Mapping the field of psychology: Trends in research topics 1995–2015

Abstract

We map the topic structure of psychology utilizing a sample of over 500,000 abstracts of research articles and conference proceedings spanning two decades (1995–2015). To do so, we apply structural topic models to examine three research questions: (i) What are the discipline’s most prevalent research topics? (ii) How did the scientific discourse in psychology change over the last decades, especially since the advent of neurosciences? (iii) And was this change carried by high impact (HI) or less prestigious journals? Our results reveal that topics related to natural sciences are trending, while their ’counterparts’ leaning to humanities are declining in popularity. Those trends are even more pronounced in the leading outlets of the field. Furthermore, our findings indicate a continued interest in methodological topics accompanied by the ascent of neurosciences and related methods and technologies (e.g. fMRI’s). At the same time, other established approaches (e.g. psychoanalysis) become less popular and indicate a relative decline of topics related to the social sciences and the humanities.

Benefits and detriments of interdisciplinarity on early career scientists’ performance. An author-level approach for U.S. physicists and psychologists

“…As indicated by the differences in the disparity -measures, psychology appears more fragmented than physics, giving an advantage in citation counts to those who combine research topics in close proximity. The negative effect of disparity present for ECRs in psychology hints at epistemological conflicts between different paradigms as seen in previous papers on the epistemological foundation of psychology [ 41 – 44 ]. In fact, bridging different paradigms might cost the connectivity to established discourses of an ECR in the addressed (sub-)disciplines.…”

“…We expected that IDR yields higher returns in terms of research impact for physics ECRs, while lowering the impact of ECRs in psychology. We attributed this to disciplinary differences, namely the common paradigmatic core in physics [ 66 ] and the internal fragmentation and multiparadigmatic constitution of psychology [ 43 , 44 , 79 ]. While the former supposedly enables ECRs to pursue IDR as long as it is connectable to the common paradigmatic core, the latter requires ECRs to signal their belonging to a school of thought, thus limiting their possibilities to gain recognition from conducting IDR.…”

“…Psychology is much more fragmented and relies on many theories, methodological approaches, and schools of thought like behaviorism or psychoanalysis [ 40 ]. There is also still a debate on the very subject of psychology (the mind, behavior, psyche) and whether it can be unified under a single paradigm [ 41 – 44 ]. Because of the fragmentation of the field of psychology, researchers need to signal their belonging to a school of thought which lowers the chances to get acknowledged for deviant lines of research.…”

“…To answer these research questions, we use a dataset of ECRs who completed their doctorates in physics or psychology at US universities between 2008 and 2012. We chose these two disciplines as their main difference is rooted in the connectivity between interdisciplinary as well as novel lines of research and established knowledge: While physics is characterized by a strong, paradigmatic core and a large community with the ability to integrate new knowledge easily [ 37 – 39 ], psychology is multi-paradigmatic, diverse, and characterized by different schools of thought [ 40 ], which are in epistemological conflict with each other [ 41 – 44 ], making the integration of new knowledge more difficult compared to physics. Consequently, we assume these disciplinary differences to be reflected in the effects of novelty and IDR on the research impact of early career researchers.…”

Toward a (“Dissolved”) Psychology of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Relations: A Complexity-Informed Proposal

“…The success of a new Psychology of Inter and Transdisciplinary Relations is also dependent on the challenge of Internal “Dissolution” which is dependent on a first mapping of the discipline for the identification of the sub-domains and disciplines which may be more relevant to consider (Wieczorek, Unger, Riebling, Erhard, Koß & Heiberger, 2021). This mapping can build on methodologies that have already been used and constituted, itself, as an Interdisciplinary exercise (e.g., Trujillo & Long, 2018; Melo, Caves, Dewitt, Clutton, Macpherson & Garnett, 2020; Wagner, Roessner, Bobb, Klein, Boyack, Keyton, Rafolds & Börner, 2011).…”