Arranging Psychology Experiments and Discoveries in Time Sequence

Date School of Thought Event

1848 Cognitive Phineas Gage was left with extensive brain injuries after an iron pole penetrated his skull. Although his personality was permanently altered he was still able to use his intelligence, marking the first time a correlation between brain trauma and personality changes was established.

1869 Biological Sir Francis Galton publishes the book ‘Hereditary Genius’ which suggests that each individual humans intellectual capability is determined by genetics inherited from there parents instead of external factors.

1879 Experimental Wilhelm Wundt was granted the first official Psychology laboratory by Leipzig University in Germany. This allowed human behaviour to be studied in a higher education setting, allowing Psychology to become a formal discipline.

1885 Cognitive Hermann Ebbinghaus published findings from tests he carried out on himself. He detailed the connection between time and memory loss, explaining that information learned eventually fades.

1892 General Event Granville Hall, the first American to gain a PHD in Psychology, creates the American Psychological Association.

1900 Psychoanalytic The book ‘interpretation of Dreams’ is published by Sigmund Freud, introducing the theory that individuals experiences and actions are determined, to a variable extent, by the unconscious mind.

1901 General Event The British Psychological Society is created, an organisation which now represents accredited Psychologists in the United Kingdom.

1906 Behavioural Ivan Pavlov discovered Classical Conditioning by studying saliva production in dogs. He found that associating objects, such as a bell, to the dogs food resulted in an increase in salivation even when the food wasn’t present. This suggests that the dogs learned this behaviour instead of it being a natural reaction.

1913 Behavioural The Behavioural perspective is introduced by John Watson. This way of thinking is based on the idea that human behavioural patterns are the result of environmental factors instead of cognitive processes.

1915 Psychoanalytic The idea of individuals using repression as a defence mechanism is introduced by Sigmund Freud. He believed that people who had traumatic experiences were storing this negative information in the unconscious mind instead of thinking about it on a regular basis. Freud believed this mechanism was dangerous as the unconscious mind can determine behavioural patterns.

1926 Cognitive ‘The Child’s Conception of the World’ is published by Jean Piaget. This looks at the different ways a developing child interprets the reality of the World around them. 1938 Behavioural ‘The Behaviour of Organisms’ is published by Burrhus Skinner, establishing his Operant Conditioning theory. The studies he conducted found that individuals behaviour could be altered by positive or negative affirmations.

1957 Biological The book ‘Syntactic Structures’ is published by Noam Chomsky, focussing on different types of sentence structures and the idea of grammar adhering to certain rules, it signified an important development in linguistics.

1961 Behavioural Bandura conducts an experiment where children witnessed an adult treating an inanimate object violently. Later, when given the chance to interact with the object themselves, the children also acted violently. This revealed that the children had been directly influenced by the adults actions, possibly unconsciously. This could lead to behavioural patterns such as displacement in later life.

2000 Biological The first draft of the Human Genome is announced, revealing over ninety percent of the genome had been sequenced, compared to six percent in 1998.