NINE PSYCHOLOGISTS: MAPPING THE COLLECTIVE MIND WITH GOOGLE

All pairs of names generated by the individual names of nine historically important psychologists were submitted as queries to the Google search engine. The resulting page counts were used to generate similarity/dissimilarity indices that were submitted to both cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling. Both of the analyses separated the names into three distinct clusters that were easily associated with three historically important schools of psychology. The purpose of the study was to examine the idea that the world-wide-web contains latent structures of the sort made familiar awhile ago by Charles Osgood. Earlier related data, gathered by the author in the last three or four years, is summarized and presented as further evidence that Osgood meaning may be latent in the world-wide-web. Questions regarding appropriate indices of similarity/dissimilarity and problems of the reliability and validity of these procedures and their results are discussed. Evidence is presented for all of these qualities in the results of this study. Finally, it is demonstrated that at least one of Osgood’s connotative Semantic Differential factors is hidden in the structure of the world-wide-web. Current Research in Social Psychology (Vol. 11, No. 12) (Arnold)

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