Edward Thorndike was born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, and grew up in a succession of New England towns where his father served as a Methodist minister. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University, Thorndike did graduate work in psychology, first at Harvard under the guidance of William James and later at Columbia under James McKeen Cattell. His first major research pr…
Edward Tolman was born on April 14, 1886, in Newton, Massachusetts. After graduation from the Newton public schools in 1907 and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1911, he did graduate study in psychology at Harvard. At Harvard (1911-1915), Tolman witnessed the initial reaction of the academic world to two new sets of psychological ideas: those of the Gestalt psychologists (Wolfgang…
The sense of touch is located in the skin, which is composed of three layers: the epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis. Different types of sensory receptors, varying in size, shape, number, and distribution within the skin, are responsible for relaying information about pressure, temperature, and pain. The largest touch sensor, the Pacinian corpuscle, is located in the hypodermis, the innermost thick…
Tourette syndrome (TS) affects roughly one in every 2,500 persons. The incidence of the condition is at least three times higher in males than in females. Historically, Tourette syndrome has been a largely misunderstood condition; it has been identified as demonic possession, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and other mental disorders, and was formerly thought to be the result of emotional problems due to…
Traits include such personality characteristics as introversion, aggressiveness, generosity, nervousness, and creativity. Systems that address personality as a combination of qualities or dimensions are called trait theories. The first comprehensive trait theory was that of Gordon Allport (1897-1967). Over a period of thirty years, Allport investigated over 18,000 separate traits, proposing severa…
Transference is the tendency for a client in psychotherapy, known as the analysand, to transfer emotional responses to their therapists that reflect feelings the analysand has for other significant people in his or her life. Transference often echoes clients' relationships with their parents or with other persons who played a central role in their childhood. They may become excessively depe…
Transgender, or transsexualism, a condition in which the individual defines him or herself as male or female in opposition to their physical gender, or feels strongly that he or she wants to live as a member of the other gender, is rare. By some estimates, no more than 1 person in 350,000 believes he or she was born the wrong gender. As they progress through childhood, their inability to relate to…
Identical, or monozygotic, twins are of the same sex and are genetically and physically similar because they both come from one ovum, which, after fertilization, divides in two and develops into two separate individuals. Fraternal, or dizygotic, twins occur when the mother produces two eggs in one monthly cycle and both eggs are fertilized. The conceptions may take place on two separate occasions …
In the 1970s, psychologists started investigating possible links between personality and health. Initial research seemed to indicate that persons with a type A Personality were at higher risk for coronary heart disease—a medical condition that consists of a narrowing of the blood vessels that supply blood to the heart. Type A people are achievement oriented, irritable, impatient with delays…
Sigmund Freud assumed that the human mind was divided into three divisions: the id, ego, and superego, which, in turn, had both conscious and unconscious portions. The id, motivated by two biological drives—sex and aggression—operates according to the pleasure principle, seeking satisfaction and avoiding pain. Guided by the reality principle, the ego's goal is to find safe and…
Unconscious motivation plays a prominent role in Sigmund Freud's theories of human behavior. According to Freud and his followers, most human behavior is the result of desires, impulses, and memories that have been repressed into an unconscious state, yet still influence actions. Freud believed that the human mind consists of a tiny, conscious part that is available for direct observation a…
Although the term "underachiever" commonly refers to anyone, child or adult, who performs below his or her potential, psychologists typically use the term to refer to a student whose performance in academic studies falls significantly below his scores on standardized tests of aptitude or ability. A student may also be considered to be underachieving based on the educator's eva…
The high incidence of violence in the United States is of great concern to citizens, lawmakers, and law enforcement agencies alike. Between 1960 and 1991, violent crime in the U.S. rose over 370 percent, and over 600,000 Americans are victimized by handgun crimes annually. Violent acts committed by juveniles are of particular concern: the number of American adolescents arrested for homicide has in…
The human eye is sensitive to only a limited range of radiation, consisting of wavelengths between approximately 400 to 750 nanometers (billionths of a meter). How the eye works. (Hans & Cassidy. Gale Research. Reproduced with permission.) The full spectrum of visible color is contained within this range, with violet at the low end and red at the high end. Light is converted into neu…
As a general example, a vocational aptitude test might consist of an instrument that assesses an individual's abilities, personality characteristics, and interests, and compares the individual's responses to those persons considered to be successful in their occupations and professions, with a notation of points of similarity and dissimilarity. Vocational aptitude tests are valuable …
Margaret Floy Washburn was the first woman ever to receive a doctorate in psychology and the second woman to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1931), the most eminent scientific society in the United States. The only child of Francis Washburn and Elizabeth Floy Davis, Washburn was raised in a middle class home in New York. The women in her family were exceptional and attained high le…
John Broadus Watson is best known as the founder of behaviorism, which he defined as an experimental branch of natural science aimed at the prediction and control of behavior. Its model was based on Ivan Pavlov's studies of conditioned reflex: every conduct is a response to a stimulus or to a complex set of stimulus situations. From birth, a few stimuli elicit definite reactions. But most b…
David Wechsler developed the first standardized adult intelligence test, the Bellevue-Wechsler Scale, in 1939. Likewise, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, published in 1949 and revised in 1974, was considered to be the best test available. The concept that intelligence involves the abilities necessary to succeed in life was one of Wechsler's major contributions to psychology. He…
The Wechsler Intelligence Scales are divided into two sections: verbal and nonverbal (or "performance"), with separate scores for each. Verbal intelligence, the component most often associated with academic success, implies the ability to think in abstract terms using either A test subject performs the block test portion of the Wechsler intelligence scales. (Will & Deni Mc…
Carl Wernicke was an influential member of the nineteenth-century German school of neuropsychiatry, which viewed all mental illnesses as resulting from defects in brain physiology. A practicing clinical neuropsychiatrist, Wernicke also made major discoveries in brain anatomy and pathology. He believed that abnormalities could be localized to specific regions of the cerebral cortex and thus could b…
Max Wertheimer was born in Prague on April 15,1880. At the University in Prague he first studied law and then philosophy; he continued his studies in Berlin Max Wertheimer (Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced with permission.) and then in Würzburg, where he received his doctorate in 1904. During the following years, his work included research on the psychology of testimony, deriving no doubt…
Withdrawal behavior is characterized by the tendency to avoid the unfamiliar, either people, places, or situations. Though withdrawal, or avoidance, can be the result of a temperamental tendency toward inhibition to unfamiliar events, anxiety over the anticipation of a critical evaluation, or a conditioned avoidant response, often called a phobia, can produce withdrawal. These are three different …
Joseph Wolpe's groundbreaking work as a behaviorist was grounded in his belief that behavior therapy was as much an applied science as any other aspect of medicine. He is probably best known for his work in the areas of desensitization and assertiveness training, both of which have become important elements of behavioral therapy. He was born on April 20, 1915 in Johannesburg, South Africa, …
In a word association test, the researcher presents a series of words to individual respondents. For each word, participants are instructed to respond with the first word (i.e., associate) that comes to mind. Freud believed that such responses provided clues to peoples' personalities (free association). Cognitive psychologists, however, use this procedure to investigate how semantic informa…
Wilhelm Wundt was born on August 16, 1832, in Baden, in a suburb of Mannheim called Neckarau. As a child, he was tutored by Friedrich Müller. Wundt attended the Gymnasium at Bruschel and at Heidelberg, the University of Tübingen for a year, then Heidelberg for more than three years, receiving a medical degree in 1856. He remained at Heidelberg as a lecturer in physiology from 1857 to…
Robert Yerkes was born in Pennsylvania, and was educated at Harvard University, where he received his doctorate in psychology in 1902. He served as professor of psychology at Harvard, the University of Minnesota, and Yale University, and as a member of the National Research Council. In 1919, Yerkes founded the Yale Laboratories of Primate Biology and served as its director from 1929 to 1941, when …
Edward Frank Zigler was born in 1930 to Louis Zigler and Gertrude (Gleitman) Zigler of Kansas, Missouri. His parents and two older sisters immigrated to the United States from Poland. After attending a vocational high school in Kansas City, Zigler earned his B.S. at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He went on to obtain his Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Texas at A…