Open AccessMentioning the Sample’s Country in the Article’s Title Leads to Bias in Research Evaluation
Author(s) -
Rotem Kahalon,
Verena Klein,
Inna Ksenofontov,
Johannes Ullrich,
Stephen C. Wright
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
social psychological and personality science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.276
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1948-5514
pISSN - 1948-5506
DOI - 10.1177/19485506211024036
Subject(s) - phenomenon , german , sample (material) , democracy , psychology , inequality , psychological research , world values survey , positive economics , social psychology , social science , political science , sociology , law , geography , economics , epistemology , politics , mathematical analysis , philosophy , chemistry , mathematics , archaeology , chromatography
Psychology research from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) countries, especially from the United States, receives more scientific attention than research from non-WEIRD countries. We investigate one structural way that this inequality might be enacted: mentioning the sample's country in the article title. Analyzing the current publication practice of four leading social psychology journals (Study 1) and conducting two experiments with U.S. American and German students (Study 2), we show that the country is more often mentioned in articles with samples from non-WEIRD countries than those with samples from WEIRD countries (especially the United States) and that this practice is associated with less scientific attention. We propose that this phenomenon represents a (perhaps unintentional) form of structural discrimination, which can lead to underrepresentation and reduced impact of social psychological research done with non-WEIRD samples. We outline possible changes in the publication process that could challenge this phenomenon.