ABSTRACT
The general methodology of psychology seems to have advanced in a similarly slow fashion. Consider the 10 articles published in the Psychological Bulletin that have been most cited. Seven of these dealt with broad issues of methodology. They changed our thinking—our ways of looking at research issues—but they gave us no eternal truths. This is the way that personality research has made progress: No one has given us a Mendeleev Table for psychological elements—we're not in agreement yet about those elements—or a theory of relativity, although we have learned that the perspective and individuality of the observer affect our observations. Many of the still-continuing citations of the most cited Bulletin article are in articles reporting further steps in the persistent struggle to untie the knotty problem of how to analyze the multitrait-multi-method (MTMM) matrix. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book.
