Structure of personality psychology based on cocitation analysis of prominent authors

Abstract

Traditional Author Cocitation Analysis was applied in order to map the personality psychology as a research field. A group of 25 authors were selected from the Haggbloom (1999, 2002) lists of the most cited and prominent psychologists, judged to be the main contributors to the field. All of their cocitations identified in the three year volumes of SSCI were downloaded to be analyzed by cluster analysis and MDS. The analysis resulted in four clusters comprising (1) theorists of individual differences amalgamated with authors of biological orientation with R. Cattell positioned centrally, (2) behaviorists joined by socio-cognitive theorists led by M.E.P. Seligman and A. Bandura, and (3) the group of psychoanalytic (dynamic) theorists with A. Adler in the middle. In fourth cluster G. Allport, H. Murray, K. Lewin, W. Mischel, and D. Buss were found mixed together to make a rather heterogeneous group. In two-axes representation one of the dimensions was understoodas reflecting methodological and the other one content-specific differences among the authors, although this interpretation is not univocal. The same procedure was repeated on citations given to the same authors in SocioFakt - the Serbian Citation Index for Social Sciences, revealing a reduced picture of the domain. At this portrait, some important authors are missing as a result of their low citation rate, suggesting that in the Serbian personality psychology entire research fields don"t exist.