The Psychology Book

IN CONTEXT

BRANCH

Cognitive psychology

APPROACH

Learning theory

BEFORE

1933 Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin leaves the Berlin School of Experimental Psychology and emigrates to the US.

AFTER

1963 Stanley Milgram publishes his experiments on willingness to obey authority figures, even when orders conflict with one’s conscience.

1971 Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison study shows how people adapt to the roles they are assigned.

1972 US social psychologist Daryl Bem proposes the alternative self-perception theory of attitude change.

1980s Elliot Aronson defends Festinger’s theory, conducting experiments into initiation rites.

By the end of World War II, social ...