Psychologists Trivia Quiz

Answer: Client-centered therapy

Carl Rogers was able to reshape psychotherapy from a somewhat mysterious procedure to a more applicable system. Client centered therapy applies therapy to common everyday problems which have not reached a psychiatric status. It is a technique embraced often by social workers and school guidance counselors.

Sometimes referred to as Rogerian therapy, it required the client to take an active role in treatment while the therapist is non-directive and supportive, often just reflecting thoughts and feelings, being supportive, and non-judgmental.

Answer: Id, ego, superego

Sigmund Freud dug deep into the psyche of human thought and behavior and is regarded as the first to try to model motivation.

To Freud, the 'id' was a disorganized part that contains a human's basic, instinctual drives and is present from birth.

The ego is the organized part of the personality structure that includes defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions.

The super-ego is the conscience that moderates conflicts between the id and ego and are learned responses from society.

These will lead deeper into Freudian concepts. But as he replied to a colleague who asked him if a cigar was a phallic symbol, "Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar".

Answer: collective unconscious

Carl Jung was a close colleague of Freud for many years until their split over intellectual issues. One of Jung's unique propositions is the 'collective unconscious' - that in addition to the personality of an individual there is an archetype that affects human behavior.

In 1936 Jung said: "... in addition to our immediate consciousness,... there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes..."

Jung admitted that this was not a subject of empirical evidence and research.

Here is a chart of the archetypes with their shadow--the opposite.

Ego/Shadow
Great Mother/Terrible Mother
Old Wise Man/Trickster
Anima/Animus
Meaning/Absurdity
Centrality/Diffusion
Order/Chaos
Opposition/Conjunction
Time/Eternity
Sacred/Profane
Light/Darkness
Transformation/Fixity

Answer: Educational psychology

John Dewey was equally a psychologist and a philosopher and is seen as a part of the pragmatist school of psychology, although he referred to himself as a 'functional' psychologist. Although he made contributions to several fields, he is most remembered for his influence on schools and education.

In "School and Society" (1900) Dewey... "argued that education and learning are social and interactive processes... the school itself is a social institution through which social reform... should take place... students thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum, and have...opportunity to take part in their own learning".

This eventually led to progressive and liberal education in a democratic framework.

Answer: Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is as follows:

1. Biological and Physiological needs - air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep.

2. Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, stability, freedom from fear.

3. Love and belongingness needs - friendship, intimacy, trust and acceptance, receiving and giving affection and love. Affiliating, being part of a group (family, friends, work).

4. Esteem needs - achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, self-respect, respect from others.

5. Self-Actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.

Self-actualization is the peak of human experience. In Maslow's words--"Feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placement in time and space with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable had happened, so that the subject was to some extent transformed and strengthened even in his daily life by such experiences".

Answer: Stimulus-response

The popular image of Pavlov's experiments is that with the stimulus of a bell, dogs would salivate for food (response). However, some scholars dispute that a bell was used. But other researchers have found that electric shocks, whistles, metronomes, tuning forks, and a range of visual stimuli all have the same effect.

Another popular belief is that the 1904 Noble Prize in Medicine was not for his experiments with conditioning but for a twelve years of experiments on the digestive systems of the animals.

Answer: Operant conditioning

B.F. Skinner invented the Skinner Box that was a practical device for experimenting with operant conditioning and advancing on Pavlov's research. A Skinner box had two response levers, two cue lights, one electrified floor, one house light, and one speaker in a glass cage. Using this the experimenter could control an animal's behavior (mostly using rats) by teaching it to respond to stimuli with an reward for reinforcement. The experimenters had many options at their disposal including such things as changing the stimulus, denying reward, or punishment for incorrect responses.

If the purpose of this seems vague to you, you need to read "Walden Two" a utopian novel published by Skinner in 1948. Skinner postulates that by systematically altering environmental variables, we could create an ideal society. This is often the theme of science fiction novels, films, and television. The opposition is often those who foster free will.

Answer: Personality psychology

Gordon Allport was one of the first psychologists to carry out personality research. He was interested not just personality traits but how personality related to rumor, prejudice, and religion. In one experiment a picture of several people is shown and one of them is holding a knife. Later the subject was asked who held the knife and the majority of subjects said the lone black man, but that was incorrect. This image goes through my head every time I hear or see an act of violence involving race.

Allport developed the Allport's Scale that attempted to measure the degree of prejudice in individuals and groups.

Antilocution occurs when an in-group freely purports negative images of an out-group such as hate speech that could escalate to other actions.

Avoidance is when members of the in-group actively avoid people in the out-group. The result may cause isolation and misunderstanding.

Discrimination happens when the out-group is discriminated against by denying them opportunities and services, putting prejudice into action.

In Physical Attack The in-group vandalizes, burns, or otherwise destroys out-group property and carries out violent attacks on individuals or groups.

Extermination or genocide occurs when the in-group seeks removal of the out-group. They attempt to eliminate either the entirety or a large fraction of the undesired group of people.

Answer: Child psychology

Certainly her father, Sigmund, had a great influence on her life and career but her focus was on children and she worked to apply the principles of psychology to the treatment and development of children.

Between 1920 and 1970 Anna Freud published eight volumes on child development and psychology and is often mentioned as the mother of child psychology.

Answer: Intelligence testing

In 1904, Alfred Binet was commissioned by the French Ministry of Education to develop criteria to determine which students were responding to the educational methods of the time and those who might need remedial tutoring. Along with his collaborator Théodore Simon, they produced the Binet-Simon test. It was not the first attempt to measure human intelligence but was a break-through in the field. The test has been upgraded and revised through the years but is still in use, although now called the Stanford-Binet. The tests have shown validity and reliability.

Contrary to reporting intelligence by number with such as 100 as a mean and standard deviations as norms, Binet reported an intelligence age. A child who was 8 and scored an 8 on the test was the mean which varied depending on the age of the child. An 8 year old might score a 9 years, 3 months and be considered advanced. The same child with a score of 5 years, 6 months might need extra class room assistance.

Binet was active in the psychological circles in France and is reported as having published over 200 books and articles on a wide range of psychological topics.