moral conscience. His early studies on conformity were the first experiments to compare behavioral differences between people from different parts of the world. Milgram also examined the effects of television violence, studied whether New York City subway riders …