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Contents 1 Most important authors in psychology 2 Call for comments on adding Nathaniel Branden 3 Islamic scholars 4 Order of entries in multi-method empirical study 5 Reasons for adding Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck 6 Objective inclusion criteria 7 I don't agree with this list

Most important authors in psychology

Everyone has their pet theories and theorists, so some objective measure is needed to determine who the most important authors in psychology are. (Even though a good case could be made that psychodynamic theories and radical behaviorism have been largely abandoned by psychology departments these days, we'll not pursue this.) I've chosen the psychologists determined to be the most historically important throughout the 20th century by a multi-method empirical study (Haggbloom, S.J. et al, 2002, The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century, Review of General Psychology, Vol. 6, No. 2, 139–152.) The authors combined most frequently cited in the professional psychological journal literature, most frequently cited in introductory psychology textbooks, and most frequently named in a survey of members of the Association for Psychological Science, in addition to 3 qualitative variables converted to numerical scores. While a case could be made to chose a more recent period, namely, that outdated theories and theorists are more represented in a list going back so far, it nevertheless seems more appropriate to represent the whole period, including outdated theories, in an encyclopedia article. Someone can format this if they like (though it might take up a lot of vertical space):

Table 4. The 100 (99 Reported) Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century
Rank	Name	JCL rank	TCL rank	SL rank	NAS	APA award/president	Eponym
1	B.F. Skinner	8	2	1	1950	1958/—	Skinnerian
2	Jean Piaget	2	4	2	1966	1969/—	Piagetian
3	Sigmund Freud	1	1	3	—	—/—	Freudian
4	Albert Bandura	5	3	5	—	1980/1974	Bandura’s social learning theory
5	Leon Festinger	12	19	11.5	1972	1959/—	Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory
6	Carl Rogers	28.5	5	9.5	—	1956/1947	Rogerian therapy
7	Stanley Schachter	46	6	24	1983	1969/—	Schachter’s affiliation studies
8	Neal E. Miller	13	9	14.5	1958	1959/1961
9	Edward Thorndike	40	50	9.5	1917	—/1912	Thorndike’s puzzle box
10	Abraham Maslow	37	14	19	—	—/1968	Maslow’s hierarchy
11	Gordon Allport	51	18	14.5	—	1964/1939	Allport A–S reaction study
12	Erik Erikson	16	11	17	—	—/—	Erikson’s psychosocial stages
13	Hans Eysenck	3	30	24	—	—/—	Eysenck personality inventory
14	William James	—	29	6.5	1906	—/1904	James–Lange theory of emotion
15	David McClelland	34	10	31	—	1987/—
16	Raymond Cattell	7	37	31	—	—/—	Cattell 16 Factor Personality Questionnaire
17	John B. Watson	—	17	4	—	—/1915	Watsonian behaviorism
18	Kurt Lewin	47	73.5	8	—	—/—	Lewinian psychology
19	Donald O. Hebb	58	—	11.5	1979	1961/1960	Hebbian
20	George A. Miller	43	46	67	1962	1963/1969
21	Clark L. Hull	73	73.5	14.5	1936	—/1936	Hullian
22	Jerome Kagan	20	23	67	—	1987/—
23	Carl Jung	50	40	39.5	—	—/—	Jungian
24	Ivan Pavlov	—	22	6.5	—	—/—	Pavlovian
25	Walter Mischel	48	24.5	67	—	1982/—
26	Harry Harlow	100	7	51	1951	1960/1958
27	J. P. Guilford	10	61	—	1954	1964/1950	Guilford–Martin personnel inventory
28	Jerome Bruner	14	70.5	31	—	1962/1965
29	Ernest Hilgard	67	27	51	1948	1967/1949
30	Lawrence Kohlberg	39	16	97	—	—/—	Kohlberg stages of moral development
31	Martin Seligman	93	13	31	—	—/1998
32	Ulric Neisser	59	71	31	1984	—/—
33	Donald T. Campbell	11	—	67	1973	1970/1975	Campbell’s design approach
34	Roger Brown	30	8	—	1972	—/—
35	Robert Zajonc	—	21	39.5	—	1978/—	Zajonc social facilitation
36	Endel Tulving	32.5	47.5	—	1988	1983/—
37	Herbert Simon	32.5	—	24	1953	1969/—
38	Noam Chomsky	—	28	39.5	1972	1984/—
39	Edward E. Jones	57	44.5	—	—	1977/—	Jones’s correspondent inference theory
40	Charles E. Osgood	9	—	97	1972	1960/1963	Osgood’s transfer surface
...

Remember that this is a psychology template, not a psychiatry template. -DoctorW 17:13, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I was looking for something like this to help ID "Selected psychologists" for the Psychology portal. :-) Rfrisbie^talk 20:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Is there any such objective criteria for pre-20th century psychologists? The current template makes it seem like there were no psychological thinkers before the 20th century. Also, why does the article only mention experimental psychologists and not any clinical psychologists? Jagged 85 (talk) 20:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Call for comments on adding Nathaniel Branden

I'd like to recommend Nathaniel Branden for addition to this list for the following contributions:

1) His pioneering work in self-esteem and the impact that has had,

2) He also did ground-breaking work in group therapy (Life-time achievement award for techniques of individual therapy in a group setting),

3) His Sentence-stem technique is one of the most powerful theraputic tools I've run across, and

4) His philosophy of psychology (from the first half of his first book on self-esteem) models the kind of foundation any theoretical approach should have.

He is often thought of as a pop-psychologist which isn't true given the depth of his work and the impact on the field as a whole. He is also criticized for his association with Ayn Rand when young - but that isn't relevant to his work as a psychologist. I'll let this sit for a while, as a kind of request for comments, before adding his name. Steve 21:39, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Did you read what is above? -DoctorW 23:56, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I read it. And I appreciate your effort and the intent to create an objective standard. But in the end it is hard to find methods that don't carry a bias of some sort or another - particularly when you are attempting what, at its root, is a subjective evaluation (top 100). That is why I put this in as a call for comments. I'm hoping to hear from other editors. You have created an excellent navigation template - But I'm assuming, that like the rest of WP, it is here to be edited. Steve 00:12, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Nathaniel Who? Famousdog 23:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Islamic scholars

Thanks for reverting those edits, DoctorW. "Ill-conceived" is the word. This is outright boosterism. Perhaps Jagged85 would like to create a separate template to push his POV that Muslim scholars did everything hundreds of years before Europeans. Famousdog (talk) 22:48, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't remember ever claiming anything of the sort... was that meant to be a personal attack by any chance? I'll admit I didn't read this talk page before updating the template at the time, but the "objective criteria" above only lists 20th century psychologists. Why aren't there any pre-20th century psychologists or any clinical psychologists mentioned on the template? Most of the medieval Muslim scholars I added before were very similar to what we would today consider to be clinical psychologists, so I don't see any reason why they (or at least the most important ones) shouldn't be included on the template. Jagged 85 (talk) 20:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Order of entries in multi-method empirical study

The order of entries in the template was taken from the order found in the multi-method empirical study, that is, in order by importance. The length of the list was decided by the somewhat subjective judgment that Jung and Pavlov should be on it but the next several names were not as important and list shouldn't be too long. Rearranging them by alphabetical order suggests that this particular group is some kind of canonical list. It makes a lot more sense to me to keep it in order of importance, suggesting that it trails off after the names included. One could also cite the rationale behind ordering disambiguation pages by importance, though in this case there is the added argument that a continuation of the list is implied.

In any case, people making a substantial change to the template should probably argue for their change here. -DoctorW 14:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Reasons for adding Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck

Probably everyone with a slight knowledge of psychotherapy would agree of the importance of Aaron T. Beck and Albert Ellis in modern psychotherapy. Both are the founder of the cognitive paradigm shift in psychotherapy. Psychology Today described Albert Ellis as the "greatest living psychologist," while the American Psychological Association in 2003 named him the second most influential psychologist of the twentieth century (Carl Rogers came first; Freud was third). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.117.10.100 (talk) 08:00, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

What do people think of the idea of creating a psychotherapy template? -DoctorW 18:47, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. It would take some of the pressure off the Psychology template. —Mattisse (Talk) 00:55, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Objective inclusion criteria

I would like to ask for suggestions. Maintaining this template is difficult, because lots of editors want to add their pet psychology topic to it, but often such additions are questionable. This has been especially true of important psychologists, but in fact this is where we've had some success. The widely cited multiple-criteria research study cited in detail above is by far the best guideline we have found, and we have been able to stick to it well. Where help is needed is in coming up with some guidelines, preferably somewhat objective, for inclusion of other items, particularly subdisciplines. There will be lots of borderline topics needing a decision.

One possibility is Google Scholar results, which is an objective, though somewhat blunt, instrument. If we use them (perhaps as one of several criteria?) we would have to make an allowance for the fact that in some cases adding the word "psychology" to the phrase will be necessary (e.g., "Evolutionary psychology"). Taking a stab at this, it looks like requiring about 10,000 Google Scholar results for a phrase that does not need to have "psychology" added, or about 5,000 results if "psychology" does need to be added. What do people think? What other objective criteria might we use? Having a division of APA? If there are a number of good, objective criteria, editors could argue for inclusion even if all criteria weren't met, but rather on the basis of being very strong on the others. Comments? -DoctorW 18:47, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

What about disciplines that have APA-approved doctoral programs? (I do not know what this would yield, but my sub discipline has such programs plus an ABBP certification in the area.) —Mattisse (Talk) 00:53, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with this list

Because, only behaviorist psychologist have a lot of citation. I think that other psychoanalyst, modern, can be hier ! For exmaple Andre Green, Horacio Etchegoyen, etc., etc. Thank Bettibossi (talk) 13:08, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

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