Master the History of Psychology: 109 Flashcards on Famous Psychologists from Wundt to Kahneman
Learn the history of psychology with 109 flashcards: Wundt, Titchener, James, Gestalt, Pavlov, Freud, Skinner, Piaget, Kahneman, plus the pioneers textbooks skip.
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Intro psychology exams have one recurring trap: names, dates and schools of thought that blur together. Wundt or Titchener for structuralism? Ebbinghaus for the forgetting curve or for paired associates? The History of Psychology & Famous Psychologists deck on Flip It (deck code KJ8784, 109 cards) turns that blur into a timeline you can actually recall — from the Ebers Papyrus to Daniel Kahneman.
Study this deck: History of Psychology & Famous Psychologists
1 / 10Psychology
Tap the card for the answer · swipe right if you knew it, left if not
Who is in the deck
The 109 cards split into three layers. First, the origins: the Greek roots psyche + -logia, Marko Marulić coining psychologia around 1510-1520, Steven Blankaart's 1694 English mention, Hippocrates locating mental disorders in the body, Plato putting the mind in the brain (387 BCE) and Aristotle putting it in the heart (335 BCE). Second, the birth of the science: Christian Wolff's Psychologia Empirica (1732), Fechner's psychophysics, Wundt's Leipzig laboratory (1879), Ebbinghaus, structuralism vs functionalism, Gestalt, Pavlov and the founding of the APA in 1892. Third, a who's who of 45+ psychologists — Freud, Jung, Skinner, Piaget, Maslow, Asch, Bandura, Binet, Erikson, Zimbardo, Milgram, Bowlby, Rogers, Kohlberg, Festinger, Kahneman, Seligman, Adler, Loftus, Ekman, Mischel, Frankl, Vygotsky, Cattell, Harlow, Ellis, Lewin, Csikszentmihalyi, Allport, Horney, Hebb — plus the women and minority pioneers textbooks skip: Leta Stetter Hollingworth, Mary Whiton Calkins, Mamie Phipps Clark, Martha Bernal, Marigold Linton, Naomi Weisstein.
Sample cards
| Front | Back |
|---|---|
| Where did Wilhelm Wundt establish the first psychological laboratory? | Leipzig University, 1879 — the lab that brought experimental psychology to the world |
| Who created structuralist psychology? | Edward Titchener, a student of Wundt, at Cornell — analyzing the mind through introspection |
| What famous concept did William James describe? | The stream of consciousness, in The Principles of Psychology (1890) |
| Who co-founded Gestalt psychology? | Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler, early 20th century |
| What did Mary Whiton Calkins invent? | The paired-associates technique for studying memory; also developed self-psychology |
| Doll tests conducted by Mamie Phipps Clark | Children chose between identical dolls differing only by race — evidence cited in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) |
| Hermann Ebbinghaus | The experimental study of memory: the forgetting curve and the spacing effect |
| Leon Festinger | Cognitive dissonance — the discomfort of holding contradictory beliefs |
| Donald Hebb | Hebb's rule: neurons that fire together wire together |
| What did Thomas Kuhn's 1962 critique imply about psychology? | That psychology was in a pre-paradigm state, lacking an agreed overarching theory |
Two study tips that fit this deck
1. Study by school, not by alphabet. The cards make the most sense grouped into lineages: Wundt → Titchener (structuralism) versus James, Dewey and Carr (functionalism); Pavlov → Watson → Skinner (behaviorism); Freud → Anna Freud, Jung, Adler, Horney, Klein (psychoanalysis and its rebels); Wertheimer, Koffka, Köhler (Gestalt); Maslow, Rogers, Frankl (humanistic/existential); Festinger, Asch, Milgram, Zimbardo, Lewin (social). When a card asks Who founded individual psychology?, you retrieve the branch first (a Freud dissenter), then the name (Adler).
2. Anchor the dates to four hooks. Almost every date in the deck sits near one of four moments: 1879 (Wundt's lab), 1890 (James's Principles), 1892 (APA founded) and 1951 (IUPsyS under UNESCO). Learn those four cold and the rest — 1913 Watson's behaviorist manifesto, 1962 Kuhn and Martha Bernal's PhD, 1969 the Association for Women in Psychology — become before/after judgments rather than isolated numbers.
A short plan
- Sessions 1-2: origins and birth-of-science cards (the first ~30, the most date-heavy).
- Sessions 3-5: the psychologists, one school per session.
- Session 6: critiques (Kuhn, the cult of empiricism, Jean Grimshaw) and institutional facts (54 APA divisions, 78 % of US psychology undergrads are women).
Ebbinghaus discovered the spacing effect in the 1880s; you might as well use it on his own biography. Open Flip It at flip-it.app, search for deck KJ8784 — History of Psychology & Famous Psychologists, and start with the origins.
New to spaced repetition? Read our practical guide to learning with flashcards.
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