Academic Development of Chinese Social Psychology: A Citation Analysis of Social Psychology Articles Published by Chinese Scholars During 2006 to 2015

Chinese social psychology developed vigorously, and its scientific achievement showed explosive growth from 2000 to 2015. Based on typical Chinese social psychology articles published between 2006 and 2015, the development trend of this discipline was investigated in this article by means of citation analysis. There were 61,284 references in 1,982 typical Chinese social psychology essays, which were retrieved from the database of China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Web of Science (WoS) and general literature database. The results were as follows: (a) The primary types of journal citation in the discipline of Chinese social psychology were English journals rather than Chinese journals; (b) The research hotspot of social psychology in China, as reflected by the top cited authors, involved both indigenous psychology and social psychology of culture; (c) The literature obsolescence rate of Chinese citations was declining and much lower than before; (d) Collaborations increased in Chinese social psychology articles, but remained significantly lower than collaborations in English articles.