Psychology Commons^™

Cumulating Evidence About The Social Animal: Meta-Analysis In Social-Personality Psychology, Blair T. Johnson Dr., Marcella H. Boynton Dr.

Blair T. Johnson

Like most scientific fields, social-personality psychology has experienced an explosion of research related to such central topics as aggression, attraction, gender, group processes, motivation, personality, and persuasion, to name a few. The proliferation of research can be a monster unless it is tamed with the scientific review strategy of meta-analysis, literally analyses of past analyses that produce a quantitative and empirical history of research on a particular phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to outline the basic process and statistics of meta-analysis, as they pertain to social-personality psychology. Meta-analysis involves: (i) defining the problem under review; (ii) gathering qualified …