An empirical analysis of trends in psychology

Abstract

The present research examined trends in the prominence of 4 widely recognized schools in scientific psychology: psychoanalysis, behaviorism, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. The results, which replicated across 3 measures of prominence, showed the following trends: (a) psychoanalytic research has been virtually ignored by mainstream scientific psychology over the past several decades; (b) behavioral psychology has declined in prominence and gave way to the ascension of cognitive psychology during the 1970s; (c) cognitive psychology has sustained a steady upward trajectory and continues to be the most prominent school; and (d) neuroscience has seen only a modest increase in prominence in mainstream psychology, despite evidence for its conspicuous growth in general. The authors use these findings as a springboard for discussing different views of scientific prominence and conclude that psychologists should evaluate trends in the field empirically, not intuitively.