Psychology of the Scientist: LV. Social Psychologists' Perceptions of Journals' Readability: How Consistent are They?

Abstract

Psychologists have long been criticized for the quality of their prose. This study shows, however, that one commonly accepted feature of good writing, readability, is perceived accurately in professional psychology journals by social psychologists and, also, though with less certainty, by their students. The professionals' perceptions are remarkably consistent: they agree when they rank their journals on readability and again on importance. Their perceptions are also realistic: the rankings of readability agree, on the whole, with the objective measures. Even their students are able to perceive, roughly, the journals' levels of readability. In addition, the psychologists' rankings of importance do not contaminate their rankings of readability, although their familiarity with the journals may. Finally, their journals are more alike than different: no significant differences appear in over-all Flesch scores, in polysyllabic words, in sentence length, or in embedded words, despite the very large sample analyzed.