100 Most Popular 20th Century Psychologists

Study ranks the top 20th century psychologists

July/August 2002, Vol 33, No. 7

Print version: page 28

Psychologists were put to a popularity contest in a new study that appears in the Review of General Psychology (Vol. 6, No. 2), which ranks 99 of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century.

B.F. Skinner topped the list, followed by Jean Piaget, Sigmund Freud and Albert Bandura.

The rankings were based on the frequency of three variables: journal citation, introductory psychology textbook citation and survey response. Surveys were sent to 1,725 members of the American Psychological Society, asking them to list the top psychologists of the century.

Researchers also took into account whether the psychologists had a National Academy of Sciences membership, were elected as APA president or received the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, and whether their surname was used as an eponym.

"I was not surprised by most of the names who made it toward the top of the list," says lead researcher Steven J. Haggbloom, PhD, psychology department chair at Western Kentucky University. "But there are some notable names not on the list."

For example, psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, the first to experiment with human learning and memory, didn't make it.

Omissions like that are why researchers followed the idea of researcher Eugene Garfield, who did a Top 100 list in 1977 but left off No. 100. So, No. 100 might be the many great psychologists that someone could make a compelling case to include, Haggbloom says.

--M. DITTMANN

Source - http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug02/studyranks.aspx

The text below came from this link - http://www.assessmentpsychology.com/eminentpsychologists.htm

The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century Review of General Psychology. 2002, Vol. 6, No. 2, 139–152 Steven J. Haggbloom (Western Kentucky University) Renee Warnick, Jason E. Warnick, Vinessa K. Jones, Gary L. Yarbrough,  Tenea M. Russell, Chris M. Borecky, Reagan McGahhey, John L. Powell III,  Jamie Beavers, and Emmanuelle Monte (Arkansas State University) A rank-ordered list was constructed that reports the first 99 of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Eminence was measured by scores on 3 quantitative variables and 3 qualitative variables. The quantitative variables were journal citation frequency, introductory psychology textbook citation frequency, and survey response frequency. The qualitative variables were National Academy of Sciences membership, election as American Psychological Association (APA) president or receipt of the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, and surname used as an eponym. The qualitative variables were quantified and combined with the other 3 quantitative variables to produce a composite score that was then used to construct a rank-ordered list of the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Article in the Monitor 1. B.F. Skinner 2. Jean Piaget 3. Sigmund Freud 4. Albert Bandura 5. Leon Festinger 6. Carl R. Rogers 7. Stanley Schachter 8. Neal E. Miller 9. Edward Thorndike 10. A. H. Maslow 11. Gordon W. Allport 12. Erik H. Erikson 13. Hans J. Eysenck 14. William James 15. David C. McClelland 16. Raymond B. Cattell 17. John B. Watson 18. Kurt Lewin 19. Donald O. Hebb 20. George A. Miller 21. Clark L. Hull 22. Jerome Kagan 23. Carl G. Jung 24. Ivan P. Pavlov 25. Walter Mischel 26. Harry F. Harlow27. J. P. Guilford 28. Jerome S. Bruner 29. Ernest R. Hilgard 30. Lawrence Kohlberg 31. Martin E.P. Seligman 32. Ulric Neisser 33. Donald T. Campbell 34. Roger Brown 35. R. B. Zajonc 36. Endel Tulving 37. Herbert A. Simon 38. Noam Chomsky 39. Edward E. Jones 40. Charles E. Osgood 41. Solomon E. Asch 42. Gordon H. Bower 43. Harold H. Kelley 44. Roger W. Sperry 45. Edward C. Tolman 46. Stanley Milgram 47. Arthur R. Jensen 48. Lee J. Cronbach 49. John Bowlby 50. Wolfgang Köhler 51. David Wechsler52. S. S. Stevens 53. Joseph Wolpe 54. D. E. Broadbent 55. Roger N. Shepard 56. Michael I. Posner 57. Theodore M. Newcomb 58. Elizabeth F. Loftus 59. Paul Ekman 60. Robert J. Sternberg 61. Karl S. Lashley 62. Kenneth Spence 63. Morton Deutsch 64. Julian B. Rotter 65. Konrad Lorenz 66. Benton Underwood 67. Alfred Adler 68. Michael Rutter 69. Alexander R. Luria 70. Eleanor E. Maccoby 71. Robert Plomin 72.5.* G. Stanley Hall 72.5. Lewis M. Terman 74.5.* Eleanor J. Gibson 74.5. Paul E. Meehl 76. Leonard Berkowitz77. William K. Estes 78. Eliot Aronson 79. Irving L. Janis 80. Richard S. Lazarus 81. W. Gary Cannon 82. Allen L. Edwards 83. Lev Semenovich Vygotsky 84. Robert Rosenthal 85. Milton Rokeach 88.5.* John Garcia 88.5. James J. Gibson 88.5. David Rumelhart 88.5. L. L. Thurston 88.5. Margaret Washburn 88.5. Robert Woodworth 93.5.* Edwin G. Boring 93.5. John Dewey 93.5. Amos Tversky 93.5. Wilhelm Wundt 96. Herman A. Witkin 97. Mary D. Ainsworth 98. Orval Hobart Mowrer 99. Anna Freud *Numbers with .5 indicate a tie in the ranking. In these cases, the mean is listed.