Key thinkers

Discover more about pychology’s ‘Key Thinkers’ throughout history.

Ernst Weber (1797–1878)

Weber was a physiologist who developed an interest in the senses of touch and of kinesthesis. He demonstrated that touch is composed of three qualities: temperature, pressure, and pain. In his work on kinesthesis (sensations of movement and muscle strain) Weber investigated the capacity to discriminate between weights of varying magnitudes. Weber’s work would inspire a contemporary – Gustav Fechner – to develop it further and christen the discipline of psychophysics.

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Gustav Fechner (1801–1887)

Fechner explored further the relation between sensations and perceptions. He did not believe that science and mind were mutually exclusive. The result was the creation of psychophysics and the development of three different methods to explore sensory thresholds.

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Roland Fisher (1890–1962)

Analysis of variance was the statistical technique introduced by Fisher to determine the probability of results being statistically significant or not due to chance.

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The Big Five Personality Factors: The Key Thinkers Involved

Thirteen hundred assessors rated a well-known individual with regards to whether those terms were applicable to that person or not. Subsequent factor analysis of the data revealed five factors. For our purposes it is not so much the five factors, despite the apparent suggestion of the Five Factor Model, but the clear distinction between factors of temperament and of personality that needs to be emphasized here since that distinction will become obscured.

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Gordon Allport (1897–1967)

In attempting to formulate an account of personality, Allport rejected the notion that what constitutes personality can in any way be traced back to, or attributed to, innate physiological processes. As he argued, newborns lack a personality (and the personality traits which have yet to form). The psychology of personality has to be a post-instinctive formation.

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