This list includes notable psychologists and contributors to psychology, some of whom may not have thought of themselves primarily as psychologists but are included here because of their important contributions to the discipline.
Specialized lists of psychologists can be found at the articles on comparative psychology, list of clinical psychologists, list of developmental psychologists, list of educational psychologists, list of evolutionary psychologists, list of social psychologists, and list of cognitive scientists. Many psychologists included in those lists are also listed below:
A
- Lyn Yvonne Abramson
- Alfred Adler
- Mary Ainsworth
- Hagop S Akiskal
- George Albee
- Jüri Allik
- Lauren Alloy
- Gordon Allport (one of founding figures of Personality psychology)
- Adelbert Ames, Jr.
- Harlene Anderson
- John R. Anderson
- Ernst Angel
- Heinz Ansbacher
- John Archer
- Michael Argyle
- Solomon Asch
- Roberto Assagioli
- John William Atkinson
- Aušra Augustinavičiūtė
- Virginia Axline (instrumental in the development of Play Therapy)
B
- Arthur J. Bachrach
- Alan D Baddeley
- Albert Bandura (Social learning theory)
- Bristi Barkataki (National Institute of Psychitary, Cognotive Theory)
- Russell Barkley
- Jerome Barkow
- Deirdre Barrett
- Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Lawrence W. Barsalou
- Daniel Batson
- Diana Baumrind
- Larry E. Beutler (Systematic Treatment Selection)
- Alfred Binet
- Robert Bjork
- Theodore H. Blau (first practising clinician elected president of APA}
- Stephen F. Blinkhorn
- Edmund Bourne
- Gordon H. Bower
- John Bowlby (founder of attachment theory)
- Nathaniel Branden
- Charles Brewer
- Carl Brigham
- Urie Bronfenbrenner (Ecological Systems Theory)
- Jerome Bruner
- Emily Bushnell
- David Buss
- Brian Butterworth
- Ruth M. J. Byrne
C
- Mary Whiton Calkins
- Donald T. Campbell
- James Cattell (helped establish psychology as a legitimate science)
- Raymond Cattell (Factor analysis, 16 Personality Factors and the Big Five, Fluid versus crystallized intelligence)
- Stephen J. Ceci (leading intelligence and memory specialist)
- Jean-Martin Charcot
- Nancy Chodorow
- Noam Chomsky
- Robert Cialdini
- Lee Anna Clark
- Clyde Coombs
- Leda Cosmides
- Catharine Cox
- Lee Cronbach
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
D
E
- Hermann Ebbinghaus
- Derek Edwards
- Paul Ekman (pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions)
- Albert Ellis (founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, grandfather of cognitive-behavioral therapies)
- Virgilio Enriquez (founder of Filipino Psychology)
- Erik H. Erikson (Erikson's stages of psychosocial development)
- Milton H. Erickson
- John E. Exner
- Hans Eysenck
F
G
- John Gabrieli
- Gordon G. Gallup, Jr. (mirror self-recognition (MSR) test)
- Francis Galton
- Riley Gardner
- Elmer R. Gates
- Bertram Gawronski
- Kenneth Gergen (social constructionism)
- J. J. Gibson
- Gerd Gigerenzer (bounded rationality)
- Carol Gilligan
- Stan Gooch
- Florence Goodenough
- Elizabeth Gould
- James Gross
- Robert Grosseteste
- Félix Guattari (founder of Schizoanalysis)
- J. P. Guilford
H
I
J
- William James (pioneering psychologist, James-Lange theory of emotion, Psychology of religion)
- Kay Redfield Jamison
- Julian Jaynes
- Arthur Jensen
- Marcia K. Johnson
- Philip Johnson-Laird
- Ernest Jones
- Mary Cover Jones
- Carl Gustav Jung
K
- Jerome Kagan
- Daniel Kahneman (Nobel Prize in Economics, notable in behavioral finance and hedonic psychology)
- Jacob Robert Kantor (organized scientific values into a coherent system of psychology)
- Alan S. Kaufman
- Nadeen L. Kaufman
- George Kelly
- Harold Kelley
- Otto F. Kernberg (psychiatrist)
- Doreen Kimura
- Melanie Klein
- Brian Knutson
- Kurt Koffka (co-founder of Gestalt psychology)
- Wolfgang Köhler (co-founder of Gestalt psychology)
- Lawrence Kohlberg (primary figure in moral psychology)
- Heinz Kohut
- Elizabeth Kübler-Ross
- Fritz Künkel (We-psychology)
L
- Jacques Lacan
- George Trumbull Ladd
- Ellen Langer
- Jan van der Lans
- Karl Lashley
- Bibb Latane
- Jan Lauwereyns
- Richard Lazarus
- Mark Lepper
- Kurt Lewin (pioneer of modern social psychology)
- David Lewis
- Benjamin Libet
- Rensis Likert (developed the Likert Scale)
- Marsha M. Linehan
- Elizabeth Loftus
- Konrad Lorenz
- Barry Lubetkin
- Alexander Romanovich Luria/Lurija
M
- Margaret Mahler
- James G. March (cognitive organizational psychologist)
- Ruth Marshall
- Karl Marx
- Abraham Maslow (Maslow's hierarchy of needs)
- William Masters and Virginia Johnson (physicians and sexologists)
- Rollo May
- Rufus May
- David McClelland
- James McClelland
- William McDougall
- Patrick J McGrath
- Phil McGraw
- Peter McGuffin
- David McNeill (Chicago psychologist)
- Jacques Mehler
- Ronald Melzack
- Wolfgang Metzger
- Stanley Milgram
- Alice Miller
- George A. Miller
- Neal E. Miller (instrumental in the development of biofeedback)
- Brenda Milner
- Arnold Mindell (founder of Process Oriented Psychology)
- Walter Mischel
- Jacob L. Moreno (founder of Psychodrama)
- C. Lloyd Morgan (noted for his canon)
- John Morton
- Orval Hobart Mowrer
- Hugo Munsterberg
N
O
P
Q
R
- Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
- Otto Rank
- Reimut Reiche
- Ulf-Dietrich Reips
- Daniel Reisberg
- Robert Remez
- Samuel Renshaw
- Cecil R. Reynolds
- Sylvia Rimm
- Carl Rogers (Person-centered therapy)
- James C. Ronning (Offered what is considered the definitive explanation of hypnosis)
- Eleanor Rosch
- Paul Rosenfels
- Robert Rosenthal
- Barbara Rothbaum (pioneer in the field of Virtual reality therapy)
- John Rowan
- Philip Rubin
- David Rumelhart
- Hermann Rorschach (created the famed Rorschach Test)
S
- Eleanor Saffran
- Virginia Satir
- Daniel Schacter
- Stanley Schachter (affiliation studies, Two-factor theory of emotion)
- Roy Schafer
- K. Warner Schaie
- Edgar Schein
- Gunter Schmidt
- Erich Schröger
- Walter Dill Scott
- Martin Seligman
- Tamara Sher
- Sara Shettleworth
- Morita Shoma
- Volkmar Sigusch
- Herbert Simon (Nobel Prize in Economics)
- Theodore Simon
- B. F. Skinner (founder of Radical behaviorism)
- Paul Slovic
- Stanley Smith Stevens
- Charles Spearman
- Robert Sternberg
- Harry Stack Sullivan
- William Swann
- José Szapocznik
T
- Lewis Terman
- Rachel Terry
- Andrew Thomas (Evolutionary psychologist)
- Edward Thorndike (puzzle boxes and work leading to theory of Connectionism)
- L. L. Thurstone
- Edward Titchener
- Edward C. Tolman
- John Tooby
- Ellis Paul Torrance
- Anne Treisman
- Jeanne Tsai
- Endel Tulving
- Elliot Turiel (founder of Domain Theory, the primary challenge to Kohlberg's stages of moral development)
- Amos Tversky
- David Tzuriel
U
V
W
- Henri Wallon (psychologist) (French psychologist)
- Hans-Jürgen Walter (founder of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy)
- Brian Wansink
- Margaret Floy Washburn (first female PhD in psychology)
- John B. Watson (Watsonian behaviorism)
- Paul Watzlawick
- David Wechsler
- Karl E. Weick - (cognitive organizational psychologist)
- Robert Weimar
- Max Wertheimer (co-founder of Gestalt psychology)
- Michael White (founder of Narrative Therapy)
- Ken Wilber (Transpersonal psychology, then Integral psychology)
- Glenn D. Wilson (personality and sexual behaviour)
- Donald Woods Winnicott
- Robert S. Woodworth
- Wilhelm Wundt (father of Experimental psychology)
X
Y
Z
Pre-modern theorists
This Section may be Unbalanced, with too much weight given to Arab scholars and not enough to others. Please add other notable pre-modern theorists who had an impact on modern psychology. |
- Haly Abbas (Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi)
- Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham)
- Alkindus (Al-Kindi)
- Aristotle
- Averroes (Ibn Rushd)
- Avicenna (Ibn Sina)
- Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi
- Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī
- Buddhaghosa
- René Descartes
- Søren Kierkegaard
- Moses Maimonides
- Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari