Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Psychology,

#1351

Alexander Todorov

#62264

Overall Influence

Alexander Todorov is a Bulgarian professor of psychology at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Before his current position, he was a professor at Princeton University. His research is focused on how humans perceive, evaluate, and make sense of the social world. Todorov's research on first impressions has received media coverage from the New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, The Daily Telegraph, Scientific American, National Geographic, BBC, PBS, and NPR.

#1352

Serge Tisseron

#42533

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Serge Tisseron is a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. He holds a PhD in Psychology. He is a senior research fellow at University Paris VII Denis Diderot. He is a member of Centre of Psychoanalysis Research, Medicine and Society at Université Paris VII . He studies the relationships between youth, the media and images and the effect of information and communication technology on young people. He is also an illustrator and a photographer.

#1353

Kevin MacDonald

Kevin MacDonald

#15999

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Kevin B. MacDonald is an American antisemitic conspiracy theorist, white supremacist, and retired professor of evolutionary psychology at California State University, Long Beach . In 2008, the CSULB academic senate voted to disassociate itself from MacDonald's work.

#1354

Jeremy M. Wolfe

#78582

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

#1355

Russell E Glasgow

#78591

Overall Influence

#1356

Lenore E. Walker

#21746

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Lenore Edna Walker is an American psychologist who founded the Domestic Violence Institute, documented the cycle of abuse and wrote The Battered Woman, published in 1979, for which she won the Distinguished Media Award that year. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1987.

#1357

Edward Wasserman

#59397

Overall Influence

Edward A. Wasserman is a professor of psychology at the University of Iowa. His research focusses on comparing cognitive processes in human and non-human animals. Wasserman has over 250 publications in peer reviewed academic journals. In 2015 Wasserman was honoured by the Comparative Cognition Society for his contributions to the study of animal cognition.

#1358

Juliette Favez-Boutonnier

#51851

Overall Influence

1903 - 1994 (91 years)

Juliet Favez-Boutonnier was a French academic, psychologist and psychoanalyst. Career After writing successive theses on ambivalence and angst, Favez-Boutonnier became a member of the SFP in the tradition of Pierre Janet, working to have psychoanalysis accepted in academia as a form of psychology.

#1359

Elizabeth Stokoe

Elizabeth Stokoe

#40394

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Elizabeth Stokoe is a British social scientist and conversation analyst. Since January 2023, she has been Professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at The London School of Economics and Political Science. She was previously Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University in the Discourse and Rhetoric Group, where she remains an Honorary Professor. She has been Professor II at University of South-Eastern Norway since 2016.

#1360

Robert J. Glushko

#38523

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Robert J. Glushko is an adjunct professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Information. He has written a number of books including Document Engineering and The Discipline of Organizing .

#1361

Jill de Villiers

#64822

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Jill G. de Villiers is a developmental psychologist known for her work in the field of language acquisition. She holds the position of Professor of Philosophy and Sophia and Austin Smith Professor of Psychology at Smith College. de Villiers is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. In 2018, she was elected as a Member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#1362

Constance M. Holden

#78950

Overall Influence

#1363

Sara Smilansky

#72353

Overall Influence

1922 - 2006 (84 years)

Sara Smilansky was a professor at Tel Aviv University in Israel and was a senior researcher for The Henrietta Szold Institute: The National Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences for the Ruth Bressler Center for Research in Education. She has been a visiting professor for many well known universities such as the University of Maryland, College Park. She focused her research on play training and its effects on children. Her research included studying both Israeli and American, as well as advantaged and disadvantaged, children. She wrote multiple books on children's play and its relation to learning, the effect of divorce and death on children, and the development of twins.

#1364

Charles Hulme

#65075

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Charles Hulme, is a British psychologist. He holds the Chair of Psychology and Education in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, and is a William Golding Senior Research Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. He is a Senior Editor of Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

#1365

Sven Å. Christianson

#73704

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Sven Åke Christianson is a Swedish professor of psychology. He is also a psychologist and writer. His research primarily concerns the function of human memory, crime and mental trauma and interview methods. He is widely discredited and his methods are considered pseudoscientific and unreliable.

#1366

Allan Meakin Collins

#79163

Overall Influence

#1367

Todd Rose

#39627

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Larry Todd Rose is a scientist, author, professor and social entrepreneur. He is known for being the co-founder and CEO of Populace, a Boston-based think tank. Prior to Populace, Rose was a professor at the Harvard University where he served as the faculty director of the Mind, Brain, and Education program, as well as led the Laboratory for the Science of Individuality.

#1368

Eveline Crone

#53199

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Eveline Crone is a Dutch professor of cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology at Leiden University. Her research focuses on risky behaviors in adolescent humans during puberty and examines the function of those risks. For her research in adolescent brain development and behaviour, she was awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest recognition for Dutch scientists, in 2017.

#1369

Roger W. Schvaneveldt

#61276

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Roger W. Schvaneveldt is an American experimental psychologist with a focus on basic and applied research in cognitive psychology. He earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1967 and has been on the faculties of Stony Brook University , New Mexico State University , and Arizona State University .

#1370

Donald Stuss

#65234

Overall Influence

1941 - 2019 (78 years)

Donald Thomas Stuss OC, OOnt, FRSC, FCAHS was a Canadian neuropsychologist who studied the frontal lobes of the human brain. He also directed the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest from 1989 until 2009 and the Ontario Brain Institute from 2011 until 2016.

#1371

Kathy Pezdek

#63805

Overall Influence

Kathy Pezdek is Professor and Associate Dean of the School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences , Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Dr. Pezdek is a cognitive psychologist specializing in the study of eyewitness memory. She frequently serves as an expert witness in the area of eyewitness identification and has testified on this topic in Federal, State and Superior Court cases. Her extensive research has focused on a range of topics related to Law and Psychology that apply to both adults and children. These topics include face memory, false memory, suggestibility of memory, lineup techniques, and detecting deception.

#1372

Paul-Laurent Assoun

#66459

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Paul-Laurent Assoun is a former student of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud. Career Psychoanalyst and Professor at the université de Paris VII where he founded the department of clinical human science , he is a member of the UMR CNRS psychoanalysis and social practice. From 1987-1993, he taught social and political philosophy at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Paul-Laurent Assoun is also the director of the Philosophie d'aujourd'hui collection of Presses universitaires de France, Psychoanalysis and social practice at Anthropos/Economica and a member of the editing committee of the...

#1373

Fred R. Volkmar

#46030

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Fred Robert Volkmar is a psychiatrist, psychologist, and the Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. From 2006 to 2014, he was the director of the Yale Child Study Center and the head of child psychiatry at Yale New Haven Hospital. Prior to these appointments, he was the director of the Autism Program at the Yale Child Study Center since 1983.

#1374

Tatyana Chernigovskaya

Tatyana Chernigovskaya

#23202

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Tatyana Vladimirovna Chernigovskaya is a Soviet and Russian scientist in the field of neuroscience, psycholinguistics and theory of mind, a Honored Worker of Science . On her initiative in 2000 was first open training specialization "Psycholinguistics" , Member of the Council on Science and Education under President of the Russian Federation.

#1375

Kathleen Vohs

#69952

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Kathleen D. Vohs is an American Psychologist. She is Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Land O'Lakes Chair in Marketing in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In 2015, she was named an ISI Highly Cited Researcher, and in 2018, she received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Consumer Psychology.

#1376

Ap Dijksterhuis

#43427

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Albert Jan "Ap" Dijksterhuis is a Dutch Social Psychologist at Radboud University Nijmegen. He received his Ph.D in Social Sciences from Radboud University Nijmegen in 1996. His adviser was Ad van Knippenberg. From 1996-1999, he did post-doc work as a Research Fellow of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, located in Amsterdam. In 2000, he became a professor at the University of Amsterdam, returning to Radboud University Nijmegen in 2006. In 2007, his first book was published, in Dutch, called ‘Het slimme onbewuste’ .

#1377

Leonard Katz

#54006

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Leonard Katz was an American experimental psychologist, born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut and then professor emeritus until 2017. He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Psychological Science.

#1378

Helen Neville

#51134

Overall Influence

1946 - 2018 (72 years)

Helen J. Neville was a Canadian psychologist and neuroscientist known internationally for her research in the field of human brain development. Personal life and education Neville received a B.A. from the University of British Columbia, an M.A. from Simon Fraser University, and a Ph.D. from Cornell University, and she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego. She has been employed as Director of the Laboratory for Neuropsychology at the Salk Institute and as a professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at UCSD before joining th...

#1379

Winfried Rief

#74536

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Winfried Rief is a German psychologist. Since 2000 he has been a professor of clinical psychology and psychotherapy at the University of Marburg. Rief's research examines the psychological factors involved in the development, maintenance and management of physical complaints, including investigations of somatic symptom disorders and placebo effects. Rief is the founding editor of the academic journal Clinical Psychology in Europe.

#1380

Lila R. Gleitman

#29781

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

Lila Ruth Gleitman was an American professor of psychology and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. She was an internationally renowned expert on language acquisition and developmental psycholinguistics, focusing on children's learning of their first language.

#1381

Donelson R. Forsyth

#55365

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

John Donelson Ross Forsyth is an American social psychologist. Forsyth studied sociology and psychology at Florida State University and pursued further study in psychology at the University of Florida where he earned a master of arts degree and doctorate. Forsyth began his teaching career as an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1978. He was promoted to associate professor in 1983, and became a full professor in 1989.

#1382

Helena C Kraemer

#79834

Overall Influence

#1383

Patrick J. Curran

#63084

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Patrick James Curran is an American statistician and professor of quantitative psychology at the University of North Carolina, where he is also a faculty member at the Center for Developmental Science.

#1384

Leann Birch

#61013

Overall Influence

1946 - 2019 (73 years)

Leann L. Birch was an American developmental psychologist, best known for her research on children's eating behaviors. Early life and education Birch was born in Owosso, Michigan, and grew up primarily in Southern California. She obtained a bachelor's degree in psychology from California State University, Long Beach in 1971. She completed her graduate studies in psychology at the University of Michigan, earning a master's degree in 1973 and a PhD in 1975.

#1385

Mario Mikulincer

#80045

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

#1386

Ann Belford Ulanov

#40196

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Ann Belford Ulanov is an American academic and psychotherapist. She is the Christiane Brooks Johnson Memorial Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and a Jungian analyst in private practice.

#1387

Michael McCullough

#57629

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Michael McCullough is an American psychologist and author. He received a PhD from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1995 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Louvain in 2015. He is a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, where he directs the Evolution and Human Behavior Laboratory. He studies the functions of human behavior and emotions using the conceptual tools of evolutionary psychology and cognitive science. He has conducted research on the measurement of forgiveness, empathy, altruism, prosocial life goals, and early life experience. He is th...

#1388

Ken Pugh

#41616

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Kenneth R. Pugh is president, director of research, and a senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut and professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Connecticut. He is also an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics at Yale University, an associate professor in the Department of Diagnostic Radiology at the Yale School of Medicine, and director of the Yale Reading Center. Pugh is a cognitive neuroscientist and experimental psychologist who is best known for his work on the neural, behavioral and cognitive underpinnings of reading and other co...

#1389

Margaret Hermann

#50080

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Margaret G. "Peg" Hermann is an American political psychologist who was the long-time director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

#1390

Harold A. Sackeim

#64051

Overall Influence

Harold A. Sackeim is an American psychologist and electroconvulsive therapy researcher. He has been Chief of the Department of Biological Psychiatry at New York State Psychiatric Institute and Professor of Clinical Psychology in Psychiatry and Radiology at Columbia University. He received his bachelor's degree from Columbia in 1972; in 1974, he received his master's degree from Oxford University; and in 1977 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

#1391

Gísli Guðjónsson

#50184

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Gísli Hannes Guðjónsson, CBE is an Icelandic-British academic, educator, forensic psychologist and former detective. He is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Psychiatry of King's College London and a Professor in the Psychology Department at Reykjavik University. Gísli is an internationally renowned authority on suggestibility and false confessions and is one of the world's leading experts on false memory syndrome.

#1392

Yaacov Trope

#73406

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Yaacov Trope is a social psychologist who studies cognitive, motivational, and social factors that enable perspective taking, and effects of emotions and desires on social judgment and decision making. He is a Professor of Psychology at New York University.

#1393

Ruben Gur

#80334

Overall Influence

#1394

David Poeppel

#28628

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

David Poeppel is Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University . From 2014 until the end of 2021, he was the Director of the Department of Neuroscience at Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics . In 2019, he co-founded the Center for Language, Music and Emotion an international joint research center, co-sponsored by the Max Planck Society and New York University. Since 2021, he is the Managing Director of the Ernst Strüngmann Institute.

#1395

Abram Amsel

#64153

Overall Influence

1922 - 2006 (84 years)

Abram Amsel was a Canadian-born American psychologist and faculty member at several universities. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he conducted influential research into concepts of reward and nonreward in learning and behavior. Later, his research shifted from learning theory to neurobiology.

#1396

Donald N. Bersoff

#70232

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Donald Neil Bersoff is an American psychologist, attorney and academic. He was the president of the American Psychological Association in 2013. Before being elected president, Bersoff served as APA general counsel and held several leadership positions within the organization. He has been a faculty member at several law schools and he developed the nation's second joint graduate program in psychology and law. Bersoff has written four editions of a popular book on ethics and psychology.

#1397

John W. Pilley

#37505

Overall Influence

1928 - 2018 (90 years)

John W. Pilley was an American behavioral psychologist best known for his research into canine cognition and language learning with his Border collie, Chaser, who had the largest tested memory of any non-human animal. He was a professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Wofford College and was an avid kayaker throughout his life. Pilley was awarded an honorary Doctor of Psychology from Wofford College in 2016.

#1398

Brad Bushman

#16489

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Brad J. Bushman is the Margaret Hall and Robert Randal Rinehart Chair of Mass Communication Professor at Ohio State University. He also has an appointment in psychology. He has published extensively on the causes and consequences of human aggression. His work has questioned the utility of catharsis, and relates also to violent video game effects on aggression. Along with Roy Baumeister, his work suggests that it is narcissism, not low self-esteem, that causes people to act more aggressively after an insult. Bushman's research has been featured in Newsweek, on the CBS Evening News, on 20/20, and on National Public Radio.

#1399

Thomas M. Achenbach

#37547

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Thomas M. Achenbach is Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology and President of the nonprofit Research Center for Children, Youth, and Families at the University of Vermont. His research on syndromes of psychopathology gave rise to the terms “Internalizing” and “Externalizing”. His book in 1974 about developmental psychopathology was important to the foundation of this research area.

#1400

Aurelio José Figueredo

#38588

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Aurelio José Figueredo is an American evolutionary psychologist. He is a professor of psychology, Family Studies and Human Development at the University of Arizona, where he is also the director of the Ethology and Evolutionary Psychology Laboratory. He is also a member of the interdisciplinary Center for Insect Science at the University of Arizona. His major areas of research interest are the evolutionary psychology and behavioral development of life history strategy, cognition, sex, and violence in human and nonhuman animals, and the quantitative ethology and social development of insects, birds, and primates.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions