Social Psychology: Who We Are and What We Do

Abstract

The author index of the Handbook of Social Psychology (Gilbert, Fiske & Lindzey, 1998) and of Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Processes (Higgins & Kruglanski, 1996) served as the basis for identifying and describing some of the people constructing social psychology in the 1990s. Over 10,000 names are mentioned, but relatively few are mentioned several times. The 106 contributors who were mentioned mostfrequently are identified and described. They are mostly men about 20 years beyond the PhD. The select set of institutions at which they work and from which they obtained their degrees are also identified. Similarities among contributors were calculated on the basis of the proximity of their mentions in the handbooks. An analysis of those similarities yielded eight “contributor factors”: social cognition, attitudes, motivated attribution, self, interpersonal influence, intergroup relations and stereo-types, culture and evolution, and interpersonal relationships.