An Evolving Landscape of the Psychology of Judgment and Decision-Making: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

As a discipline with an expansive and intricate landscape, the field of judgment and decision-making (JDM) has evolved significantly since the beginning of the 2020s. The extensive and intricate nature of this field might pose challenges for scholars and researchers in designing course content and curricula as well as in defining research boundaries. Several techniques from a bibliometric study, such as co-word analysis and co-citation analysis, can provide insights into the scopes and directions of the field. Previous bibliometric studies on the psychology of JDM have primarily analyzed published documents restricted either by content areas or by journal outlets. The present study attempts to analyze a collection of published documents with broad search terms (i.e., “judgment*” or “decision mak*”) within the purview of the psychology subject area, separately by years of publication (from 2020 to 2022) using the bibliometrix package in the R environment. The most relevant journals and the most frequent keywords have suggested established areas of study, uncovering common themes, patterns, and trends. Beyond that, two science mapping techniques (i.e., keyword co-occurrence network and reference co-citation network) revealed 12 prominent themes that cut across the three-year period. These themes, alongside other intellectually stimulating issues, were discussed based on a comparison with outstanding book chapters and reviews. Implications for pedagogical purposes were also provided with a handful of notable resources.

Keywords

• judgment and decision-making
• JDM
• psychology
• applied psychology
• bibliometrics