214 Stephanie Amedeo Marquez
Asch, Milgram, and Zimbardo (Smith & Haslam, 2017). See Table 1,
Appendix A for the complete list.
The sample examined included 20 introductory textbooks, based upon
Warne et al.’s (2018) list of the 29 most commonly popular textbooks.
Most of these textbooks were requested and obtained via interlibrary loan
from universities around the country (listed in Table 2, Appendix B).
When two versions of a book were available, the most recent edition, or
the full version rather than the brief version was selected whenever
possible to follow the same procedure in Warne et al. (2018). Cengage and
Worth had the largest number of textbooks in the sample (N = 4), with
Pearson (N = 3), and McGraw-Hill tied at (N = 3), and BVT with 2.
Norton, Oxford University Press, Wiley and Prentice Hall each had one
textbook in the sample. The list used for our sample frame was provided in
Warne et al. (2018). Because the purposive sampling method focused on
the most popular introductory psychology textbooks, the books included in
the methodology likely provide a reasonably broad overview of material
introductory psychology courses offer students regarding the discipline of
social psychology. Using the taxonomy proposed by Steuer and Ham
(2008), basic information about the section on social psychology in each
book was collected and recorded. This information consisted of where
social psychology was located within the text, how social psychology was
defined by the authors, the concept presented before and after the social
psychology chapter, and the number of pages devoted to social psychology
as compared to the total number of pages in the textbook (not including
references, indices, or glossaries).
RESULTS
Within the sample chosen, social psychology is typically found as the
last chapter in the textbook (N = 6, out of 20 or 30% of the time). When
not the final chapter, the social psychology chapter was always located at
the end of the book, either the second or third to the last (N = 9).
Hockenbury and Hockenbury (2011), and Cicarrelli and White (2015),