Contributions to the History of Psychology: CIV. Eminence in Psychology as Measured by Name Counts and Eponyms

Abstract

Two measures of eminence in psychology are proposed, (1) consistency of surname counts among authors of introductory psychology textbooks and (2) frequency of use of eponyms in the psychological literature. After comparing surname counts from introductory psychology textbooks across 75 years with page-space allocations from history of psychology textbooks, it was suggested that the present measures are orthogonal to other existing measures of eminence which are based on content analyses of textbooks. Also, when surname counts were plotted against ranked positions of individuals and when percent of use of eponyms was plotted against frequency (low, medium, high) category, respectively, a hyperbolic shaped curve for the surnames and significant disproportions for the eponyms was observed. These findings agree with previous data which led to the conclusion that those who are highly eminent in psychology receive a disproportionate share of attention, praise, and citation space in the psychological literature.