The Decline of Behavioral Research? Examining Language and Communication Journals

In recent years, the decline of behavioral research in personality and social psychology has attracted renewed attention. The decreased incidence of behavioral research over the past few decades has been documented in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin .This article examined whether this trend was also characteristic of two interdisciplinary language and communication journals (Human Communication Research and the Journal of Language and Social Psychology) that publish experimental research on interpersonal processes. In contrast to the two personality—social psychology journals, the language and communication journals showed no decrease in behavioral studies over the past two decades. Possible reasons for the contrasting trends in the two types of journals are discussed, including the pattern of increasing numbers of studies per article over time in the personality— social psychology journals, but not in the language and communication journals. Finally, the implications of these differences for research strategies are considered.