Psychologists & Sociologists Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sigmund Freud

Technically a psychoanalyst with training in neurology, Sigmund Freud is considered one of the founders of the field of psychology. He believed that people were driven by strong drives and was the first to write about transference, the Oedipal complex, and free association.

Answer: Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov, born in Russia in 1849, was a pioneer scholar of the reflex system. His most famous experiment involved making particular sounds whenever feeding his dogs; the dogs eventually began salivating when they heard the sounds, before seeing or smelling any food. One of his dogs was preserved by a taxidermist and resides at the Pavlov Museum in Ryazan, Russia.

Answer: Max Weber

Max Weber is considered a founding figure on the field of sociology. He wrote the book "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," and studied the confluence of technological, economic, and class-based forces that form a society's culture.

Answer: Carl Jung

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychologist who at one point was considered Freud's closest protegé. Jung contributed major concepts to the field of psychology, including that of the collective unconscious, introversion versus extroversion, and individuation in the therapeutic process.

Answer: B.F. Skinner

B.F. Skinner was an influential behavioral psychologist largely known for creating the Skinner Box, a box-like apparatus created to run scientific experiments on animals related to rewards and punishments. He created another box that he called an "air crib" which was for babies and young children -- he made it for commercial purposes but it was a flop.

Answer: Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow put forth that if people had their physical, safety, social, and esteem needs met, then they should be able to become "self actualized," a state comfort, compassion, and good nature. His work set the fundamental theories for humanistic psychology.

Answer: Linguistics

Noam Chomsky was trained as a linguist, but because he's written books and given speeches on war, politics, and mass media, he's more of a modern-day philosopher. Born in Philadelphia in 1928, Chomsky joined the academic staff at MIT in 1955.

Answer: Philip Zimbardo

Professor Zimbardo ran the infamous "Stanford Prison Experiment" in 1971 on a grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research. The experiment was supposed to last two weeks but was shut down after six days, as the mock prisoners and mock guards were traumatized at playing their roles.

Ever since, Zimbardo has headed studies researching more positive scenarios, including what brings out heroism in everyday people, and how shy people can learn to be more comfortable in groups.

Answer: Stanford-Binet

The Stanford-Binet test is an intelligence test based on an earlier version created by French psychologist Alfred Binet, who was tasked with creating a test to baseline students for the French educational system in 1904. The "Stanford" of the test was actually Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman, who built on Binet's test after Binet died. Lewis Terman was a leading researcher on giftedness as well as intelligence in general.

His son, engineering professor Frederick E. Terman, went on to be an influential provost at Stanford and has been referred to as the Father of Silicon Valley.

Answer: Hermann Rorschach

Hermann Rorschach created ink blot tests -- what you saw in the blots of ink would reveal thoughts from your unconscious. Rorschach died at age 37 in 1922 but the Rorschach test is still used today by practitioners in the US, Japan, and, to a lesser extent, the UK.