Literature in psychology viewed from the elementary text

Literature in Death, Dying and Bereavement Viewed from the Basic Text

“…It can be seen from Table 1 that approximately four out of every five references cited in any given text are unique references to that specific text. By the same token, less than 1 percent of all references cited are cited in common by all five texts in the sample, whether from current texts in Thanatology or from texts in another field of study (Introductory Psychology from Wrenn, 1964) in a sample taken roughly thirty-five years ago. While no hard and fast conclusions can be drawn from these two sets of data it may be that in other fields of study, at least within the human sciences, the "classic" studies (see Table 3) hold the attention of all authors while individual differences rule the remaining references cited and from which the text is constructed.…”

“…Do all texts quote the same research, discuss the same topics, agree on the same issues of importance as to what should be included in the text? This question relates to a similar question raised by the lead author of this article concerning the nature of the basic texts in the field of psychology (Wrenn, 1964). In that study it was discovered that of five leading texts for the elementary course in Psychology at that time, only twenty citations out of the total of 3,587 were quoted in common by all five texts.…”

Linguistic isolation of American social psychology: A comparative study of journal citations.

“…Bibliographical citations are archival data (Webb et al, 1966), a plausible indicator of scientific communication patterns (Parker, Paisley, & Garrett, 1967). Citations have been used to indicate the prominence of individual psychologists (Clark, 1954;Ruja, 1956), the existence of a scientific elite (Cole & Cole, 1972;Garvey & Griffith, 1971), and the importance of psychological books and articles (Wrenn, 1964). Matrices of interjournal citation counts have been used to infer influence patterns in psychology (Cason & Lubotsky, 1936).…”

Psychology Today

“…Si la dispersión la entendemos en el aspecto bibliográfi co, personalmente me impresiona esto: se ha podido tomar cinco manuales "introducciones a k psicología" de los mismos años, en Estados Unidos, textos muy recientes, textos de los que se ha sacado la bibliografía que utilizan. Se han contabl lizado 3.587 referencias y entre éstas sólo hablan 20 trabajos que hubieran sido citados por los cinco manuales: un porcentaje de menos del medio por cien (WRENN, 1964).…”