Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover: A Case Study and Comparative Analysis of Popular vs. Academy Psychology Books

PUBLICATION

journalofscientificexploration.org   JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION • VOL. 36, NO 2 – SUMMER 2022

https://doi.org/10.31275/20222463

HIGHLIGHTS

A review of selected 'pop psychology' books shows that they do not inevitably contain

misreported facts or findings from the original research studies they reference. This result

suggests that negative sterotypes of such lay books should be reconsidered.

ABSTRACT

Many academic psychologists hold negative and stereotypical views about popular psychology

books, even though there have been few formal investigations into these materials

to understand their content, construction, purposes, or orientations, or their authors’

credentials. This paper explores the origins of these views within the Sociology of

Scientific knowledge literature and psychological literature. Through formal case study

methodology, an extensive review and comparative analysis of books with the psychological

construct of “Attention” in their title was undertaken to determine whether the

current delineations between scholarly and popular materials and those who write them

are as clear-cut as they seem, or if an alternative model of the relationship between academic

and popular psychology literature could be offered. A bibliography of 145 books was

compiled, followed by what turned out to be an arduous and at times impossible task of

sorting these books into either popular or scholarly categories. This revealed flaws in the

dualistic nature of this activity that is often required of university students, instructors,

and scholars alike. Six popular and six scholarly books (Table 3) revealed that while some

of the popular books were less rigorous in referencing and representing experimental or

original findings, they offered bibliotherapeutic benefits and were cited by others within

journal articles, books, and dissertations across multiple disciplines, thus suggesting that

popularization is not simply a trickling down of knowledge from the scientific arenas to

the public, but that science can be informed by professionals with expertise in applied areas.

Meanwhile, the six books designated as scholarly only had a collective of 14 Amazon

reader reviews. This project’s findings have implications for educators, researchers, librarians,

and journal editors who may presently disqualify useful materials without fully understanding

them, and for writers seeking to improve in their research and writing skills.

Click here to access full article as a PDF file.

KEYWORDS

Popularization of science, popular science, attention, scholarly books, pop psychology,

popular psychology, bibliotherapy, self-help books