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Personality psychology in the first decade of the new millenium:
A bibliometric portrait
Jüri Allik
Department of Psychology
University of Tartu
Estonian Academy of Sciences
Keywords: personality psychology; bibliometric indicators; journal impact factors; highly
cited papers; country performance; country self-citation bias
Address correspondence to:
Jüri Allik
Department of Psychology
University of Tartu
Tiigi 78, Tartu 50410
E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract
Nine principal personality psychology journals – Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology (JPSP), Journal of Personality (JP), Journal of Research in Personality (JRP),
European Journal of Personality (EJP), Personality and Individual Differences (PAID),
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB), Personality and Social Psychology
Review (PSPR), Journal of Personality Assessment (JPA), and Journal of Personality
Disorders (JPD) – have published 8,510 research papers during the period from 2001 to 2010.
These papers have been cited 149,108 times (September 2011) by papers published in
journals indexed in the Web of Science. Although personality psychologists from the US
published the largest number of papers (4,924, 57.9%), and had the largest number of
citations (101,875, 68.3%), their relative contribution to personality literature has slightly
diminished during the first decade of the new millennium. Unlike other countries, personality
psychologists residing in the US demonstrated a strong country self-citation bias: they were
about 14% more likely to cite papers which were written by their compatriots rather than non-
US authors in three leading journals JPSP, PSPB, and PSPR. The intensity and pattern of
citations indicate that personality psychology indeed occupies one of the core positions at the
heart of psychological knowledge.
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Personality psychology in the first decade of the new millennium:
A bibliometric portrait
A bibliometric analysis may be entertaining but it also could serve for more constructive
purposes. Science administrators, for instance, can use results of a bibliometric analysis for
making more educated managerial decisions, journal editors can promote new policies, and
scientists can elaborate strategies for making their research findings available for the best
possible audience.
Personality psychologists have a long tradition of believing that their field forms a core of
psychology (Allport, 1961). A bibliometric analysis seems to support this suggestion since an
examination of journal citation data collected from 17 APA journals over 40 years revealed
that personality and social psychology is indeed by their citation networks located at the heart
of psychological knowledge (Yang & Chiu, 2009). This position may have served as a
justification for personality and social psychologists who have been rather active to observe
publication trends in their own field. For example, a bibliometric analysis of the first 36 years
(1965-2000) of the most cited psychology journal, Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology (JPSP), showed that papers published in this journal have grown over the years
both in length and the number of co-authors (Quiñones-Vidal, Lopez-García, Peñarañda-
Ortega, & Tortosa-Gil, 2004). They also found that the papers published in JPSP have become
more international with an increasing proportion of authors from outside the United States
(Quiñones-Vidal et al., 2004). Also, an analysis of the articles published in Personality and
Individual Differences (PAID) demonstrated that their authorship has become culturally more
diverse. Yet, unlike for JPSP papers published in PAID have become shorter over the period
from 1993 to 2005 (Bedford, 2007). Mallon and Kingsley (1998) analysed the papers
published in Journal of Personality (JP) from 1970 to 1995 and confirmed a well-known
secret that a typical personality analysis uses questionnaire measures and undergraduate
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participants. Finally, in a recent paper Kashy with colleagues (2009) documented how authors
of the papers published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB) were reporting
or misreporting their analyses and results.
Unfortunately, most of these bibliometric analyses are limited to few journals and/or
relatively short periods of publication. For example, Haslam with colleagues (2008) examined
citations of 308 papers which were published in 1996 in three primary social-personality
journals: JPSP, PSPB, and Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Later, they studied the
citation impact of 1,580 articles from 37 journals that were all published during only one
year—1998—and concluded that the articles with greater length, more references and authors,
and especially with United States (US), Canadian or United Kingdom (UK) origin had a
significant citation advantage (Haslam & Koval, 2010).
The main aim of this paper was to follow bibliometric trends in a comprehensive set of
personality journals during the first decade of the new millennium. With this purpose it is
necessary to identify a set of core personality journals and observe their bibliometric records
(number of papers and their citations) for the most productive countries during the last ten
years. Obviously, the largest problem was how to surpass ambiguity in the use of the term
personality. For example, a search in the Web of Science (WoS; Thomson Reuters) database
(September 23, 2011) covering the period from 2001 to 2010 retrieved 42,362 publications
which contained the search term “personality” in the title, abstract, or keywords. Many of
these papers were evidently not related to psychology as such, speaking, for instance, about
“magnificent personality of musicians” or other creative individuals. On the other hand, a
paper can describe a genuine personality concept such as self-esteem or procrastination
without explicitly using personality as an explanatory category. For example, from 11,428
papers containing “self-esteem” in the title, abstract, or keywords only 1,494 (13.1%) also
mentioned personality. Thus, the best solution appeared to be identifying a set of principal
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journals specialised for publishing results of personality psychology. As a rule, these journals
also mention personality in the their title.
Methods
Analysing all papers published in the journals indexed by the WoS in the period from 2001 to
2010 it was possible to identify 9 principal personality psychology journals that contributed
the largest number of papers containing the search term “personality” in their title, abstract or
keywords: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP), Journal of Personality (JP),
Journal of Research in Personality (JRP), European Journal of Personality (EJP),
Personality and Individual Differences (PAID), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
(PSPB), Personality and Social Psychology Review (PSPR), Journal of Personality
Asseessment (JPA), Journal of Personality Disorders (JPD). There were also several
psychiatry journals (e.g. Biological Psychiatry, Psychiatry Research etc.) publishing a
considerable number of personality papers. Also some general psychology journals (e.g.,
Psychological Reports, Journal of Applied Psychology etc.) are open to contributions from
personality psychologists but personality is not the main subject of these journals. However,
there are some specialised journals which were nevertheless left out from the further analysis.
For example, the Social Psychological and Personality Science (Sage Publisher) was
established only in 2010 and it is not yet indexed in the WoS. The Journal of Individual
Differences (Hogrefe Publishing) changed its name in 2005 (formerly Zeitschrift für
Differentielle und Diagnostische Psychologie) and has been indexed in the WoS for the last
three years only. On the other hand, the Social Behavior and Personality (Society for
Personality Research Inc) was founded in 1973 and it has been regularly indexed in the WoS.
However, its impact over more than 30 years (from 1980-2010) has been as small as 3.25 (the
habitual two-year impact factor for 2010 was 0.26) which speaks about its rather modest
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impression on the field. For these various reasons, the three mentioned journals were excluded
from the further analysis.
In all searches, the items that were classified as editorial materials, corrections, and book
reviews were excluded. The EJP was the greatest loser in terms of the number of published
items, because it publishes every year a special review issue where 1 to 3 target articles are
accompanied by comments and authors’ responses to these comments which all are classified
as “Editorial materials”. Four parts of the UK – England, Scotland, Wales, and North Ireland
– are indexed separately in the WoS. These four categories were aggregated under the heading
of the UK. Hong Kong, however, is not treated as a separate entity in WoS and is included in
the records of the People Republic of China.
Results
Country-Level Analysis: Who Publishes Most and Who Gets Most Citations?
Twenty five most productive countries producing the largest number of publications in the 9
core journals specialised on personality psychology over the period from 2001 to 2010 were
selected for more detailed analysis. The bibliometric indices of these 25 countries are shown
in Table 1. In total, there were 8,510 research, theoretical or review papers published in these
journals during the period of ten years which have been cited by all journals indexed in the
Web of Science 149,108 times (September 21, 2011). Thus, the average paper in these
journals was cited 17.52 times. Interestingly, from all these papers only 678 (8.0%) have not
received a single citation and 206 (2.4%) has collected 100 or more citations. Countries were
ranked according to their total number of citations across all nine journals. As expected,
personality psychologists from the US published the largest number of papers (4,924, 57.9%),
and had the largest number of citations (101,875, 68.3%). Although the impact (citations per
paper) of the US personality psychologists was not the largest in any of the nine journals, their
average citation per paper ratio of 20.69 across all 9 journals was the highest among the 25
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countries. The performance of the People’s Republic of China depended heavily on
personality psychologists working in Hong Kong. From all Chinese papers, 71.7% were
authored by Hong Kong personality psychologists. Countries producing a small number of
papers may be contingent on only a few actively publishing scholars. For example, from 24
papers published by researchers from the Russian Federation, 14 (58%) were authored by
Gennady Knyazev from Novosibirsk.
For the five most productive countries (US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Netherlands), it was
feasible to analyse their relative productivity on yearly basis during the observed decade.
Only statistically significant trend was the decrease of the US papers relative to the total
number of papers published yearly in the 9 core personality journals (r = −.72, p = .018).
Contrary to this, the proportion of papers authored by UK and German authors showed a
slight tendency to increase (r = .62, p = .054 and r =.53, p = .111 respectively). Thus,
although the absolute number of the US papers even increased (from 467 in 2001 to 531 in
2010) their proportion to the total number of published papers dropped from 61.9% to 57.9%
during the first decade of the new millennium.
According to the Essential Science Indicators (ESI; Thomson Reuters) database, researchers
from Switzerland, US, and Denmark had the highest number of citations per paper across all
fields of sciences (Allik, 2008). However, in a more narrow research area, such as personality
psychology, for instance, the ranking of countries could be substantially different. For
example, comparing results of this analysis with that of the ESI, personality researchers in
Israel, Germany and France seem to have higher citations per paper rate than their colleagues
from other disciplines in general including some other areas of psychology. Conversely, the
impact of personality research carried out in Switzerland and Finland failed to match
country’s average scientific ranking in other disciplines.
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The high rate of citations to US papers is likely due in part to the quality of those papers but it
may also be, partly at least, the result of a country self-citation bias. Three journals – JPSP,
PSPB, and PSPR – have one of the highest percentages of articles authored by the researchers
residing in the US, 77.8%, 71.2%, and 73.6% respectively. Collectively, US researchers have
published 2,242 (74.9%) out of 2,993 papers published in these 3 journals during the observed
10 years period. These 2,242 papers have been cited in 38,412 papers which appeared in all
journals that are indexed by WoS. On the other hand, there were 760 papers with no US
researchers among authors that were cited by 12,260 other articles.1 The ratio of citing papers
per published papers was very similar for the papers with US (15.0) and non-US (16.1)
authors. It is important to notice, however, that the papers with US authors have a
considerable advantage over papers with non-US authors in the citation-per-paper ratio: the
average paper with US authors was cited 32.4 times while the average paper with non-US
authors was cited only 24.4 times. Thus, the advantage of the US papers comes from the fact
that they are cited more frequently together with other US papers by the same citing article.
For all papers published in JPSP, PSPB, and PSPR during 2001-2010, it was possible to find
the percentage of how much researchers from country X have cited the papers with US and
non-US authors. For example, among the articles that cited the papers with US authors, 60.9%
had also US authors, whereas only 46.7% of the articles citing the non-US authored papers
had US authors. The positive difference of 14.3% can be used as the index of the country self-
citation bias: the degree to which US authors are inclined to cite works done by the
researchers of their own country relative to the work that was done outside of the US. In all
other countries, the index of the self-enhancement was more modest. For example, Canadian
authors cited their own papers 9.0% more frequently than papers that were authored by non-
Canadian authors. However, there was a general tendency to cite non-US papers more
1 Please note that due to imperfection of the search engine these two number 2,242 and 760 do not add up to the total number of papers 2,993.
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frequently than US papers among all nations but US. For example, it was 5.0%, 4.5% and
2.2% more likely that Dutch, German and Canadian authors cited papers with non-US authors
more frequently than papers authored by researchers from the US. Thus, this is a clear
evidence of the country self-citation bias which contributes to the US dominance in the
personality psychology: the authors residing in the US are more inclined to cite papers which
were written by the US authors than papers with non-US authors.
It is possible that the country self-citation bias affects social psychologists more than
personality psychologists who are publishing in JPSP, PSPB, and PSPR. To control this
possibility we selected from 2,993 papers published in these 3 journals during the observed 10
years only these papers which explicitly used “personality” in the title, abstract, or keywords.
There were 705 (23.6%) such papers which were slightly more cited (+3.8 citations per paper)
than an average paper in general. From these 705 “personality” papers 556 (78.9%) were co-
authored by at least one US author. Since the percentage of US authors who cited US papers
published in JPSP, PSPB, and PSPR was 61.4% and 46.9% among those who cited non-US
papers the country-self-citation bias was 14.5%. Thus, the degree to which US authors are
inclined to cite works done by the researchers of their own country relative to the work that
was done outside of the US was almost identical irrespective to mentioning or not mentioning
personality in the title, abstract or keywords.
The analysis of the first 36 years of JPSP showed a growth of internationalism with an
increasing proportion of authors from outside the US, by 2000 constituting almost one third of
JPSP articles (Quiñones-Vidal et al., 2004). However, this trend seems to be reversed during
the last few years. The percentage of the US authors in JPSP reached its highest concentration
(80.9%) in 2010. Among authors of JPSP 42 different countries/territories were represented.2
2 It should be noted that the actual number of countries published in JPSP may be underestimated. Due to the
editorial policy authors of large collaborative projects are hided behind group names. For example,118 co-
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Almost the same level of international participation (41 countries) was achieved by EJP which
published more than 4 times fewer papers than JPSP. The most open to international
collaboration was PAID recruiting authors from 57 countries/territories. Across the 9 core
personality journals, there was a moderately negative correlation (r = -.60, p < .088) between
percentage authors from the US and the number of countries/territories having published in
that journal.
Which Are the Most Influential Journals in the Field?
Two journals – JPSP and PSPR – distinguish from other 9 core personality journals by
extremely high 10-years impact factor, 39.4 and 38.1 respectively. According to the Journal
Citation Report (Thomson Reuters) for 2010, the most recent two-years impact factors for
PSPR was 6.1 which is higher than 5.2 for JPSP. These two top journals are followed by a
group of a median 10-years impact factor: PSPB (18.5), JP (17.2), JPD (14.2), and EJP (12.6).
Finally, three journals have the impact factor below 10 citations per paper: PAID (9.5), JRP
(9.5), and JPA (8.4). The impact factors reflect not only scientific quality but also editorial
policies and journal’s scientific profile. For example, PAID has adopted a policy that regular
manuscripts should not exceed 5000 words including title page text, abstract, main text, tables,
references, and any additional materials. As said above, however, it is already known that
articles with greater length and more references are more likely cited (Haslam & Koval, 2010).
By this fact alone, PAID is destined to have a smaller impact. On the other hand, PSPR
accepts only theoretical papers and review articles which are known to be cited more
frequently than other publication types (Aksnes, 2006).
In general, the average citation rate of papers published in the 9 core personality journals
(17.52) was considerably higher of the average citation rate (10.81) for papers published in all
authors from 52 countries were listed as a single group author in all databases (Schmitt & 118 Members of the
International Sexuality Description Project, 2003).
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fields of psychological science from 2000 to 2010 (data retrieved from the Essential Science
Indicators, March 1, 2011). This is an indication that personality research has higher intensity
than psychology in general.
Is Personality Psychology Becoming More Visible?
One obvious peculiarity of personality journals published in the US (JPSP, PSPB, and PSPR)
is to combine personality and social psychology. In order to establish proportions between
these two fields, the relative number of personality papers (papers containing “personality” in
the title, abstract or keywords) in the JPSP, PSPB, and PSPR during the last 10-years period
from 2001 to 2010 was computed. It turned out that on average only 23.6% of all published
papers in these three journals mentioned personality. This percentage demonstrate a slightly
decreasing trend over the last 10 years (r = -.55, p = .100). In contrast, the proportion of
personality-related papers demonstrated a considerable increase in the 7 generalist psychology
journals (Psychological Bulletin, Psychological Review, Psychological Science, American
Psychologist, Annual Review of Psychology, Review of General Psychology, and Journal of
Applied Psychology): r = .63, p = .051. Thus, personality papers form less than 1/4 of all
papers published in JPSP, PSPB, and PSPR and even this small proportion has slightly
decreased during the last decade.
Which Are the Most Cited Papers in the Field?
Table 2 presents two most cited personality articles published in the 9 core personality
journals for years 2001-2010. The ranking includes only papers which used explicitly
personality either in the title, abstract or keywords (Connor-Smith & Flachsbart, 2007; Costa,
Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001; Elliot & Thrash, 2002; Goldberg et al., 2006; Gosling,
Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003; Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009; Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann,
& Banaji, 2009; Gross & John, 2003; Hopwood & Donnellan, 2010; John & Gross, 2004;
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Judge, Erez, Bono, & Thoresen, 2002; Markon, Krueger, & Watson, 2005; McCrae,
Terracciano, & 78 Members of the Personality Profiles of Cultures Project, 2005; Penke,
Denissen, & Miller, 2007; Reynolds, Ortengren, Richards, & de Wit, 2006; Schmidt & Hunter,
2004; Schmitt, Realo, Voracek, & Allik, 2008; Sibley & Duckitt, 2008; Vazire, 2010;
Whiteside & Lynam, 2001). From these 20 top-cited articles, 12 (60%) were published in
JPSP, 2 papers in JRP, PSPB and PAID, and 1 paper in JP and EJP. Four authors (James
Gross, Oliver John, Robert McCrae, and Antonio Terracciano) were presented with two
papers in the list of most cited personality papers. Nineteen of the 20 top-cited papers were
authored by researchers from the US and one paper each from Australia, Canada, Estonia,
Germany, Netherlands, and New Zealand. It is not surprising that papers describing new
measurement instruments or methods (Goldberg et al., 2006; Gosling et al., 2003; Greenwald
et al., 2009; Hopwood & Donnellan, 2010) and meta-analyses (Connor-Smith & Flachsbart,
2007; Greenwald et al., 2009; Sibley & Duckitt, 2008) have achieved colleagues’ attention. It
is also expected that theoretical (Markon et al., 2005; Penke et al., 2007; Whiteside & Lynam,
2001) and cross-cultural (Costa et al., 2001; McCrae, Terracciano, & 78 Members of the
Personality Profiles of Cultures Project, 2005; Schmitt et al., 2008) topics have collected a
sufficiently large number of citations.
Readers of this journal might be interested to learn about highly cited papers published in EJP
during the first decade of the new millennium. Table 3 presents the list of the most cited
articles for each of the years 2001-2010 (Ekehammar, Akrami, Gylje, & Zakrisson, 2004;
Jonason, Li, Webster, & Schmitt, 2009; Penke et al., 2007; Petrides & Furnham, 2001, 2003;
Riemann & Kandler, 2010; Smits & Boeck, 2006; Steinmayr & Spinath, 2008; van der Zee,
Thijs, & Schakel, 2002; Whiteside, Lynam, Miller, & Reynolds, 2005).
Where are Personality Papers Cited?
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The analysed 8,510 papers were cited in 59,667 papers (note that there were considerably less
citing papers than the number of citations 149,108 meaning that on average each citing paper
cited 2.5 of the analysed papers). It is expected that papers that were published in the 9 core
personality journals are frequently cited by other papers published in the same core
personality journals. However, if personality papers are also cited in psychology journals not
focusing on personality per se, this will indicate that personality is relevant to psychology in
general (Yang & Chiu, 2009). Table 4 shows the top 35 journals containing the largest
number of papers citing articles of the 9 core personality journals. As expected, the core 9
personality journals (marked by asterisk) frequently cited papers which were published in
these journals. However, among the top rankings, there were many general (Psychological
Science, Psychological Reports, Psychological Inquiry, Psychological Bulletin), social
(Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, European Journal of Social Psychology, British
Journal of Social Psychology), applied (Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Applied
Social Psychology, Basic and Applied Social Psychology), clinical (Behaviour Research and
Therapy, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Journal of Abnormal Psychology),
cognitive (Cognition and Emotion, Social Cognition), and affective (Emotion, Motivation and
Emotion) psychology journals. It is also remarkable that organizational (Advances in
Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research) and cross-cultural (Journal of Cross-
Cultural Psychology) psychology pay attention to what is going on in the core personality
journals.
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Discussion
According to bibliometric indicators, personality psychology is one of many expanding areas
among various disciplines of psychology (Krampen, von Eye, & Schui, 2011). This expansion
is not very surprising, considering the evidence that shows personality psychology is
apparently occupying one of the central positions in psychological knowledge. Indeed, it
seems to be nowadays impossible to devise any sufficiently complete explanation of
emotional or rational behaviour without involving the concept of personality. Since
personality psychology has been rather persuasive in demonstration consequential outcomes
of personality (Ozer & Benet-Martinez, 2006), it is logical that publications in personality
psychology journals have been extensively cited not only by general theoretical journals but
also in many applied journals devoted to either clinical, organizational or social issues.
Although claims have often been made about the central position of personality in
psychological knowledge, it was surprising to see how uneven is the geographical distribution
of personality research. France and Japan seem to have productivity and impact in that are
very low in personality psychology relative to science overall. Some countries with very
strong research traditions in psychology (for example Switzerland and Finland) provide
relatively modest input to the core personality journals. Policy makers and science
administrators in many countries should be concerned by the discovery that their countries
failed to reach even the top 25 list of productivity while several small countries such as
Estonia and Singapore have succeeded. However, there was another type of countries, such as
Spain and Israel, whose scientific strength is concentrated on psychology in general and
personality psychology in particular (cf. Allik, 2008).
Unlike many fields of psychology, personality research has been a truly international
enterprise for many decades. A recent highly publicized article in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, Nature and Science re-iterated the well-known fact that in the top psychological
European Journal of Personality (2012), in press
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journals 96% of all research participants were from Western industrialized countries (Henrich,
Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010a, 2010b; Jones, 2010). It is clear that personality research which
is rooted predominantly in Western culture—sometime called WASP (Western Academic
Scientific Psychology)—cannot pretend to have automatically relevance to the majority of the
world (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 2002), reflecting only a small minority of WEIRD
(Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) people (Henrich et al., 2010a).
Even though personality psychology has been relatively successful in avoiding studying
exclusively “weird” people, a desired level of international cooperation is still out of reach.
One alarming sign is that the most influential personality journals which are the official
heralds for the Society of Personality and Social Psychology and APA are growing less
international.
Extrapolating the trends that had been observable during the preceding period, it was
concluded a few years ago that half of all authors publishing in JPSP would be outside of the
US rather soon (Quiñones-Vidal et al., 2004). These prophesy was obviously wrong since, by
2010, the domination of authors from the US in such journals as JPSP, PSPB, PSPR, and JP is
not decreasing but increasing. This is opposite to the general trend which shows an increase in
the proportion of the papers with non-US authors. It seems that personality journals edited by
the US institutions have become, opposite to their own intentions, more self-centred and less
opened to an international co-operation.
There are obviously many mechanisms by which the US domination in the leading personality
journals has been maintained. The most obvious cause is the outstanding quality of the US
authors and the type of research they are publishing in the peer-reviewed journals. There are,
however, some supplementary mechanisms which could enhance the US domination in
personality research. One of these mechanisms is the country self-citation bias which is
typical to many countries but is most prominent among the US personality journals. There
European Journal of Personality (2012), in press
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seems to be a pervasive tendency that researchers who are residing in the US are more likely
to cite an article when it was authored by the US rather than non-US authors. However, the
US self-citation bias is not specific to personality psychology alone. There are few countries
such as USA, China and Iran which show exceptionally high country self-citation rates in all
fields of science (Jaffe, 2011).
What is behind the elevated level of the US self-citation bias? There are probably many
factors influencing the country self-citation bias including large populations, large total
number of publications and language barriers (Jaffe, 2011). One additional possibility is that
that the country self-citation bias may be a group-level manifestation of self-enhancement
biases that normally operate at an individual level: scientists in one country have a tendency
to emphasize or exaggerate qualities of the scientific work done in their country relative to
other countries. Since greater self-enhancement has been found in societies with more income
inequality (Loughnan et al., 2011) it may be more likely that the US scientists are inclined to
believe in a superior quality of science done in their country. As a consequence, authors who
are affiliated with one of the US institutions are more likely than non-US researchers to cite
many US papers in the same article. In the result there were 2.5 times more citations than
citing articles. After removing these two biases – the US self-citation bias and serial citations
– there was no substantial difference in the number of citing articles: both the US and the non-
US papers in the three leading personality journals JPSP, PSPB, and PSPR were recognized
by approximately the same number of citing articles. Thus, if the number of citing papers, not
the number of total citations in these papers, is a measure of quality of scientific papers there
was no superiority of the US papers over non-US papers.
However, it is possible that the US self-citation bias has a more mundane explanation.
Another possibility, suggested by one of the reviewers, is that the US authors working in a
field of personality psychology are more than their colleagues from other countries involved
European Journal of Personality (2012), in press
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in a small-world collaborative network (Watts & Strogatz, 1998). When it comes to a decision
to cite or not to cite a previously published paper a preference is given to another member of
an invisible college whose research questions, used methods and proposed theories are more
comprehensible to the citing authors. Not only infectious diseases spread more easily in
small-world networks but also practices of mutual citation.
Limitations of the Current Study
There are several obvious limitations of these analyses. One of them is a principal difference
between American and European personality journals. The North American tradition
combines social and personality psychology which opposes European tradition to emphasize
individual differences. For example, EJP is published separately from the European Journal
of Social Psychology. Described bibliometric regularities may characterize social psychology
more than personality psychology and vice versa. It was recently observed that differences
between personality and social psychologists may be more fundamental than it was thought
before. Like physicists personality psychologists seem to gravitate towards simplicity in
which pursuit they try to reduce all individual differences to a small set of basic principles. By
contrast, social psychologists are more like to chemists who are fascinated by an almost
endless richness of mechanisms, contexts, and biases (McCrae, 2009). Bibliometrically it is
difficult to keep personality and social psychology articles separate from each other in these
journals at least. There is no strict criterion and numerous papers could be classified into these
two categories simultaneously. Therefore it is possible that either some credits or faults of one
of these parties may be wrongly attributed to the other.
European Journal of Personality (2012), in press
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Author Notes
Jüri Allik, Department of Psychology, University of Tartu, Estonia.
Writing this paper was supported by a grant from the Estonian Ministry of Education and
Science (SF0180029s08). I am very grateful to Anu Realo and René Mõttus for their valuable
comments and suggestions.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jüri Allik, Department of
Psychology, University of Tartu, Tiigi 78, Tartu 50410, Estonia. Electronic mail may be sent
European Journal of Personality (2012), in press
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Table 1. Bibliometric record of 25 most prolific counties in the core 9 personality journals
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Journal of Personality
Journal of Research in Personality
European Journal of Personality
Personality and Individual Differences
Country/territory Pp Cit Cit/Pp Pp Cit Cit/Pp Pp Cit Cit/Pp Pp Cit Cit/Pp Pp Cit Cit/Pp USA 1 147 47 733 41.62 377 7 196 19.09 509 5 059 9.94 85 1 110 13.06 997 8 876 8.90CANADA 180 6 169 34.27 59 1 005 17.03 71 978 13.77 31 476 15.35 298 3 270 10.97UK 115 3 396 29.53 31 519 16.74 40 369 9.23 41 786 19.17 636 6 351 9.99GERMANY 126 4 805 38.13 29 443 15.28 55 469 8.53 68 922 13.56 160 1 617 10.11NETHERLANDS 130 4 531 34.85 22 222 10.09 23 91 3.96 51 681 13.35 167 2 178 13.04AUSTRALIA 29 747 25.76 9 100 11.11 28 75 2.68 15 280 18.67 239 2 473 10.35ISRAEL 35 1 522 43.49 15 179 11.93 13 180 13.85 5 58 11.60 63 457 7.25BELGIUM 25 1 098 43.92 16 164 10.25 15 121 8.07 36 419 11.64 84 867 10.32SPAIN 19 708 37.26 0 0 0.00 8 18 2.25 7 63 9.00 126 1 473 11.69ITALY 23 757 32.91 7 74 10.57 5 22 4.40 12 161 13.42 59 619 10.49FRANCE 23 1 235 53.70 5 84 16.80 3 9 3.00 4 26 6.50 36 149 4.14PEOPLES R CHINA 25 490 19.60 14 189 13.50 11 48 4.36 5 66 13.20 72 410 5.69NEW ZEALAND 12 298 24.83 4 90 22.50 7 83 11.86 6 52 8.67 40 497 12.43SWEDEN 3 403 134.33 5 73 14.60 4 37 9.25 7 178 25.43 43 471 10.95NORWAY 5 199 39.80 1 16 16.00 2 6 3.00 5 42 8.40 33 434 13.15JAPAN 15 244 16.27 3 36 12.00 1 7 7.00 2 38 19.00 37 149 4.03SWITZERLAND 15 204 13.60 7 70 10.00 13 44 3.38 9 47 5.22 28 216 7.71SINGAPORE 14 315 22.50 7 11 1.57 9 31 3.44 1 0 0.00 23 90 3.91FINLAND 3 71 23.67 6 72 12.00 10 86 8.60 18 171 9.50 30 261 8.70AUSTRIA 5 120 24.00 2 41 20.50 2 7 3.50 3 13 4.33 43 465 10.81POLAND 7 181 25.86 2 25 12.50 0 0 0.00 7 58 8.29 24 130 5.42ESTONIA 6 195 32.50 0 0 0.00 6 24 4.00 10 119 11.90 10 58 5.80DENMARK 0 0 0.00 0 0 0.00 0 0 0.00 1 3 3.00 12 155 12.92SOUTH KOREA 7 101 14.43 1 3 3.00 4 47 11.75 0 0 0.00 9 52 5.78RUSSIA 0 0 0.00 0 0 0.00 2 46 23.00 2 32 16.00 18 217 12.06Total 1 474 58 068 39.39 518 8 916 17.21 718 6 828 9.51 334 4 194 12.56 2 877 27 410 9.53
European Journal of Personality (2012), in press
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Table 1. Bibliometric record of 25 most prolific counties in the core 9 personality journals (continued)
Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin
Journal of Personality Assessment
Personality and Social Psychology
Review Journal of Personality
Disorders Total Pp Cit Cit/Pp Pp Cit Cit/Pp Pp Cit Cit/Pp Pp Cit Cit/Pp Pp Cit Cit/Pp USA 933 18 130 19.43 471 3 942 8.37 153 5 938 38.81 252 3 891 15.44 4 924 101 875 20.69CANADA 162 2 868 17.70 48 815 16.98 22 664 30.18 60 919 15.32 931 17 164 18.44UK 106 2 214 20.89 8 41 5.13 18 628 34.89 50 671 13.42 1 045 14 975 14.33GERMANY 93 1 776 19.10 25 275 11.00 12 682 56.83 17 258 15.18 585 11 247 19.23NETHERLANDS 109 1 732 15.89 25 120 4.80 9 238 26.44 34 459 13.50 570 10 252 17.99AUSTRALIA 56 1 347 24.05 13 90 6.92 14 588 42.00 14 147 10.50 417 5 847 14.02ISRAEL 32 754 23.56 12 52 4.33 8 343 42.88 0 0 0.00 183 3 545 19.37BELGIUM 18 397 22.06 10 78 7.80 6 138 23.00 17 212 12.47 227 3 494 15.39SPAIN 6 127 21.17 9 33 3.67 0 0 0.00 8 59 7.38 183 2 481 13.56ITALY 15 329 21.93 9 38 4.22 0 0 0.00 7 66 9.43 137 2 066 15.08FRANCE 19 197 10.37 8 23 2.88 1 209 209.00 3 10 3.33 102 1 942 19.04PEOPLES R CHINA 17 276 16.24 11 19 1.73 6 169 28.17 5 28 5.60 166 1 695 10.21NEW ZEALAND 13 304 23.38 3 23 7.67 4 71 17.75 2 25 12.50 91 1 443 15.86SWEDEN 3 56 18.67 9 37 4.11 2 12 6.00 5 46 9.20 81 1 313 16.21NORWAY 2 28 14.00 14 114 8.14 1 170 170.00 10 103 10.30 73 1 112 15.23JAPAN 14 331 23.64 5 9 1.80 1 22 22.00 1 56 56.00 79 892 11.29SWITZERLAND 20 189 9.45 5 28 5.60 2 16 8.00 3 17 5.67 102 831 8.15SINGAPORE 14 331 23.64 1 0 0.00 0 0 0.00 0 0 0.00 69 778 11.28FINLAND 2 18 9.00 7 60 8.57 0 0 0.00 3 28 9.33 79 767 9.71AUSTRIA 3 18 6.00 0 0 0.00 1 42 42.00 1 14 14.00 60 720 12.00POLAND 5 94 18.80 0 0 0.00 4 63 15.75 0 0 0.00 49 551 11.24ESTONIA 1 10 10.00 0 0 0.00 0 0 0.00 1 28 28.00 34 434 12.76DENMARK 1 1 1.00 2 2 1.00 0 0 0.00 7 228 32.57 23 389 16.91SOUTH KOREA 10 169 16.90 0 0 0.00 0 0 0.00 0 0 0.00 31 372 12.00RUSSIA 1 11 11.00 1 1 1.00 0 0 0.00 0 0 0.00 24 307 12.79Total 933 18 130 19.43 471 3 942 8.37 153 5 938 38.81 252 3 891 15.44 4 924 101 875 20.69
Note: Pp = papers; Cit = citations; Cit/Pp = citations per papers; UK = aggregate of four separate entities England, Wales, Scotland, and North Ireland; PEOPLES R CHINA = Peoples Republic of China includes also Hong Kong. Countries are ranked according to the total number of citations.
European Journal of Personality (2012), in press
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Table 2. Two most cited personality articles published in the 9 core personality journals for years 2001-2010.
Year Paper CitationsWhiteside, S. P., & Lynam, D. R. (2001). The Five Factor Model and
impulsivity: using a structural model of personality to understand impulsivity. Personality and Individual Differences, 30(4), 669-689.
365 2001
Costa, P. T., Terracciano, A., & McCrae, R. R. (2001). Gender differences in personality traits across cultures: Robust and surprising findings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(2), 322-331.
362
Judge, T. A., Erez, A., Bono, J. E., & Thoresen, C. J. (2002). Are measures of self-esteem, neuroticism, locus of control, and generalized self-efficacy indicators of a common core construct? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(3), 693-710.
239 2002
Elliot, A. J., & Thrash, T. M. (2002). Approach-avoidance motivation in personality: Approach and avoidance temperaments and goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(5), 804-818.
274
Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348-362.
489 2003
Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(6), 504-528.
374
John, O. P., & Gross, J. J. (2004). Healthy and unhealthy emotion regulation: Personality processes, individual differences, and life span development. Journal of Personality, 72(6), 1301-1333.
163 2004
Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. (2004). General mental ability in the world of work: Occupational attainment and job performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(1), 162-173.
129
Markon, K. E., Krueger, R. F., & Watson, D. (2005). Delineating the structure of normal and abnormal personality: An integrative hierarchical approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(1), 139-157.
208 2005
McCrae, R. R., Terracciano, A., & 78 Members of the Personality Profiles of Cultures Project (2005). Universal features of personality traits from the observer's perspective: Data from 50 cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(3), 547-561.
183
Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., et al. (2006). The international personality item pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(1), 84-96.
222 2006
Reynolds, B., Ortengren, A., Richards, J. B., & de Wit, H. (2006). Dimensions of impulsive behavior: Personality and behavioral
122
European Journal of Personality (2012), in press
28
measures. Personality and Individual Differences, 40(2), 305-315.
Penke, L., Denissen, J. J. A., & Miller, G. F. (2007). The evolutionary genetics of personality. European Journal of Personality, 21(5), 549-587.
100 2007
Connor-Smith, J. K., & Flachsbart, C. (2007). Relations between personality and coping: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(6), 1080-1107.
76
Schmitt, D. P., Realo, A., Voracek, M., & Allik, J. (2008). Why can't a man be more like a woman? Sex differences in big five personality traits across 55 cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(1), 168-182.
64 2008
Sibley, C. G., & Duckitt, J. (2008). Personality and prejudice: A meta-analysis and theoretical review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12(3), 248-279.
57
Greenwald, A. G., Poehlman, T. A., Uhlmann, E. L., & Banaji, M. R. (2009). Understanding and Using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta-Analysis of Predictive Validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1), 17-41.
144 2009
Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), 1029-1046.
51
Vazire, S. (2010). Who Knows What About a Person? The Self-Other Knowledge Asymmetry (SOKA) Model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), 281-300.
18 2010
Hopwood, C. J., & Donnellan, M. B. (2010). How Should the Internal Structure of Personality Inventories Be Evaluated? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(3), 332-346.
15
Note: Search in the Web of Science was done on January 6, 2012
European Journal of Personality (2012), in press
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Table 3. The most cited articles published in the Euroepan Journal of Psychology for years 2001-2010
Citations Paper 166 Petrides, K. V., & Furnham, A. (2001). Trait emotional intelligence:
Psychometric investigation with reference to established trait taxonomies. European Journal of Personality, 15(6), 425-448.
46 van der Zee, K., Thijs, M., & Schakel, L. (2002). The relationship of emotional intelligence with academic intelligence and the Big Five. European Journal of Personality, 16(2), 103-125.
126 Petrides, K. V., & Furnham, A. (2003). Trait emotional intelligence: Behavioural validation in two studies of emotion recognition and reactivity to mood induction. European Journal of Personality, 17(1), 39-57.
71 Ekehammar, B., Akrami, N., Gylje, M., & Zakrisson, I. (2004). What matters most to prejudice: Big five personality, social dominance orientation, or right-wing authoritarianism? European Journal of Personality, 18(6), 463-482.
69 Whiteside, S. P., Lynam, D. R., Miller, J. D., & Reynolds, S. K. (2005). Validation of the UPPS impulsive behaviour scale: a four-factor model of impulsivity. European Journal of Personality, 19(7), 559-574.
30 Smits, D. J. M., & Boeck, P. D. (2006). From BIS/BAS to the Big Five. European Journal of Personality, 20(4), 255-270.
100 Penke, L., Denissen, J. J. A., & Miller, G. F. (2007). The evolutionary genetics of personality. European Journal of Personality, 21(5), 549-587.
21 Steinmayr, R., & Spinath, B. (2008). Sex differences in school achievement: What are the roles of personality and achievement motivation? European Journal of Personality, 22(3), 185-209.
19 Jonason, P. K., Li, N. P., Webster, G. D., & Schmitt, D. P. (2009). The Dark Triad: Facilitating a Short-Term Mating Strategy in Men. European Journal of Personality, 23(1), 5-18.
9 Riemann, R., & Kandler, C. (2010). Construct Validation Using Multitrait-Multimethod-Twin Data: The Case of a General Factor of Personality. European Journal of Personality, 24(3), 258-277.
Note: Search in the Web of Science was done on January 6, 2012.
European Journal of Personality (2012), in press
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Table 4. Ranking of journals having the highest number of citing papers to 8,510 papers published in the core 9 personality journals during 2001-2010
Rank Source Title Papers Percent
of 59,5671 PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES* 1851 3.11%2 JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY* 1204 2.02%3 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN* 934 1.57%4 JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 856 1.44%5 JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN PERSONALITY* 590 0.99%6 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 502 0.84%7 PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 473 0.79%8 JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT* 382 0.64%9 JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY* 381 0.64%10 JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 326 0.55%11 SEX ROLES 322 0.54%12 EMOTION 320 0.54%13 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY* 294 0.49%14 JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY DISORDERS* 291 0.49%15 JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY 280 0.47%16 COGNITION EMOTION 263 0.44%17 GROUP PROCESSES INTERGROUP RELATIONS 253 0.43%18 SOCIAL COGNITION 246 0.41%19 PSYCHOLOGICAL REPORTS 240 0.40%20 BEHAVIOUR RESEARCH AND THERAPY 222 0.37%21 PSYCHOLOGICAL INQUIRY 213 0.36%22 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY 212 0.36%
23 ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND HUMAN DECISION PROCESSES 206 0.35%
24 PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT 197 0.33%25 PSYCHOLOGICAL BULLETIN 197 0.33%26 PSYCHOLOGY AND AGING 197 0.33%27 ADVANCES IN CONSUMER RESEARCH 194 0.33%28 JOURNAL OF CROSS CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY 194 0.33%29 DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 193 0.32%30 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH 190 0.32%31 JOURNAL OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 186 0.31%32 BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 178 0.30%33 BASIC AND APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 176 0.30%34 PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS 173 0.29%35 MOTIVATION AND EMOTION 168 0.28%
Note: * = core personality journal analysed in this paper; PSPR is on the 38th position with 163 citing papers.