Robins, R. W., Gosling, S. D., & Craik, K. H. (1999). An empirical analysis of trends in psychology. American Psychologist, 54, 117-128.

III. Overview:

Every introductory psychology text begins with at least a bit of psychology's history. Often, the story is told of the rise and fall of the historically important schools of psychology. The Robins et al. article brings this story up to date by documenting the trends in the four most prominent schools in modern-day psychology: psychoanalysis, behaviorism, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience.

This study used three indices to estimate the relative importance, or "scientific prominence," of each of these schools to modern research and thinking in psychology. The first index was an analysis of the subject matter of papers published in psychology's "flagship" journals (American Psychologist, Annual Review of Psychology, Psychological Bulletin, and Psychological Review). The second index examined the content of dissertations. And finally, the third index was an analysis of how frequently articles in each of the 4 schools primary journals were cited in the 4 "flagship" journals.

V. Conclusions and Implications:

These 3 indices showed remarkable consistency and revealed the following (1) psychoanalysis has not played a pivotal role in mainstream psychology over the past several decades, (2) the influence of behaviorism has declined in the past 3 decades, (3) cognitive psychology has become the dominant school of psychology concomitant with behaviorism's decline, and (4) although neuroscience is, in general, experiencing strong growth in general, it has exerted only modest levels of influence in psychology. The authors lament the weak connection between psychology and neuroscience and suggested that we must "work harder to integrate neuroscience into the field" (p. 126).