Tracing the historical roots of positive psychology by reference publication year spectroscopy

Positive psychology is a branch of psychology that has been developed in recent years. One can look at this almost new emerging field of psychology through different perspectives including scientometrics (and similarly bibliometrics). In this study, the historical roots of positive psychology were traced by a new scientometrics approach called Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) introduced in 2014. 2594 documents (1900-2017) on positive psychology indexed in Web of Science core collection were extracted. Results showed 10 peaks which present historical roots of positive psychology as depicted by RPYS analysis. The RPYS analysis showed that positive psychology dates back to 1900s, humanistic psychology and to the works of authors such as Maslow and Raggers. A turning point was observed in 2000 that highlights Seligman's works. Afterward, other researches carried out on positive psychology promoted this field.