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.

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List of the most influential people in Psychology,

#401

Elizabeth Bates

#11032

Overall Influence

1947 - 2003 (56 years)

Elizabeth Ann Bates was a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego. She was an internationally renowned expert and leading researcher in child language acquisition, psycholinguistics, aphasia, and the neurological bases of language, and she authored 10 books and over 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on these subjects. Bates was well known for her assertion that linguistic knowledge is distributed throughout the brain and is subserved by general cognitive and neurological processes.

#402

Robert Sommer

#9610

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

Robert Sommer is an internationally known Environmental Psychologist and held the position of Distinguished Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of California, Davis. Sommer wrote 14 books and over 600 articles, he was best known for his book Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design , which discusses the influence of the environment on human activities.

#403

Michael Daniels

Michael Daniels

#33797

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Dr Michael Daniels is a British transpersonal psychologist and parapsychologist. A Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, he was formerly a senior lecturer in Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University and Editor of Psychology Review .

#404

Lawrence Weiskrantz

#17495

Overall Influence

1926 - 2018 (92 years)

Lawrence Weiskrantz was a British neuropsychologist. Weiskrantz is credited with discovering the phenomenon of blindsight, and with establishing the role of the amygdala in emotional learning and emotional behavior. Blindsight is when a person with a brain injury causing blindness can nevertheless detect, point accurately at, and discriminate visually presented objects.

#405

Elkhonon Goldberg

Elkhonon Goldberg

#11373

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Elkhonon Goldberg is a neuropsychologist and cognitive neuroscientist known for his work in hemispheric specialization and the "novelty-routinization" theory. Biography Goldberg studied at Moscow State University with the great neuropsychologist Alexander Luria and moved to the United States in 1974. He is currently a Clinical Professor of Neurology at New York University School of Medicine, Diplomate of The American Board of Professional Psychology in Clinical Neuropsychology, and Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of SharpBrains, an online brain fitness center. He offers post-doctoral training in Neuropsychology at Fielding Graduate University.

#406

M. Brewster Smith

#15238

Overall Influence

1919 - 2012 (93 years)

Mahlon Brewster Smith was an American psychologist and past president of the American Psychological Association. His career included faculty appointments at Vassar College, New York University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago and University of California, Santa Cruz. Smith had been briefly involved with the Young Communist League as a student at Reed College in the 1930s, which resulted in a subpoena by the U.S. Senate in the 1950s. That activity caused him to be blacklisted by the National Institute of Mental Health for ten years without his knowledge.

#407

Alan S. Kaufman

#11796

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Alan S. Kaufman is an American psychologist, writer, and research professor known for his work on intelligence testing. Early life and career Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, Kaufman earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965; M.A. in Educational Psychology from Columbia University in 1967; and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1970 , specializing in psychometrics.

#408

John E. Exner

#10814

Overall Influence

1929 - 2006 (77 years)

John E. Exner, Jr. , born in Syracuse, New York, was an American psychologist. He received a BS and an MS degree in psychology from Trinity University and a PhD in clinical psychology from Cornell University in 1958. From 1968 to 1969 he served as a director for the East Asia/Pacific and North Africa, Near East, South Asia Regions of the Office of Selection, Peace Corps of the United States of America. Later he became a faculty member at Long Island University, where he was director of clinical training from 1969 to 1979. He became professor emeritus in 1984.

#409

Lee Anna Clark

#14168

Overall Influence

Lee Anna Clark is an American psychologist and William J. and Dorothy K. O’Neill Professor of Psychology Emerite in the Department of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. She used to be a professor and collegiate fellow at the University of Iowa. She was, as of 2007, the director of clinical training in the Clinical Science Program. Prior to her appointment at the University of Iowa, she was a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Her research focuses on personality and temperament, clinical and personality asse...

#410

Ward Edwards

#5937

Overall Influence

1927 - 2005 (78 years)

Ward Edwards was an American psychologist, prominent for work on decision theory and on the formulation and revision of beliefs. Education Edwards attended Swarthmore College and then received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University.

#411

Satoshi Kanazawa

#11192

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Satoshi Kanazawa is an American-born British evolutionary psychologist and writer. He is currently Reader in Management at the London School of Economics. Kanazawa's comments and research on race and intelligence, health and intelligence, multiculturalism, and the relationship between physical attractiveness and intelligence have led to condemnation from observers and colleagues. Critics have described his claims as pseudoscientific and racist.

#412

Antoine Vergote

Antoine Vergote

#8974

Overall Influence

1921 - 2013 (92 years)

Antoine Vergote , also known as Antoon Vergote, was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, psychologist and psychoanalyst. He was an Emeritus Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven. His extensive publications span multiple disciplines including psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, philosophical anthropology, linguistics, theology, cultural anthropology, and phenomenology.

#413

Thomas Moore

#9041

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Thomas Moore is a psychotherapist, former monk, and writer of popular spiritual books, including the New York Times bestseller Care of the Soul , a "guide to cultivating depth and sacredness in everyday life". He writes and lectures in the fields of archetypal psychology, mythology, and imagination. His work is influenced by the writings of Carl Jung and James Hillman.

#414

Michael Billig

#12646

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Michael Billig is a British academic. He is Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences at Loughborough University, working principally in contemporary social psychology although much of his work crosses disciplinary boundaries in the social sciences.

#415

Keith Holyoak

#11356

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Keith James Holyoak is a Canadian–American researcher in cognitive psychology and cognitive science, working on human thinking and reasoning. Holyoak's work focuses on the role of analogy in thinking. His work showed how analogy can be used to enhance learning of new abstract concepts by both children and adults, as well as how reasoning breaks down in cases of brain damage.

#416

Jeffrey Alan Gray

#10074

Overall Influence

1934 - 2004 (70 years)

Jeffrey Alan Gray was a British psychologist who is notable for his contributions to the theory of consciousness. Life and work He was born in the East End of London. His father was a tailor, but died when Jeffrey was only seven. His mother, who ran a haberdashery, brought him up alone. Following military service , he took up a MacKinnon scholarship at Magdalen College, Oxford, with a place to study Law. In the event he negotiated a switch to Modern Languages, obtaining a first in French and Spanish. He stayed on to take a second BA, this time in Psychology and Philosophy, which he completed ...

#417

David Premack

#4184

Overall Influence

1925 - 2015 (90 years)

David Premack was an American psychologist who was a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He was educated at the University of Minnesota when logical positivism was in full bloom. The departments of Psychology and Philosophy were closely allied. Herbert Feigl, Wilfred Sellars, and Paul Meehl led the philosophy seminars, while Group Dynamics was led by Leon Festinger and Stanley Schachter.

#418

Justin Kruger

#7648

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Justin S. Kruger is an American social psychologist and professor at New York University Stern School of Business. Education Kruger received his BS in Psychology from Santa Clara University in 1993 , and received his PhD in Social Psychology from Cornell University in 1999.

#419

Martin Hautzinger

#20755

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Martin Hautzinger is a German psychologist and professor. Early life Hautzinger was born in Frankenbach, Heilbronn in 1950. Career Martin Hautzinger studied psychology from 1971 to 1976 in Bochum and at the Free University of Berlin. In 1980 he was awarded his doctorate from the Technical University of Berlin.

#420

Robert Epstein

#5646

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Robert Epstein is an American psychologist, professor, author, and journalist. He was awarded a Ph.D. in psychology by Harvard University in 1981, was editor in chief of Psychology Today, and has held positions at several universities including Boston University, University of California, San Diego, and Harvard University. He is also the founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in Concord, MA. In 2012, he founded the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology , a nonprofit organization that conducts research to promote the well-being and fun...

#421

Bernice Neugarten

#12967

Overall Influence

1916 - 2001 (85 years)

Bernice Neugarten was an American psychologist who specialised in adult development and the psychology of ageing. Biography Neugarten was born to a Jewish family in Norfolk, Nebraska, where she spent her childhood and early teenage years. Neugarten started as an early undergraduate at the University of Chicago at the age of 16, obtaining her bachelor's degree in English and French Literature in 1936. She also obtained a Master's degree in Educational Psychology master's degree in educational psychology and her Ph.D. in human development. In 1960, Neugarten was the first person at the Univer...

#422

Marilynn Brewer

#18123

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Marilynn B. Brewer is an American social psychologist. She is professor emeritus of psychology at Ohio State University and resides in New South Wales. She was formerly Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute for Social Science Research at UCLA.

#423

Martin Fishbein

#18425

Overall Influence

1936 - 2009 (73 years)

Martin Fishbein was a social psychologist, considered influential, and active AIDS prevention. He had been director of the health communication program at the University of Pennsylvania Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication.

#424

David Berliner

#8583

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

David C. Berliner is an educational psychologist. He was a professor and dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. Biography After a B.A. in psychology from U.C.L.A. and an M.A. in psychology from California State University at Los Angeles, Berliner received a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the Stanford Graduate School of Education. He also was awarded Doctorates of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Manhattanville College. He is the father to a son and a daughter.

#425

Muriel Lezak

#22226

Overall Influence

1927 - 2021 (94 years)

Muriel Elaine Deutsch Lezak was an American neuropsychologist best known for her book Neuropsychological Assessment, widely accepted as the standard in the field. Her work has centred on the research, assessment, and rehabilitation of brain injury. Lezak was a professor of neurology at the Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine.

#426

Julian Rappaport

#7905

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Julian Rappaport is an American psychologist who introduced the concept of empowerment into social work and social psychiatry. He is a recipient of the American Psychological Association's Division of Community Psychology Distinguished Career Award and of the Seymour B. Sarason Award for "novel and critical rethinking of basic assumptions and approaches to human services, education, and other areas of community research and action."

#427

Margie Holmes

#12762

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Margarita Go-Singco Holmes, popularly known as Dr. Margie Holmes, is a popular psychologist specializing in sex therapy in the Philippines. Education Holmes graduated with a degree in Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of the Philippines Diliman in 1973. She was one of only seven people to graduate magna cum laude among more than two thousand who graduated that year. Holmes was adjudged "most outstanding graduate" for 1973 by the University of the Philippines Alumni Association.

#428

John C. Norcross

#12647

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

John C. Norcross is an American professor, board-certified clinical psychologist, and author in psychotherapy, behavior change, and self-help. He is Distinguished Professor and chair of psychology at the University of Scranton and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University. He also maintains a part-time practice of clinical psychology in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

#429

Michael Eysenck

#14730

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Michael William Eysenck is a British academic psychologist, and is an Emeritus Professor in Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. He also holds an appointment as Professorial Fellow at Roehampton University. His research focuses on cognitive factors affecting anxiety. Eysenck has written and co-written many publications, including several textbooks. In the late 1990s, he developed the theory of the "hedonic treadmill", stating that humans are predisposed by genetics to plateau at a certain level of happiness, and that the occurrence of novel happy events merely elevates this lev...

#430

Jeffrey K. Zeig

#22156

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Jeffrey K. Zeig , is a writer, teacher and practitioner of psychotherapy. He has edited, co-edited, authored or coauthored more than 20 books on psychotherapy that appear in fourteen languages. He organises several conferences on psychotherapy, and is the founder and director of the Milton H. Erickson Foundation.

#431

Richard Noll

#7230

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Richard Noll is an American clinical psychologist and historian of medicine. He has published on the history of psychiatry, including two critical volumes on the life and work of Carl Gustav Jung, books and articles on the history of dementia praecox and schizophrenia, and on anthropology on shamanism. His books and articles have been translated into fifteen foreign languages and he has delivered invited presentations in nineteen countries on six continents.

#432

Mark Lepper

#22653

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Mark R. Lepper is the Albert Ray Lang Professor of psychology at Stanford University, and a leading theorist in social psychology. He is particularly known for his research on attribution theory and confirmation bias, and for his collaborations with Lee Ross.

#433

Jack Block

#12773

Overall Influence

1924 - 2010 (86 years)

Jacob "Jack" Block was a psychology professor at UC Berkeley. His main areas of research were personality theory, personality development, research methodology, personality assessment, longitudinal research, and cognition. He often collaborated with his wife Jeanne Block.

#434

Myrna Gopnik

#13229

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Myrna Lee Gopnik is a Canadian linguist. She is a professor emerita of linguistics at McGill University. She is known for her research on the KE family, an English family with several members affected by specific language impairment.

#435

Nancy McWilliams

#11603

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D., ABPP., is emerita visiting professor at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University. She has written on personality and psychotherapy. McWilliams is a psychoanalytic/dynamic author, teacher, supervisor, and therapist. She has a private practice in psychotherapy and supervision in Lambertville, New Jersey. She is a former president of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association .

#436

Paul Pintrich

#22356

Overall Influence

1953 - 2003 (50 years)

Paul R. Pintrich was an educational psychologist who made significant contributions to the fields of motivation, epistemological beliefs, and self-regulated learning. He was a professor of education and psychology at the University of Michigan where he also completed his PhD and MA. Pintrich published over 140 articles, book chapters, and books on topics related to educational psychology.

#437

Evelyn Hooker

#6873

Overall Influence

1907 - 1996 (89 years)

Evelyn Hooker was an American psychologist most notable for her 1956 paper "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual" in which she administered several psychological tests to groups of self-identified male homosexuals and heterosexuals and asked experts to identify the homosexuals and rate their mental health. The experiment, which other researchers subsequently repeated, argues that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, as there was no detectable difference between homosexual and heterosexual men in terms of mental adjustment.

#438

Wolfgang Prinz

#12346

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Wolfgang Prinz is a German cognitive psychologist. He is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and an internationally recognized expert in experimental psychology, cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind. He is the founder of the common coding theory between perception and action that has a significant impact in cognitive neuroscience and social cognition.

#439

Eugene Landy

#3339

Overall Influence

1934 - 2006 (72 years)

Eugene Ellsworth Landy was an American psychologist known for his unconventional and controversial 24-hour therapy program and treatment of celebrity clients. Landy's regimen involved supervising and micromanaging his client's life with a team of counselors and doctors. His most notable patient was the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, with whom he formed a controversial business and creative partnership in the 1980s.

#440

Dacher Keltner

#11975

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Dacher Joseph Keltner is a Mexican-born American professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, who directs the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab. He is also the founder and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center, host of the podcast The Science of Happiness, and chief scientific advisor of Hume AI.

#441

Martin Daly

#19407

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Martin Daly is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and author of many influential papers on evolutionary psychology. His current research topics include an evolutionary perspective on risk-taking and interpersonal violence, especially male-male conflict and family violence. He and his wife, the late Margo Wilson, were formerly editors-in-chief of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior and presidents of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.

#442

John Turner

#21488

Overall Influence

1947 - 2011 (64 years)

John Charles Turner was a British social psychologist who, along with colleagues, developed the self-categorization theory. Amongst other things, the theory states that the self is not a foundational aspect of cognition, but rather that the self is an outcome of cognitive processes and an interaction between the person and the social context. The self-categorization theory was developed as a companion theory to the social identity theory, and the two theories taken together are known as the social identity approach.

#443

Arnold H. Buss

#23564

Overall Influence

1924 - 2021 (97 years)

Arnold Herbert Buss was a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin known for his work in aggression, temperament, self-consciousness and shyness. Career Buss received his B.A. from New York University in 1947 after serving as a medic in the United States Army during World War II and received his Ph.D. from Indiana University Bloomington in 1952. He worked as a lecturer at the University of Iowa from 1951 to 1952 and then served as the Chief Psychologist at Larue D. Carter Memorial Hospital from 1952 to 1957. He was a professor at the University of Pittsburgh from 1957 to 1965 and a professor at Rutgers University from 1965 to 1969.

#444

Melanie Joy

#5447

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Melanie Joy is an American social psychologist and author, primarily notable for coining and promulgating the term carnism. She is the founding president of nonprofit advocacy group Beyond Carnism, previously known as Carnism Awareness & Action Network , as well as a former professor of psychology and sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She has published the books Strategic Action for Animals, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows and Beyond Beliefs.

#445

Albert Mehrabian

#12166

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Albert Mehrabian is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is best known for his publications on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages. Early life and career Mehrabian was born in 1939 to an Armenian family living in Iran. He originally trained as an engineer, but is best known for his publications on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages. He also constructed a number of psychological measures including the Arousal Seeking Tendency Scale. Mehrabian's findings on inconsistent messages of feelings and attitudes ar...

#446

Harold Gulliksen

#27741

Overall Influence

1903 - 1996 (93 years)

Harold Oliver Gulliksen was an American psychologist. A professor at Princeton University for most of his academic career, Gulliksen pioneered in the field of psychometrics. In 1952 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

#447

Irving Kirsch

#6525

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Irving Kirsch is an American psychologist and academic. He is the Associate Director of the Program in Placebo Studies and a lecturer in medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is also professor emeritus of psychology at the Universities of Hull and Plymouth in the United Kingdom, and the University of Connecticut in the United States. Kirsch is a leading researcher within the field of placebo studies who is noted for his work on placebo effects, antidepressants, expectancy, and hypnosis. He is the originator of response expectancy theory, and his...

#448

William Schutz

#9772

Overall Influence

1925 - 2002 (77 years)

William Schutz was an American psychologist. Biography Schutz was born in Chicago, Illinois. He practiced at the Esalen Institute in the 1960s. He later became the president of BConWSA International. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA. In the 1950s, he was part of the peer-group at the University of Chicago's Counseling Center that included Carl Rogers, Thomas Gordon, Abraham Maslow and Elias Porter. He taught at Tufts University, Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and was chairman of the holistic studies department at Antioch Uni...

#449

G. Alan Marlatt

#21029

Overall Influence

1941 - 2011 (70 years)

Gordon Alan Marlatt was a leading American-Canadian clinical psychologist in the field of addictive behaviors from the 1980s through the 2000s. He conducted pioneering research in harm reduction, brief interventions, and relapse prevention.

#450

Barry Mehler

#17513

Overall Influence

Barry Alan Mehler is an American social researcher. He was a professor of humanities at Ferris State University, who founded the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism . He earned his B.A. from Yeshiva University in 1970, his M.A. from City College of New York in 1972, and his Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1988. His dissertation was entitled, "A history of the American Eugenics Society, 1921-1940."

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