A Citation Analysis of Who's Who in Introductory Textbooks

Given the many changes in the introductory psychology textbook market in the past 2 decades and the lack of a recent citation study of introductory texts, we conducted a citation analysis of a stratified random sample of current texts. To provide a more comprehensive picture of current citation emphases, we extended our analysis to the top 60 authors. As expected, historically prominent psychologists dominated the top 15, with Freud cited most often. We also found that the citation patterns reflected recent changes in the prominence of various schools of scientific psychology with cognitive psychology well represented. We discuss the role of these data in students' perceptions of psychology and in helping introductory teachers to make course content choices.