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Psychology

This guide will help you get started with your research in psychology. It includes books, research databases, journals and links to useful websites.

Background Information

Psychology is the science or study of the thought processes and behavior of humans and other animals in their interaction with the environment. Psychologists study processes of sense perception, thinking, learning, cognition, emotions and motivations, personality, abnormal behavior, interactions between individuals, and interactions with the environment. The field is closely allied with such disciplines as anthropology and sociology in its concerns with social and environmental influences on behavior; physics in its treatment of vision, hearing, and touch; and biology in the study of the physiological basis of behavior. In its earliest speculative period, psychological study was chiefly embodied in philosophical and theological discussions of the soul (Source:Credo). 

Fathers of Psychology

Fathers of Psychology

Name Branch of Psychology Known For
Wilhelm Wundt Introspection Father of Psychology
Sigmund Freud Psychoanalysis Free Association and the Iceberg Metaphor
Ivan Pavlov Behaviorism Classical Conditioning and Pavlov's Dogs
B. F. Skinner Behaviorism Operant conditioning and Radical Behaviorism
John B. Watson Behaviorism "Little Albert" Experiment
Jean Piaget Constructivism Genetic Epistemology and Cognitive Therapy
Abraham Maslow Humanism Hierarchy of Needs and Self-Actualization
Carl Rogers Humanism Client-Centered Therapy and Self-Actualization
William James Functionalism Habit Forming
Edward B. Titchener Structuralism Introspection
Max Wertheimer Gestalt Psychology Phi Phenomena