The Most Influential People Across History
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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List of the most influential people in Social Psychology,
#1
Albert Bandura
#86
Overall Influence
1925 - 2021 (96 years)
Albert Bandura was a Canadian-American psychologist. He was a professor of social science in psychology at Stanford University. Bandura was responsible for contributions to the field of education and to several fields of psychology, including social cognitive theory, therapy, and personality psychology, and was also of influence in the transition between behaviorism and cognitive psychology. He is known as the originator of social learning theory and the theoretical construct of self-efficacy, and is also responsible for the influential 1961 Bobo doll experiment. This Bobo doll experiment de...
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Stanley Schachter
#1118
Overall Influence
1922 - 1997 (75 years)
Stanley Schachter was an American social psychologist best known for his development of the two factor theory of emotion in 1962 along with Jerome E. Singer. In his theory he states that emotions have two ingredients: physiological arousal and a cognitive label. A person's experience of an emotion stems from the mental awareness of the body's physical arousal and the explanation one attaches to this arousal. Schachter also studied and published many works on the subjects of obesity, group dynamics, birth order and smoking. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Schac...
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Solomon Asch
#1236
Overall Influence
1907 - 1996 (89 years)
Solomon Eliot Asch was a Polish-American Gestalt psychologist and pioneer in social psychology. He created seminal pieces of work in impression formation, prestige suggestion, conformity, and many other topics. His work follows a common theme of Gestalt psychology that the whole is not only greater than the sum of its parts, but the nature of the whole fundamentally alters the parts. Asch stated: "Most social acts have to be understood in their setting, and lose meaning if isolated. No error in thinking about social facts is more serious than the failure to see their place and function". Asc...
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Philip Zimbardo
#439
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
#5
Robert Zajonc
#2226
Overall Influence
1923 - 2008 (85 years)
Robert Bolesław Zajonc was a Polish-born American social psychologist who is known for his decades of work on a wide range of social and cognitive processes. One of his most important contributions to social psychology is the mere-exposure effect. Zajonc also conducted research in the areas of social facilitation, and theories of emotion, such as the affective neuroscience hypothesis. He also made contributions to comparative psychology. He argued that studying the social behavior of humans alongside the behavior of other species, is essential to our understanding of the general laws of social behavior.
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Icek Ajzen
#5580
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Icek Ajzen is a social psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and is best known for his work, with Martin Fishbein, on the theory of planned behavior. Ajzen has been ranked the most influential individual scientist within social psychology in terms of cumulative research impact and, in 2013, received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. His research has been influential across diverse fields such as advertising, health psychol...
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Shalom H. Schwartz
#5256
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Shalom H. Schwartz is a social psychologist, cross-cultural researcher and creator of the Theory of Basic Human Values . He also contributed to the formulation of the values scale in the context of social learning theory and social cognitive theory.
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Serge Moscovici
#3784
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Serge Moscovici was a Romanian-born French social psychologist, director of the Laboratoire Européen de Psychologie Sociale , which he co-founded in 1974 at the Maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris. He was a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and Officer of the Légion d'honneur, as well as a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Moscovici's son, Pierre Moscovici, was European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs.
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Susan Fiske
#4435
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
#10
Jonathan Haidt
#720
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
#11
Robert Cialdini
#2944
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Robert Beno Cialdini is an American psychologist. He is the Regents' Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and was a visiting professor of marketing, business and psychology at Stanford University.
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Anthony Greenwald
#4874
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#13
Bibb Latané
#5985
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Bibb Latané is an American social psychologist. He worked with John M. Darley on bystander intervention in emergencies. He has also published many articles on social attraction in animals, social loafing in groups, and the spread of social influence in populations.
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Diederik Stapel
#7442
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Diederik Alexander Stapel is a Dutch former professor of social psychology at Tilburg University. In 2011 Tilburg University suspended Stapel for fabricating and manipulating data for his research publications. This scientific misconduct took place over a number of years and affected dozens of his publications. By 2015, fifty-eight of Stapel's publications had been retracted. He has been described in coverage by the New York Times as "the biggest con man in academic science".
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Roy Baumeister
#12405
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
#16
John T. Cacioppo
#6610
Overall Influence
1951 - 2018 (67 years)
John Terrence Cacioppo was the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He founded the University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and was the director of the Arete Initiative of the Office of the Vice President for Research and National Laboratories at the University of Chicago. He co-founded the field of social neuroscience and was member of the department of psychology, department of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience, and the college until his death in March 2018.
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Leonard Berkowitz
#8656
Overall Influence
1926 - 2016 (90 years)
Leonard Berkowitz was an American social psychologist best known for his research on altruism and human aggression. He originated the cognitive neoassociation model of aggressive behavior, which was created to help explain instances of aggression for which the frustration-aggression hypothesis could not account.
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Herbert Kelman
#7513
Overall Influence
1927 - 2022 (95 years)
Herbert Chanoch Kelman was an Austrian-born American psychologist who was the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard University. He is known for his work on conflict resolution in the Middle East.
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John M. Darley
#6508
Overall Influence
1938 - 2018 (80 years)
John M. Darley was an American social psychologist and professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University. Darley is best known, in collaboration with Bibb Latané, for developing theories that aim to explain why people might not intervene at the scene of an emergency when others are present; this phenomenon is known as the bystander effect and the accompanying diffusion of responsibility effect. This work stemmed from the tragic case of Kitty Genovese, a New Yorker who was murdered in March 1964 while 38 people either witnessed or heard her struggling with the assailant. Darl...
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Morton Deutsch
#6603
Overall Influence
1920 - 2017 (97 years)
Morton Deutsch was an American social psychologist and researcher in conflict resolution. Deutsch was one of the founding fathers of the field of conflict resolution. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Deutsch as the 63rd most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
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John Bargh
#4979
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
#22
Walter Mischel
#1859
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Walter Mischel was an Austrian-born American psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology. He was the Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Humane Letters in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Mischel as the 25th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
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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.
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Daniel Batson
#3689
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
C. Daniel Batson is an American social psychologist. He has two doctoral degrees, in theology and psychology . Batson obtained his doctorate under John Darley and taught at the University of Kansas. He retired in 2006 and now is an emeritus professor in the psychology department of the University of Tennessee. He is best known for his contributions to the social psychology of altruism, empathic concern, and psychology of religion.
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Klaus Scherer
#6617
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Klaus Rainer Scherer is former Professor of Psychology and director of the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences in Geneva. He is a specialist in the psychology of emotion. He is known for editing the Handbook of Affective Sciences and several other influential articles on emotions, expression, personality and music.
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Paul Ekman
#603
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
#27
David Dunning
#5681
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
David Alan Dunning is an American social psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. He is a retired professor of psychology at Cornell University. Education He received his BA from Michigan State University in 1982 and PhD from Stanford University in 1986, both in psychology.
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Irwin Altman
#7166
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Irwin Altman , is a social psychologist who earned his B.A. degree from New York University in 1951, his M.A. degree from the University of Maryland in 1954 and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1957. He is active in many groups and associations including the International Association of Applied Psychology, American Psychological Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Association of University Professors, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Society of Experimental Social Psychology, Society of Personality and Social Psychology, A...
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Carol Dweck
#3302
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Carol Susan Dweck is an American psychologist. She holds the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professorship of Psychology at Stanford University. Dweck is known for her work on motivation and mindset. She was on the faculty at the University of Illinois, Harvard, and Columbia before joining the Stanford University faculty in 2004. She was named an Association for Psychological Science James McKeen Cattell Fellow in 2013, an APS Mentor Awardee in 2019, and an APS William James Fellow in 2020, and has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2012.
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Richard E. Nisbett
#8996
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Richard Eugene Nisbett is an American social psychologist and writer. He is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor of social psychology and co-director of the Culture and Cognition program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Nisbett's research interests are in social cognition, culture, social class, and aging. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, where his advisor was Stanley Schachter, whose other students at that time included Lee Ross and Judith Rodin.
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Susan Michie
#19846
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Susan Fiona Dorinthea Michie is a British academic, clinical psychologist, and professor of health psychology, director of The Centre for Behaviour Change and head of The Health Psychology Research Group, all at University College London. She is also an advisor to the British Government via the SAGE advisory group on matters concerning behavioural compliance with government regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, she was appointed Chair of the World Health Organisation’s Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health.
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Geert Hofstede
#535
Overall Influence
1928 - 2020 (92 years)
Gerard Hendrik Hofstede was a Dutch social psychologist, IBM employee, and Professor Emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, well known for his pioneering research on cross-cultural groups and organizations.
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Steve Reicher
#9940
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Stephen David Reicher is Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Social Psychology at the University of St Andrews. His research is in the area of social psychology, focusing on social identity, collective behaviour, intergroup conflict, leadership and mobilisation. He is broadly interested in the issues of group behaviour and the individual-social relationship.
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Paul Rozin
#4913
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Paul Rozin is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He teaches two Benjamin Franklin Scholars honors courses and graduate level seminars. He is also a faculty member in the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program started by Martin Seligman. He is described as the world's leading expert on disgust. His work focuses on the psychological, cultural, and biological determinants of human food choice.
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Kenneth J. Gergen
#11129
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Kenneth J. Gergen is an American social psychologist and emeritus professor at Swarthmore College. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts from Yale University and his PhD from Duke University . Biography The son of John Jay Gergen, the chair of the Mathematics Department at Duke University, and Aubigne Munger , Gergen grew up in Durham, North Carolina. He had three brothers, one of whom is David Gergen, the prominent political analyst. After completing public schooling, he attended Yale University. Graduating in 1957, he subsequently became an officer in the U.S. Navy. He then returned to graduate school at Duke University, where he received his PhD in psychology in 1963.
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Melvin J. Lerner
#11580
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Melvin J. Lerner, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Waterloo between 1970 and 1994 and now a visiting scholar at Florida Atlantic University, has been called "a pioneer in the psychological study of justice."
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E. Tory Higgins
#11747
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Edward Tory Higgins is the Stanley Schachter Professor of Psychology and Business, and Director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University. Higgins' research areas include motivation and cognition, judgment and decision-making, and social cognition. Most of his works focus on priming, self-discrepancy theory, and regulatory focus theory. He is also the author of Beyond Pleasure and Pain: How Motivation Works, and Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing the World for Success and Influence .
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Shinobu Kitayama
#13075
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Shinobu Kitayama is a Japanese social psychologist and the Robert B. Zajonc Collegiate Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. He is also the Social Psychology Area Chair and Director of the Culture & Cognition Program at the University of Michigan. He is the editor-in-chief of the Attitudes and Social Cognition section of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. He received his bachelor's degree and master's degree from Kyoto University and his doctorate from the University of Michigan. Together with Mayumi Karasawa, he discovered the birthday-number effect, the subconscious tendency of people to prefer the numbers in the date of their birthday over other numbers.
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Donald T. Campbell
#2105
Overall Influence
1916 - 1996 (80 years)
Donald Thomas Campbell was an American social scientist. He is noted for his work in methodology. He coined the term evolutionary epistemology and developed a selectionist theory of human creativity. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Campbell as the 33rd most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
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Thomas Gilovich
#8616
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Thomas Dashiff Gilovich an American psychologist who is the Irene Blecker Rosenfeld Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. He has conducted research in social psychology, decision making, behavioral economics, and has written popular books on these subjects. Gilovich has collaborated with Daniel Kahneman, Richard Nisbett, Lee Ross and Amos Tversky. His articles in peer-reviewed journals on subjects such as cognitive biases have been widely cited. In addition, Gilovich has been quoted in the media on subjects ranging from the effect of purchases on happiness to perception of judgment in social situations.
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Peter Gollwitzer
#13667
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Peter Max Gollwitzer is a German professor of psychology in the Psychology Department at New York University. His research centers on how goals and plans affect cognition, emotion, and behavior. Gollwitzer has developed several models of action control: the symbolic self-completion theory ; the Rubicon Model of Action Phases ; the Auto-Motive Model of Automatic Goal Striving ; the Mindset Theory of Action Phases ; and the distinction between action control by Goal Intentions vs. Implementation Intentions .
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Ellen S. Berscheid
#12907
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Ellen S. Berscheid is an American social psychologist who is currently a Regents professor at the University of Minnesota, where she earlier had earned her PhD in 1965. Berscheid conducted research on interpersonal relationships, emotions and moods, and social cognition. Berscheid wrote books, articles and other publications to contribute to the field of Social Psychology. She was involved in controversy surrounding the funding for her research on why people fall in love. In addition to her position at the University of Minnesota as a Psychology and Business professor; she has also held a position at Pillsbury.
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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.
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Thomas Blass
#11502
Overall Influence
Thomas Blass was an American social psychologist, Holocaust survivor, and professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is known for his work regarding Stanley Milgram and the Milgram experiment.
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David A. Kenny
#32277
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
David Anthony Kenny is an American social psychologist and Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among the subjects he has researched are the interpersonal perception, the statistical analysis of data from dyads and groups, as well as mediation analysis. He co-authored a 1986 paper with Reuben M. Baron on mediation analysis that has been highly influential in the years since, with 114,891 citations . He received the American Psychological...
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Amy Cuddy
#11473
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Amy Joy Casselberry Cuddy is an American social psychologist, author and speaker. She is a proponent of "power posing", a self-improvement technique whose scientific validity has been questioned. She has served as a faculty member at Rutgers University, Kellogg School of Management and Harvard Business School. Cuddy's most cited academic work involves using the stereotype content model that she helped develop to better understand the way people think about stereotyped people and groups. Though Cuddy left her tenure-track position at Harvard Business School in the spring of 2017, she continues...
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Arie W. Kruglanski
#25677
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Arie W. Kruglanski is a social psychologist known for his work on goal systems, regulatory mode, and cognitive closure. He is currently a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
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David A. Kolb
#3249
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
David Allen Kolb is an American educational theorist whose interests and publications focus on experiential learning, the individual and social change, career development, and executive and professional education. He is the founder and chairman of Experience Based Learning Systems, Inc. , and an Emeritus Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.
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Elaine Hatfield
#11883
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Elaine Hatfield is an American social psychologist. She has been credited, alongside Ellen S. Berscheid, as the pioneer of the scientific study of love. She is employed as a professor in the psychology department of the University of Hawaii.
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Brian Nosek
#16574
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Brian Arthur Nosek is an American social-cognitive psychologist, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and the co-founder and director of the Center for Open Science. He also co-founded the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science and Project Implicit. He has been on the faculty of the University of Virginia since 2002.
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