The Rise, Impact, and Imbalances of Big Team Psychology

The present work evaluates the rise, impact, and imbalances of big team psychology via an analysis of n = 3,023,895 articles published in the 21st century. Results indicate that big teams – ranging from 10 to 100+ authors – are relatively unusual (n = 49,695) but increasing in popularity. More notably, such collaborations generate unusually high impact, in terms of yearly mentions in scholarly articles (n = 39,788,158), the news (n = 1,018,639), social media (n = 5,971,965), and policy documents (n = 69,959). An examination of country-level sociocultural indicators revealed that first authors, in general, tend to be in regions that are relatively western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. However, this so-called “WEIRD” imbalance is slightly more pronounced among larger teams. In summary, results suggest that big team science is an emerging trend in psychology – one that is unevenly deployed across world regions to generate high-impact scientific insights.