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).

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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Social Psychology,

#151

Mark John Millan

#95759

Overall Influence

#152

Jon Krosnick

#49172

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Jon Alexander Krosnick is a professor of Political Science, Communication, and Psychology, and director of the Political Psychology Research Group at Stanford University. Additionally, he is the Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences and an affiliate of the Woods Institute for the Environment. Krosnick has served as a consultant for government agencies, universities, and businesses, has testified as an expert in court proceedings, and has been an on-air television commentator on election night.

#153

Harry Reis

#36825

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Harry Reis is a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. He has been a leading figure in the field of social psychology, credited with helping to launch the study of relationship science and notable for his contribution to theories of intimacy. His research encompasses emotional regulation, the factors that influence social interaction, and consequences of different socializing patterns for health and psychological well-being.

#154

Richard J. Crisp

#52863

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Richard J. Crisp is an author, blogger, scientist and Professor of Psychology at Durham University. He is co-originator of the imagined contact hypothesis and a major contributor to the field of social psychology.

#155

Gary L. Wells

#14639

Overall Influence

Gary L. Wells is an American psychologist and an internationally recognized pioneer and scholar in eyewitness memory research. Wells is a professor at Iowa State University with a research interest in the integration of both cognitive psychology and social psychology and its interface with law. He has extensive research on lineup procedures and the reliability and accuracy of eyewitness identification, and has been widely acknowledged in both the field of psychology and the criminal justice system. Wells has received many awards and honorary degrees and been widely recognized for his work an...

#156

Carsten de Dreu

Carsten de Dreu

#58026

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Carsten Karel Willem de Dreu is a Professor of Psychology at Leiden University and previously Behavioral Economics at the University of Amsterdam. He is member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. De Dreu received his PhD in social and organizational psychology from the University of Groningen and was president of the European Association of Social Psychology and the International Association for Conflict Management . In 2016 he was named Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Oxford.

#157

Nancy Adler

#47707

Overall Influence

Nancy Elinor Adler is an American health psychologist. She is the Lisa and John Pritzker Professor of Medical Psychology at the University of California, San Francisco and director of UCSF's Center for Health and Community Sciences. Adler is known for her research on health behaviors, health disparities, and social determinants of health.

#158

Sonja Lyubomirsky

Sonja Lyubomirsky

#4448

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Sonja Lyubomirsky is a Russian-born American professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside and author of The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want.

#159

Deborah Terry

#51945

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Professor Deborah Jane "Debbie" Terry is an Australian university executive, and psychology scholar. She is currently the Vice-Chancellor and President of The University of Queensland. Professor Terry is also currently the Chair of Universities Australia, the peak body representing Australia's higher education sector.

#160

Anu Realo

#37972

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Anu Realo is an Estonian personality and cross-cultural psychologist. She is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick, the United Kingdom, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia.

#161

Jeffry A. Simpson

#99123

Overall Influence

#162

Brad J Bushman

#99145

Overall Influence

#163

Sheldon Solomon

#13936

Overall Influence

Sheldon Solomon is an American social psychologist. He is a professor of psychology at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Solomon is best known for developing terror management theory, along with Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski. This theory is concerned with how humans deal with their own sense of mortality.

#164

Ellen Frank

#99173

Overall Influence

#165

Charles Daniel Batson

#99449

Overall Influence

#166

Richard Lucas

#66664

Overall Influence

Richard E. Lucas is an American psychologist specializing in personality psychology. Lucas is an MSU Foundation Professor in the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. He was president of the Association for Research in Personality from 2020 to 2021. He was awarded the ARP service award in 2019. Lucas is the editor of the Personality Processes and Individual Differences section of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

#167

George Levinger

#34533

Overall Influence

1927 - 2017 (90 years)

George Levinger was Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Born in Berlin, Germany, he fled the Nazi regime with his Jewish family in 1935, first moving to Switzerland and then to London, before emigrating to the United States in 1941. He received his B.A. from Columbia University in 1946. After his army service in Tokyo and time in the import-export business, he received a 1951 M.A. in clinical psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and a 1955 Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan. He later taught at Bryn Mawr College , Wes...

#168

William J. McGuire

#30825

Overall Influence

1925 - 2007 (82 years)

William James McGuire was an American social psychologist known for his work on the psychology of persuasion and for developing Inoculation theory. He was a faculty member at Yale University from 1970 until he retired in 1999, and chaired the psychology department there from 1971 to 1973. He was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology from 1967 to 1970.

#169

Russell Spears

#101315

Overall Influence

#170

Brenda Major

#75467

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Brenda Nelle Major is an American social psychologist and distinguished professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she heads the Self and Social Identity Lab.

#171

James Jaccard

#84596

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

James Jay Jaccard is an American psychologist and social work researcher. He is a Professor of Social Work at New York University's Silver School of Social Work. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1976. He helped to design the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health . In 2016, he was inducted into the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.

#172

Robert Arkin

#87269

Overall Influence

Robert M. Arkin was a social psychologist and member of the social psychology program faculty at Ohio State University. He was primarily known for his research on self-handicapping. Research Arkin’s research concerned the self in social interaction, with special emphasis on the uncertain self . Arkin developed the Subjective Overachievement Scale in 2001 to tap feelings of self-doubt coupled with a performance outcome concerns. He was the editor of the books Most Underappreciated: 50 Prominent Social Psychologists Describe Their Most Unloved Work, Handbook of the Uncertain Self , and Han...

#173

James S. House

#51071

Overall Influence

James Stephen House is an American social psychologist. He is the Angus Campbell Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Survey Research, Public Policy, and Sociology at the University of Michigan.

#174

William Swann

#31392

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

William B. Swann is a professor of social and personality psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is primarily known for his work on identity, self and self-esteem, but has also done research on relationshipss, social cognition, group processes, accuracy in person perception and interpersonal expectancy effects. He received his Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of Minnesota and undergraduate degree from Gettysburg College.

#175

Saadi Lahlou

#65546

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Saadi Lahlou is Professor in Social Psychology, in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics. He conducts and publishes research in the areas of social psychology, consumer behaviour, survey and forecast methods, lexical analysis, cognition and design. He is the Director of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study

#176

Laura L. Carstensen

#103110

Overall Influence

#177

Wendy Wood

#81977

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Wendy Wood is a UK-born psychologist who is the Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at University of Southern California, where she has been a faculty member since 2009. She previously served as vice dean of social sciences at the Dornsife College of the University of Southern California. Her primary research contributions are in habits and behavior change along with the psychology of gender.

#178

Mark Schaller

#50931

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Mark Schaller is a psychological scientist who has made many contributions to the study of human psychology, particularly in areas of social cognition, stereotyping, evolutionary psychology, and cultural psychology. He is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia.

#179

Jolanda Jetten

#70653

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Petronella Antonia Gerarda "Jolanda" Jetten is a Dutch social psychologist and a professor at the University of Queensland. She won the Spearman Medal in 2004 and was inducted into the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2015. Her research concerns social identity, social groups, and group dynamics.

#180

Tom Pyszczynski

#27172

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Tom Pyszczynski is an American social psychologist. He is notable, together with Jeff Greenberg and Sheldon Solomon, for founding the field of Terror Management Theory . TMT is a theory that is based on the writings of Ernest Becker, along with other existential thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Otto Rank, and Heidegger. At the heart of TMT is the notion that human beings have a unique capacity for self-awareness, which makes them realize that death is inevitable. This realization, which conflicts with people's instinctive need for self-preservation, gives rise to a potential for existential anxiety, or terror, that is greater than that in other animals.

#181

Julie Dachez

#52130

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (39 years)

Julie Dachez is a French social psychologist, lecturer and autism rights activist. She's the author of Invisible Differences and Dans ta bulle! . In 2016, she became the first openly autistic person to defend a thesis on the subject in France.

#182

Brent Roberts

#55745

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Brent Walter Roberts is an American social and personality psychologist who is professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is known for his research on personality traits, especially conscientiousness and narcissism. He is the president of the Association for Research in Personality, and was named an ISI Highly Cited Researcher in 2016 and 2017. In 2014 he presented the Paul B. Baltes Lecture at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His daughter, Siena Roberts, is the American University Washington College of Law 2022 1L Section 2 Representative.

#183

Daniel Nettle

#24131

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Daniel Nettle is a British behavioural scientist, biologist and social scientist. He is notable for his research that integrates psychology with evolutionary and comparative biology. After obtaining a BA in Psychology and Philosophy at Oxford University, Nettle went on to complete a PhD in Biological Anthropology at University College London. He is a CNRS senior researcher at the Institut Jean Nicod, an interdisciplinary research institute associated with the Ecole Normale Superieure and EHESS in Paris.

#184

Francis T. McAndrew

Francis T. McAndrew

#19321

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Francis T. "Frank" McAndrew is an American social psychologist and the Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. At Knox, he founded the environmental studies program and chaired the psychology department for a decade. McAndrew is an elected fellow of numerous professional organizations, including the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and the Midwestern Psychological Association . He received a B.S. in psychology from King's College in Pennsylvania and also a Ph.D.

#185

Paul Webley

#35964

Overall Influence

1953 - 2016 (63 years)

Paul Webley CBE was director and principal of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London from 2006 to 2015. From 2010 until his death in 2016, he was Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of London. He was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Psychology and a former president of the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology.

#186

Ilan Meyer

#81044

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Ilan H. Meyer is an American psychiatric epidemiologist, author, professor, and a senior scholar for public policy and sexual orientation law at the Williams Institute of UCLA. He has conducted extensive research on minority identities related to sexual orientation, gender, race and ethnicity, drawing conclusions on the impact of social stresses on their mental health. Meyer was an expert witness for the plaintiffs in Perry v. Schwarzenegger , the federal case that overturned California Proposition 8.

#187

Kay Deaux

#94587

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Kay Deaux is an American social psychologist known for her pioneering research on immigration and feminist identity. Deaux is Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Department of Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York . According to Brenda Major, Deaux's work centers on the question of how social categories affect one's psychological makeup, social behavior, and life outcomes, while emphasizing the subjectivity of people's identities and experiences and the larger social context.

#188

Justin Lehmiller

#55095

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Justin J. Lehmiller is an American social psychologist and author. He is a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. Lehmiller has authored books such as Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life and The Psychology of Human Sexuality. He has appeared on several television programs to discuss his research and the science of sex. He maintains the Sex and Psychology blog and podcast.

#189

Delroy L. Paulhus

#106898

Overall Influence

#190

Dennis Chapman

#66774

Overall Influence

1911 - 2003 (92 years)

Dennis Chapman was a social psychologist best known for his book The Home and Social Status, published in 1955, which investigated the British working class domesticity in the mid-twentieth century. His research focuses mainly on two primary aspects of society: domestic housing and provision, and the sociology of crime.

#191

Vera King

#59772

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Vera King is a German sociologist and social psychologist. She has been Professor of Sociology and Social Psychology at Goethe University Frankfurt and Director of the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt am Main since 2016.

#192

David G. Rand

#51565

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (42 years)

David G. Rand is the Erwin H. Schell Professor and Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Biography Rand grew up in Ithaca, New York, where his father is a professor at Cornell University. As a teenager he was in several rock bands including solo project Robot Goes Here

#193

Paula M. Niedenthal

#80800

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Paula M. Niedenthal is a social psychologist currently working as a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She also completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison where she received a Bachelor's in Psychology. She then received her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan before becoming a faculty member of the departments of Psychology at Johns Hopkins University and Indiana University. Until recently, she served as the Director of Research in the National Centre for Scientific Research at the Université Blaise Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand France.

#194

Jeff Greenberg

#108096

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Jeff Greenberg may refer to:Jeff Greenberg , American social psychology professorJeff Greenberg , American sports executive

#195

Hubert Hermans

#27321

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Hubert J.M. Hermans is a Dutch psychologist and Emeritus Professor at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, internationally known as the creator of dialogical self theory. Biography Hermans was born as son of a baker family in Maastricht, The Netherlands. He studied psychology at the Radboud University Nijmegen, where he became staff member at the psychological laboratory of the same university in 1965.

#196

Melvin Seeman

#83286

Overall Influence

1918 - 2020 (102 years)

Melvin Seeman was an American social psychologist and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles . He is known for researching social isolation. Seeman turned 100 in February 2018.

#197

Gerald L. Clore

#108900

Overall Influence

#198

Gregory M. Herek

#49845

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Gregory M. Herek is a researcher, author, and professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis . He has conducted extensive research on prejudice against sexual minorities, and coined the term sexual prejudice as a replacement for homophobia to describe this phenomenon. Herek argued that using the term homophobia incorrectly assumes that negative responses to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are founded in pathological, irrational fear , whereas psychological research indicates they are more accurately regarded as a form of prejudice. Herek is an openly and prominent gay psychologist.

#199

Adam D. Galinsky

#109169

Overall Influence

#200

Paul van Lange

#108773

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Paul van Lange is a Dutch professor of psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, distinguished scholar at the University of Oxford, and holds a global professorship at the University of Cologne.

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