Forty Years of Introductory Psychology: An Analysis of the First 10 Editions of Hilgard et al.'s Textbook

Abstract

In this study, we analyzed the first 10 editions of Hilgard et al.'s (see Appendix A) introductory psychology textbook, covering the period from 1953 through 1992. We extended the period of analysis of introductory psychology books from Webb's (1991) examination of the three editions of Boring, Langfeld, and Weld's text (1935, 1939, 1948) to the present. In addition to completing a content analysis similar to that used by Webb, we completed an analysis of several objective variables (taken from Weiten's, 1988, analysis of introductory psychology texts) and addressed some reference list and citation questions. In addition, we compared our results with those from an analysis by Weiten and Wight (1992) of samples of popular texts from each of the 4 relevant decades.