Psychology Quiz
Pavlov, Freud, Milgram, Maslow and the Bobo doll: 15 questions on the experiments that explained the mind.
Ivan Pavlov carried out his famous conditioning experiments on which animals?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Dogs
Pavlov noticed that his laboratory dogs began salivating before food arrived, and he showed they could be trained to drool at a neutral signal, the basis of classical conditioning.
Pavlov was a physiologist, not a psychologist, and his 1904 Nobel Prize was awarded for research on digestion, not learning.
Which Austrian neurologist is known as the father of psychoanalysis?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis in Vienna in the 1890s, using free association and dream analysis to explore the unconscious mind, and published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899.
Freud fled Nazi occupied Vienna for London in 1938, and his final home in Hampstead, complete with the famous couch, is now the Freud Museum.
Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs is usually drawn as what shape?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Pyramid
Maslow's 1943 theory ranks human needs from physiological basics up through safety, love, esteem and finally self actualisation, and it is almost always illustrated as a five level pyramid.
Maslow himself never drew the pyramid; the image was popularised later by management writers and textbook authors.
The Rorschach test asks people to describe what they see in a series of what?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Inkblots
Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach published his test in 1921, using ten symmetrical inkblots whose ambiguous shapes were meant to reveal aspects of personality and thinking.
Rorschach died in 1922 at only 37, less than a year after his inkblot test was published.
In Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments, participants believed they were giving a learner what?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Electric shocks
Milgram's volunteers at Yale, starting in 1961, were told to press switches on a shock generator labelled up to 450 volts whenever the learner answered wrongly; the shocks were fake and the learner was an actor.
In the baseline study 65 percent of participants went all the way to the maximum 450 volt switch despite the learner's screams.
B. F. Skinner is best known for developing which type of conditioning, based on rewards and punishments?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Operant conditioning
Skinner showed that behaviour followed by a reward is repeated and behaviour followed by punishment fades, calling this operant conditioning and studying it with rats and pigeons in his Skinner box.
During the Second World War Skinner trained pigeons to guide missiles by pecking at a target image, a project the military never deployed.
In Freud's model of personality, the id and the ego are joined by which third part?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Superego
Freud described the id as instinctive drives, the ego as the realistic mediator and the superego as the internalised moral voice of parents and society, introducing the model in 1923.
Freud's original German terms were simply das Es, das Ich and das Über-Ich, meaning the It, the I and the Over-I.
Who led the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, in which students played guards and prisoners?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Philip Zimbardo
Philip Zimbardo turned a Stanford basement into a mock prison, and the experiment was stopped after six days as guards became abusive and prisoners showed severe distress.
Zimbardo later served as an expert witness in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse trials, drawing on what his experiment suggested about situations and power.
Albert Bandura's Bobo doll experiment showed that children learn aggression mainly through what?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Observing and imitating adults
In Bandura's 1961 study, children who watched an adult punch and kick an inflatable Bobo doll were far more likely to attack the doll themselves, supporting his social learning theory.
Bandura went on to develop the concept of self efficacy, a person's belief in their own ability to succeed at a task.
Solomon Asch's famous conformity experiments asked participants to compare what?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
The length of lines
Asch asked people to say which of three lines matched a reference line, and when a group of actors confidently gave the wrong answer, about three quarters of participants conformed at least once.
Having just one other person in the group give the correct answer cut conformity dramatically, showing the power of a single ally.
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget is best known for his theory of what?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Cognitive development in children
Piaget proposed that children pass through four stages of cognitive development, from sensorimotor to formal operational, each with a distinct way of understanding the world.
Piaget published his first scientific paper, on an albino sparrow, at the age of 10, and was an expert on molluscs before turning to psychology.
Which psychologist introduced the ideas of the collective unconscious and archetypes?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Carl Jung
Carl Jung, once Freud's closest collaborator, broke with him in 1913 and developed analytical psychology, arguing that all humans share inherited archetypes in a collective unconscious.
Jung also coined the terms introvert and extravert, and his personality types later inspired the widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
Which term, coined by Leon Festinger in 1957, describes the discomfort of holding two conflicting beliefs at once?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Cognitive dissonance
Festinger argued that people feel tension when their beliefs and actions clash and reduce that cognitive dissonance by changing a belief or justifying the behaviour.
Festinger developed the idea after infiltrating a UFO cult whose members became more committed, not less, when the predicted apocalypse failed to arrive.
In the 1920 Little Albert experiment, John B. Watson conditioned a baby to fear which object?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
A white rat
Watson and Rosalie Rayner struck a steel bar with a hammer whenever nine month old Albert touched a white laboratory rat, until the sight of the rat alone made him cry.
Albert's fear generalised to other furry things, including a rabbit, a fur coat and a Santa Claus mask with a cotton wool beard.
Who opened the first laboratory dedicated to experimental psychology, at Leipzig in 1879?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Wundt founded his Leipzig laboratory in 1879, an event widely treated as the birth of psychology as an independent science separate from philosophy and physiology.
Wundt trained dozens of students who spread experimental psychology around the world, including Edward Titchener, who took it to Cornell University.
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All Science quizzes →About the Psychology Quiz
Psychology produced some of the most famous experiments in science. Ivan Pavlov taught dogs to drool at a signal, Stanley Milgram found that 65 percent of ordinary people would deliver what they believed was a 450 volt shock when told to, and Philip Zimbardo had to shut down his mock prison after six days.
These 15 questions cover the founding figures, from Wundt and Freud to Jung and Piaget, the landmark studies on obedience, conformity and learning, and the terms that escaped the lecture hall, such as cognitive dissonance and operant conditioning. It starts with the names everyone knows and builds to the deeper cuts that psychology students will enjoy.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Medium. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
How difficult is the Psychology Quiz?
It is rated Medium. The early questions cover household names like Freud and Pavlov, while later ones ask about specific experiments, theorists and technical terms.
Which famous experiments are included?
Pavlov's conditioning, Milgram's obedience study, the Stanford prison experiment, Bandura's Bobo doll, Asch's conformity tests and Watson's Little Albert study, among others.
Is this quiz useful for psychology students?
Yes. It touches on key names and concepts from introductory psychology courses, and every answer includes a short explanation and an extra fact for revision.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- Ivan Pavlov carried out his famous conditioning experiments on which animals?
Dogs Pavlov noticed that his laboratory dogs began salivating before food arrived, and he showed they could be trained to drool at a neutral signal, the basis of classical conditioning. Pavlov was a physiologist, not a psychologist, and his 1904 Nobel Prize was awarded for research on digestion, not learning. - Which Austrian neurologist is known as the father of psychoanalysis?
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis in Vienna in the 1890s, using free association and dream analysis to explore the unconscious mind, and published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899. Freud fled Nazi occupied Vienna for London in 1938, and his final home in Hampstead, complete with the famous couch, is now the Freud Museum. - Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs is usually drawn as what shape?
Pyramid Maslow's 1943 theory ranks human needs from physiological basics up through safety, love, esteem and finally self actualisation, and it is almost always illustrated as a five level pyramid. Maslow himself never drew the pyramid; the image was popularised later by management writers and textbook authors. - The Rorschach test asks people to describe what they see in a series of what?
Inkblots Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach published his test in 1921, using ten symmetrical inkblots whose ambiguous shapes were meant to reveal aspects of personality and thinking. Rorschach died in 1922 at only 37, less than a year after his inkblot test was published. - In Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments, participants believed they were giving a learner what?
Electric shocks Milgram's volunteers at Yale, starting in 1961, were told to press switches on a shock generator labelled up to 450 volts whenever the learner answered wrongly; the shocks were fake and the learner was an actor. In the baseline study 65 percent of participants went all the way to the maximum 450 volt switch despite the learner's screams. - B. F. Skinner is best known for developing which type of conditioning, based on rewards and punishments?
Operant conditioning Skinner showed that behaviour followed by a reward is repeated and behaviour followed by punishment fades, calling this operant conditioning and studying it with rats and pigeons in his Skinner box. During the Second World War Skinner trained pigeons to guide missiles by pecking at a target image, a project the military never deployed. - In Freud's model of personality, the id and the ego are joined by which third part?
Superego Freud described the id as instinctive drives, the ego as the realistic mediator and the superego as the internalised moral voice of parents and society, introducing the model in 1923. Freud's original German terms were simply das Es, das Ich and das Über-Ich, meaning the It, the I and the Over-I. - Who led the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, in which students played guards and prisoners?
Philip Zimbardo Philip Zimbardo turned a Stanford basement into a mock prison, and the experiment was stopped after six days as guards became abusive and prisoners showed severe distress. Zimbardo later served as an expert witness in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse trials, drawing on what his experiment suggested about situations and power. - Albert Bandura's Bobo doll experiment showed that children learn aggression mainly through what?
Observing and imitating adults In Bandura's 1961 study, children who watched an adult punch and kick an inflatable Bobo doll were far more likely to attack the doll themselves, supporting his social learning theory. Bandura went on to develop the concept of self efficacy, a person's belief in their own ability to succeed at a task. - Solomon Asch's famous conformity experiments asked participants to compare what?
The length of lines Asch asked people to say which of three lines matched a reference line, and when a group of actors confidently gave the wrong answer, about three quarters of participants conformed at least once. Having just one other person in the group give the correct answer cut conformity dramatically, showing the power of a single ally. - Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget is best known for his theory of what?
Cognitive development in children Piaget proposed that children pass through four stages of cognitive development, from sensorimotor to formal operational, each with a distinct way of understanding the world. Piaget published his first scientific paper, on an albino sparrow, at the age of 10, and was an expert on molluscs before turning to psychology. - Which psychologist introduced the ideas of the collective unconscious and archetypes?
Carl Jung Carl Jung, once Freud's closest collaborator, broke with him in 1913 and developed analytical psychology, arguing that all humans share inherited archetypes in a collective unconscious. Jung also coined the terms introvert and extravert, and his personality types later inspired the widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. - Which term, coined by Leon Festinger in 1957, describes the discomfort of holding two conflicting beliefs at once?
Cognitive dissonance Festinger argued that people feel tension when their beliefs and actions clash and reduce that cognitive dissonance by changing a belief or justifying the behaviour. Festinger developed the idea after infiltrating a UFO cult whose members became more committed, not less, when the predicted apocalypse failed to arrive. - In the 1920 Little Albert experiment, John B. Watson conditioned a baby to fear which object?
A white rat Watson and Rosalie Rayner struck a steel bar with a hammer whenever nine month old Albert touched a white laboratory rat, until the sight of the rat alone made him cry. Albert's fear generalised to other furry things, including a rabbit, a fur coat and a Santa Claus mask with a cotton wool beard. - Who opened the first laboratory dedicated to experimental psychology, at Leipzig in 1879?
Wilhelm Wundt Wilhelm Wundt founded his Leipzig laboratory in 1879, an event widely treated as the birth of psychology as an independent science separate from philosophy and physiology. Wundt trained dozens of students who spread experimental psychology around the world, including Edward Titchener, who took it to Cornell University.
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