Towards a More Social Social Psychology 215placed the coverage of social psychology at chapter 11 out of 14. Other
placements included a two-chapter coverage (Chapters 13 and 14) by Gray
and Bjorklund (2014), 13 out of 17 (Gleitman et al., 2011), and 14 out of
18 (Baird, 2010). Overall, social psychology is presented to introductory
college students 75% of the time as the last, or nearly the last, chapter in
the textbook. Out of 11,994 pages of text covering social psychology in all
20 texts, the range of pages is 17-69. The total chapter count divided by the
text’s total pages (again, excluding appendices, glossaries, and references)
averaged 6.8%, with a high of 11.8% for Gray and Bjorklund (2014), since
they included two chapters. The lowest percentage was found at 4.2%
coverage in the text by Gleitman et al. (2011).
Based on prior studies of textbook content (e.g., Griggs & Marek,
2001; Griggs & Mitchell, 2002; Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2000), the
code included each textbook’s section headings, emphasized vocabulary
terms (e.g., bolded vocabulary words), and topics discussed in relationship
with conformity. The definition of ‘social psychology’ as presented by
each text was coded, as well as ‘conformity.’ Further qualitative date was
coded to determine if the author(s) were providing students with any
alternative explanations. Specifically looking at the section presenting the
Asch experiment, it was coded both for length, for alternative explanations,
and the entire chapter was examined to see if ‘collectivist’ or
‘individualistic’ culture was mentioned.
Coverage of the Asch Experiment
The next section compares texts for presentations of the classic Asch
conformity studies. Was the demonstration mostly individualistic, or
socially interactive? Were alternative explanations posed? Were these
alternatives able to convey that being a member of a collectivist culture
might affect the interpretation of the results?
All the texts (N = 20) covered the Asch experiment. To investigate
whether the information was expressed in terms of PSP (highly
individualistic), or SSP (including cultures as collective or individualistic),