Evolutionary psychologists Topics

How to choose a topic in Evolutionary psychology

Abstract: What do evolutionary psychologists study, which are their most highly citedarticles, and which variables predict high citation counts? These are important questions forany emerging science. To help answer these questions, we present new empirical researchon publication trends in evolutionary psychology’s flagship journal, Evolution and Human Behavior (and its predecessor, Ethology and Sociobiology), from its inception in 1979 to 2008. First, analyses of 8,631 title words published in these journals between 1979 and 2008 (808 articles) show an increasing interest in researching sex, sex differences, faces, and attractiveness. For example, during the Ethology and Sociobiology era (1979-1996), the most frequent title words were “evolutionary,” “human,” “behavior,” “reproductive,” “evolution,” “selection,” and “altruism,” whereas during the Evolution and Human Behavior era (1997-2008), they were “sex,” “attractiveness,” “differences,” “sexual,” “human,” “male,” and “facial.” Second, we reveal the 20 most-cited articles in these journals, which show the importance of research teams. Third, citation analyses for these journals between 1979 and 2002 (562 articles) suggest articles that cite more references are in turn cited more themselves (r = .44, R2 = .19). Lastly, we summarize recent research that suggests evolutionary psychology is not only surviving, but also thriving, as a new interdisciplinary science. Keywords: citation analysis, Matthew effect, metascience, Pareto 80/20 rule, publication trends, reciprocal altruism