Nosek et al., 2010, Cumulative and career-stage citation impact of social-personality psychology programs and their members
citation
Nosek, B. A., Graham, J., Lindner, N. M., Kesebir, S., Hawkins, C. B., Hahn, C., Schmidt, K., Motyl, M., Joy-Gaba, J . A., Frazier, R., & Tenney, E. R. (2010). Cumulative and career-stage impact of social-personality psychology programs and their members. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1283-1300. [Request paper]
Notable article outliers
The analyses in this article focused on citation impact of individuals and programs. It included 611 active members of 97 social-personality psychology programs in Canada and the U.S. Another level of analysis is the impact of individual scientific works. The presents a list of works by at least one of the members of our sample that have been cited more than 1500 times (as of August 2009). The most extreme outlier – Baron and Kenny (1986) – has been cited more than 17,000 times. How big is that? There are 55 programs in our sample of 97 for which the sum total of citation counts of every work by every member of the program is less than the citation count of Baron and Kenny (1986).
This mind-boggling example inspires an obvious question: What is the translation of times cited to some conceptual understanding of the article’s impact? There is no definitive answer. Through our review of thousands of articles, we offer as intuitive guides these tentative benchmarks for works that have had some time to “mature” (scaled by a factor of 3 approximately):
100 times cited = high impact
300 times cited = widespread impact
1000 times cited = citation classic
3000 times cited = transformational impact
These should be understood as relatively arbitrary breakpoints on the continuous distribution of citation counts. They may not apply in fields for which citations accumulate more quickly or more slowly than psychology. All of the highly-cited scholars in the present sample have multiple “high impact” scientific works, and most have at least one that meets the “widespread impact” mark. It is unusual for an author to have more than one “citation classic,” though there are multiple examples of that among the highest impact scientists. And, finally, 22 articles in our search and review of many thousand surpass the “transformational impact” benchmark (Appendix F). Note also, that by these benchmarks, Baron and Kenny (1986) re-earns “citation classic” status annually for being cited more than 1000 times each year so far this century.
Number of cites | Authors | Year | Article Title | Journal or Book Title |
17196 | Baron & Kenny | 1986 | The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |
11300 | Fishbein & Ajzen | 1975 | [book] | Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior |
9824 | Ajzen & Fishbein | 1980 | [book] | Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behavior |
8406 | Aiken & West | 1991 | [book] | Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions |
7667 | Ajzen | 1991 | Theory of planned behavior | Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes |
6922 | Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall | 1978 | [book] | Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation |
6520 | Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky | 1982 | [book] | Judgment under certainty: Heuristics and biases |
6300 | Watson, Clark, & Tellegen | 1988 | Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |
5807 | Deci & Ryan | 1985 | [book] | Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior |
5731 | Fiske & Taylor | 1991 | [book] | Social Cognition |
5355 | Markus & Kitayama | 1991 | Culture & the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, & motivation | Psychological Review |
5001 | Shrout & Fleiss | 1979 | Intraclass correlations: Uses in assessing rater reliability | Psychological Bulletin |
4385 | Nisbett & Wilson | 1977 | Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes | Psychological Review |
4211 | Nisbett & Ross | 1980 | [book] | Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment |
3956 | Eagly & Chaiken | 1993 | [book] | The Psychology of Attitudes |
3898 | Cohen & Wills | 1985 | Stress, social support and the buffering hypothesis | Psychological Bulletin |
3359 | Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell | 1987 | [book] | Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Theory |
3347 | Slovic | 1987 | Perception of risk | Science |
3317 | Taylor & Brown | 1988 | Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health | Psychological Bulletin |
3163 | Ajzen | 1985 | From intentions to actions | Action-Control: From Cognition to Behavior |
3061 | Collins & Loftus | 1975 | A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing | Psychological Review |
3007 | Mischel | 1968 | [book] | Personality and Assessment |
2882 | Hackman & Oldham | 1980 | [book] | Work Redesign |
2796 | Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub | 1989 | Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |
2770 | Ajzen | 1988 | [book] | Attitudes, Personality, and Behaviour |
2695 | Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin | 1985 | The satisfaction with life scale | Journal of Personality Assessment |
2592 | Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein | 1983 | A global measure of perceived stress | Journal of Health and Social Behavior |
2591 | Deci | 1973 | [book] | Intrinsic Motivation |
2555 | Lind & Tyler | 1988 | [book] | The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice |
2488 | Dweck & Leggett | 1988 | Social cognitive approach to motivation | Psychological Review |
2481 | Petty & Cacioppo | 1986 | [book] | Communication and Persuasion |
2471 | Baumeister & Leary | 1995 | The need to belong | Psychological Bulletin |
2317 | Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy | 1985 | Security in infancy, childhood, and adulthood: A move to the level of representation | Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development |
2316 | Ryan & Deci | 2000 | Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being | American Psychologist |
2251 | Devine | 1989 | Stereotypes and prejudice | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |
2213 | Heatherton, Kozlowski, Frecker, & Fagerström | 1991 | The Fagerström Test for nicotine dependence: A revision of the Fagerström Tolerance Questionnaire. | British Journal of Addiction |
2150 | Watson & Clark | 1984 | Negative affectivity: The disposition to experience aversive emotional states | Psychological Bulletin |
2135 | Salovey & Mayer | 1990 | Emotional intelligence | Imagination, Cognition, and Personality |
2121 | Hackman & Oldham | 1975 | Development of the job diagnostic survey | Journal of Applied Psychololgy |
2074 | Dweck | 1986 | Motivational processes affecting learning | American Psychologist |
2067 | Bartholomew & Horowitz | 1991 | Attachment styles among young adults: A test of a four-category model | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |
2016 | Scheier & Carver. | 1985 | Optimism, coping and health: Assessment and implications of generalized outcome expectancies | Health Psychology |
2014 | Markus & Nurius | 1986 | Possible selves | American Psychologist |
1980 | Watson & Tellegen | 1985 | Toward a consensual structure of mood | Psychological Bulletin |
1965 | Petty & Cacioppo | 1986 | The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion | Advances in Experimental Social Psychology |
1960 | Ross | 1978 | The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process | Cognitive Theories in Social Psychology |
1905 | Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz | 1998 | Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit Association Test | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |
1890 | Hackman & Oldham | 1976 | Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory | Organizational Behavior |
1889 | Maslach & Jackson | 1981 | [book] | The Maslach Burnout Inventory |
1852 | Garner, Olmstead, & Polivy | 1983 | Development and validation of a multidimensional eating disorder inventory for anorexia nervosa | International Journal of Eating Disorders |
1837 | Higgins | 1987 | Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and affect | Psychological Review |
1836 | Janoff-Bulman | 1992 | [book] | Shattered Assumptions |
1804 | Markus | 1999 | Self-schemata | The Self in Social Psychology |
1787 | Russell | 1980 | A circumplex model of affect | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |
1782 | Ajzen & Fishbein | 1977 | Attitude-behavior relations | Psychological Bulletin |
1749 | Steele | 1997 | A threat in the air | American Psychologist |
1736 | Crocker & Major | 1989 | Social stigma and self-esteem: The self-protective properties of stigma | Psychological Review |
1734 | Ajzen & Madden | 1986 | Prediction of goal-directed behavior | Journal of Experimental Social Psychology |
1682 | Carver & Scheier | 1981 | [book] | Attention and self-regulation: A control theory approach to human behavior |
1646 | Jones & Nisbett | 1972 | The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior | Attribution: perceiving the causes of behavior |
1632 | Langer | 1975 | The illusion of control | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |
1624 | Petty & Cacioppo | 1996 | [book] | Attitudes and Persuasion |
1618 | Snyder | 1974 | Self-monitoring and expressive behavior | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |
1597 | Greenwald & Banaji | 1995 | Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes | Psychological Review |
1592 | Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison & Sowa | 1986 | Perceived organizational support | Journal of Applied Psychololgy |
1563 | Dweck | 2000 | [book] | Self-Theories |
1550 | Watson & Pennebaker | 1989 | Health complaints, stress, and distress: Exploring the central role of negative affect | Psychological Review |
1540 | Eagly | 1987 | [book] | Sex Differences in Social Behavior: A Social Role Interpretation |
1539 | Carver & Scheier | 2001 | [book] | On the Self-Regulation of Behavior |
1521 | Werner & Smith | 1981 | [book] | Vulnerable, but Invincible: A Longitudinal Study of Resilient Children and Youth |
1519 | Deci & Ryan | 2000 | The "what" and" why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior | Psychological Inquiry |
1514 | Bargh & Chartrand | 1999 | The unbearable automaticity of being | American Psychologist |
1503 | Mischel | 1973 | Toward a cognitive social learning reconceptualization of personality | Psychological Review |
1501 | Cacioppo & Petty | 1983 | Effects of need for cognition on message evaluation, recall, and persuasion | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |
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