Vittorio Benussi

Vittorio Benussi (January 17, 1878 in Trieste — November 24, 1927 in Padua) was an Italian psychologist.

Benussi was a member of the Austrian school of act psychology, a theory opposed to structuralism. Adherents of act psychology, which was founded by Franz Brentano, held that the most important aspect of the mind is what the mind does, rather than what is merely contained within the mind. As Edwin Boring notes, "When one sees a color, the color itself is not mental. It is the seeing, the act, that is mental."

In his work, Benussi conducted numerous studies on optical illusions, visual and haptic perception, spatial perception, as well as the perception of time. He also developed one of the first lie detection tests.