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Thursday, December 6

The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century

 In 2002, Steven J. Haggbloom from Western Kentucky University, along with leading figures from Arkansas State University's  Department of Psychology and Counseling, constructed a rank-ordered list of 99 of the 100 most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. To measure the eminence, they used 3 quantitative variables - journal citation frequency, introductory psychology textbook citation frequency, and survey response frequency - and 3 qualitative variables - 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 survey questions were sent to 1,725 members of the American Psychological Society (APS). The respondents were asked what is their specialization in psychology, who, in their opinion, are the 3 greatest psychologists of the 20th and century and who they think are the greatest psychologists of the 20th century in the overall field of psychology.

 However, only 5.6% of the APS members who were sent the survey questions responded. The results of the responses were then compiled into a ranked list of 117 names most frequently
mentioned. The list contained 117 names instead of 100 because of ties near the end of the list.

 Despite the low response rate, they didn't discount the survey results as a factor from constructing the list.

 The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century:

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. Harlow
27. 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 Wechsler
52. 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 Berkowitz
77. 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.


Source:
Haggbloom, S. J., Warnick, R., Warnick, J. E., Jones, V., Gary, Y., Russell, T., Borecky, C., McGahhey, R., Powell J., Beavers, J., & Monte, E. (2002). The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Review of general psychology, 6(2), 139-152. doi: 10.1037//1089-2680.6.2.139