40 YEARS OF INTRODUCTORY PSYCHOLOGY - AN ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST 10 EDITIONS OF HILGARD ET AL TEXTBOOK

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 introduc tory psychology books from Webb's (1991) examination of the three edit ions of Boring, Langfeld, and Weld's text (1935, 1939, 1948) to the pr esent. In addition to completing a content analysis similar to that us ed by Webb, we completed an analysis of several objective variables (t aken from Weiten's, 1988, analysis of introductory psychology texts) a nd addressed some reference list and citation questions. In addition, we compared our results with those from an analysis by Weixen and Wigh t (1992) of samples of popular texts from each of the 4 relevant decad es.