Journal impact factors and self-citations: implications for psychology journals.

that it is a misinterpretation of the Steele and Aronson (1995) results to conclude that eliminating stereotype threat eliminates the African American–White test-score gap. They agree that we have identified multiple mischaracterizations of their work in media reports, journal articles, and textbooks, which wrongly interpret their work as finding that eliminating stereotype threat did indeed eliminate the score gap. They agree that these mischaracterizations are regrettable. However, Steele and Aronson (2004) assert that there is no need to worry about mischaracterizations of their findings in the absence of evidence that these mischaracter-izations have led to widespread misunderstanding of the role stereotype threat plays in explaining the African American–White test-score gap. We disagree. Although evidence of such misunderstanding would certainly be grave cause for concern, we believe it is sufficiently worrisome when one of the sem-inal studies on stereotype threat is commonly wrongly interpreted— by the popular media, textbook publishers, and academics alike—to mean that the African American–White test-score gap disappears when stereotype threat is eliminated. Steele and Aronson assert that their 1995 study is " a drop in an ocean of information about the race gap " (Steele & Aronson, 2004, p. 47). We believe they are unduly modest about the impact of their paper ; that the Social Sciences Citation Index reports that it has been cited more than 300 times is one indicator of its prominence. Steele and Aronson (2004) assert that because there are now over 100 research studies on stereotype threat, our focus on the first article on the topic results in a serious bias. However, they later acknowledge that their article is one of few stereotype threat studies focusing on African Americans. As the African American– White score gap was the topic of our article , we see our focus on this pivotal and highly cited article as entirely appropriate. Steele and Aronson (2004) also assert that no attentive reader of the literature on the race gap would conclude that stereotype threat is its sole cause. However, our concern is with broader audiences than the serious scholar working on issues of race. We are concerned about students who are being initially exposed to issues of psychological testing and the race gap in their introductory psychology courses. We are concerned about managers responsible for personnel selection systems in their organizations. We are concerned about psychologists who do not follow testing issues closely and whose only exposure …