Ebenezer Scrooge
From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference.
Ebenezer Scrooge, was a character from the 19th century novel A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens that Data was portraying to study "method acting".
He attempted to discover emotions of his own by recreating them in performance through this technique. Data noted the way fear was used to motivate the evil Ebenezer Scrooge to redeem himself. (TNG: "Devil's Due")
