Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire lifespan. Developmental psychologists aim to explain how thinking, feeling, and behaviors change throughout life. This field examines change across three major dimensions, which are physical development, cognitive development, and social emotional development. Within these three dimensions are a broad range of topics including motor skills, executive functions, moral understanding, language acquisition, social change, personality, emotional development, self-concept, and identity formation.
Erik Homburger Erikson was a Danish German-American child psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychosocial development of human beings. He coined the phrase identity crisis.
Psychobiography aims to understand historically significant individuals, such as artists or political leaders, through the application of psychological theory and research.
Frances Luella Welsing was an American psychiatrist and well-known proponent of The Cress Theory of Color Confrontation and Racism. Her 1970 essay, The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism , offered her interpretation of what she described as the origins of white supremacy culture.
Delbert Duane Thiessen is an American psychology professor emeritus whose research focused on evolutionary mechanisms of reproduction and social communication.
Quantitative psychology is a field of scientific study that focuses on the mathematical modeling, research design and methodology, and statistical analysis of psychological processes. It includes tests and other devices for measuring cognitive abilities. Quantitative psychologists develop and analyze a wide variety of research methods, including those of psychometrics, a field concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement.
Melanin theory is a set of pseudoscientific claims made by some proponents of Afrocentrism, which holds that black people, including ancient Egyptians, have superior mental, physical, and paranormal powers because they have higher levels of melanin, the primary skin pigment in humans.
The Austen Riggs Center is a psychiatric treatment facility in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was founded by Austen Fox Riggs in 1913 as the Stockbridge Institute for the Study and Treatment of Psychoneuroses before being renamed in honor of Austen Riggs on July 21, 1919.
Joe Richard Feagin is an American sociologist and social theorist who has conducted extensive research on racial and gender issues in the United States. He is currently the Ella C. McFadden Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University. Feagin has previously taught at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, University of California, Riverside, University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Florida.
Nancy L. Segal is an American evolutionary psychologist and behavioral geneticist, specializing in the study of twins. She is the Professor of Developmental Psychology and Director of the Twin Studies Center, at California State University, Fullerton. Segal was a recipient of the 2005 James Shields Award for Lifetime Contributions to Twin Research from the Behavior Genetics Association and International Society for Twin Studies.
Leonard Berkowitz was an American social psychologist best known for his research on altruism and human aggression. He originated the cognitive neoassociation model of aggressive behavior, which was created to help explain instances of aggression for which the frustration-aggression hypothesis could not account.
Carol Miller Swain is an American political scientist and legal scholar who is a retired professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University. She is a frequent television analyst and has authored and edited several books. Her interests include race relations, immigration, representation, evangelical politics, and the United States Constitution.
Marimba Ani is an anthropologist and African Studies scholar best known for her work Yurugu, a comprehensive critique of European thought and culture, and her coining of the term "Maafa" for the African holocaust.
William A. "Sandy" Darity Jr. is an American economist and social sciences researcher. Darity's research spans economic history, development economics, economic psychology, and the history of economic thought, but most of his research is devoted to group-based inequality, especially with respect to race and ethnicity. His 2005 paper in the Journal of Economics and Finance established Darity as the 'founder of stratification economics.' His varied research interests have also included the trans-Atlantic slave trade, African American reparations and the economics of black reparations, and social and economic policies that affect inequities by race and ethnicity. For the latter, he has been described as "perhaps the country’s leading scholar on the economics of racial inequality."
Callie House (1861–1928) was a leader of the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, one of the first organizations to campaign for reparations for slavery in the United States.
Adelbert H. Jenkins is an African American clinical psychologist who is known for his humanistic approach to Black psychology at the start of the field in the early 1970s. Jenkins was also one of the 28 founding members of the National Association of Black Psychologists, along with other notable psychologists such as Robert V. Guthrie and Joseph White. He is currently an associate professor of psychology at New York University.
Belinda Sutton, also known as Belinda Royall, was a Ghanaian-born woman who was enslaved by the Royall family at the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, USA. Additional details of Sutton's family life are under ongoing research. Baptism records for a son Joseph, and a daughter Prine, appear in church records. Belinda was abandoned by, Isaac Royall Jr., when he fled to Nova Scotia at the beginning of the American Revolution. In Royall's will, a number of enslaved people are listed, but Belinda was unique in his wishes:
"In his will he gave his slave Belinda the option of freedom, and he further 'provided that she get security that she shall not be a charge in the town of Medford.' If she did not elect freedom, he bequeathed her to his daughter Mary Erving. Other slaves were bequeathed and some were sold, but Belinda was emancipated."
Faye Z. Belgrave is a psychologist known for her research conducted for the benefit of the African American youth, specifically in the areas of substance abuse and HIV. She is currently a professor of Psychology and the founding director of the Center for Cultural Experiences in Prevention (CCEP) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).
Kelly Goldsmith is an American marketing researcher who specializes in consumer behavior and a former reality television contestant. She is currently the E. Bronson Ingram Chair and Professor of marketing at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University.
Charles William Thomas II was an African American psychologist and one of the founders of the Association of Black Psychologists.
