Assignment
Richard W. Robins, Samuel D. Gosling, and Kenneth H. Craik
Psychology is a science, and as such, it uses the scientific method to explore previously unknown areas, while elaborating written reports to share with fellow peers and the general community, in order to guarantee its own progress. An important component of a modern psychologist then, is the ability to accurately read and interpret the works of others. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to critically analyze the paper entitled An Empirical Analysis of Trends in Psychology (Robins, Gosling, & Craik, 1999).
Research Question
Introduction
In the introduction section, the authors perform a review of the literature available at the time the paper was written, and elaborate on the topic. They cite 13 references (Baars, B. J., 1986; Bechtel, W., 1988; Churchland, P. S., 1986; Friman, P. C, Allen, K. D., Kerwin, M. L. E., & Larzelere, R., 1993; Gardner, H., 1985; Garfield, E., 1979; Heidbreder, E., 1933; Hunt, M., 1993; Leahey, T. H., 1991; Pierce, W. D., 1996; Salzinger, K., 1994; Sperry, R. W., 1988; Robins, R. W., & Craik, K. H., 1993) and discuss popular thoughts on the research question. The authors decide to focus on four schools: psychoanalysis, behaviorism, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience, and make the observation that "many of these schools have risen and fallen from prominence" (Robins et al., 1999, p. 117). Many of the sources they cite have a subjective perception of which psychology schools are most prominent at a given time. Some of the authors they cite state that the cognitive school is the most prominent, while others believe the behaviorist school is still strong within the field. None of the sources they cite appear to have conducted a methodic empirical research on the subject. So, they decide to conduct an empirical research to answer. They first start by describing how they decided to measure prominence, and then identify a main objective and a secondary objective. The main one would be to answer the research question previously stated. The secondary objective consists on describing the specific trends that could be identified over time regarding the four schools.
Methods
Results
The results are presented in a very friendly and easy-to-understand manner, subdivided by sections, and had a table or a graph complementing the information. There is one table, and five graphs. Table 1 shows the four leading journals from each school, along with their 1996 citation impact, and year of first publication. Figure 1 shows a graph over time of the percentage of flagship articles with keywords (first index). Figures 2 and 3 show the second and third index graphics, respectively. Figures 4 and 5 are complementary, and show the annual membership in the Society for Neuroscience, and the total number of leading neuroscience journals’ citations per year by the Journal Science, respectively.
The results clearly answer the research question. All 3 indexes show a rise in trends of cognitive articles, dissertations, and citations starting in 1960. They also show a decreased trend of the behavioral school, and almost no trends for the psychoanalysis and neuroscience schools.
Discussion
References
Personal reaction
Overall, this was a very good written article. Although some might argue that in scientific writing it is mandatory to used third-person and passive voice, I believe that writing in first person adds a sense of responsibility when presenting the results of a research. Sentences that used the “we” pronoun reflect this (“we examined”, “we used”, “we calculated”). Nevertheless, I believe the article was not well organized. Part of the methodology was explained in the introduction section (definition of indexes), part of it in the results section (supplemental analyses), and the rest in the methods section itself. Part of the results was given in the methods section (ratings of prominence of neuroscience journals). Part of the discussion was included in the results section (specifically on neuroscience), and the research question was given away too early on the introduction, before the problem was fully stated. Sometimes this non-traditional way of organizing the information presented on a paper depends on journals policies. Even though, the paper is so well written that it was still not hard to grasp and understand it.
Reading and analyzing this paper allowed me to learn about writing style, and the trends in psychology schools at the end of the 20th century. That was 15 years ago. I would like to know how are those trends nowadays, and if neuroscience is more important today within psychology, than it was at that time.
References
Baars, B. J. (1986). The cognitive revolution in psychology. New York: Guilford.
Bechtel, W. (1988). Philosophy of science: An overview for cognitive science. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Churchland, P. S. (1986). Neurophilosophy: Toward a unified science of the mind/brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.
Friman, P. C, Allen, K. D., Kerwin, M. L. E., & Larzelere, R. (1993). Changes in modern psychology: A citation analysis of the Kuhnian displacement thesis. American Psychologist, 48, 658-664.
Gardner, H. (1985). The mind's new science: A history of the cognitive revolution. New York: Basic Books.
Garfield, E. (1979). Citation indexing—its theory and application in science, technology, and humanities. New York: Wiley.
Heidbreder, E. (1933). Seven psychologies. New York: Appleton.
Hunt, M. (1993). The story of psychology. New York: Doubleday.
Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakatos, I. (1970). Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes. In I. Lakatos & A. Musgrave (Eds.), Criticism and the growth of knowledge (pp. 91—196). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Leahey, T. H. (1991). A history of modern psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Pierce, W. D. (1996). Behavior analysis is alive and well. Contemporary Psychology, 41, 461.
Salzinger, K. (1994). The one with the most citations wins. American Psychologist, 49, 816.
Sperry, R. W. (1988). Psychology's mentalist paradigm and the religion/science tension. American Psychologist, 43, 606-613.
Robins, R. W., & Craik, K. H. (1993). Is there a citation bias in the judgment and decision literature? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 54, 225-244.
Robins, R. W., Gosling, S. D., & Craik, K. H. (1999). An empirical analysis of trends in psychology. The American psychologist, 54(2), 117–128.
