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This special issue of COMPUTING SURVEYS on" The Psychology of the Computer User" represents the debut of user psychology, as a coherent subfield of computer science, to the computing community. In the sixties only a handful of researchers were exploring the psychology of the computer user (eg, SACK70, WEIr71). During the decade of the seventies the researchers venturing into this difficult area began to number in the tens. By the end of the decade a large enough body of work had been amassed for us to begin to think of the area as a distinct field of study, as evidenced by substantial reviews [RAMS79], books [SHNES0, RousS0, CARD81], and the establishment of the" Human Aspects of Computing" department in the Communications of the ACM.

This special issue thus presents a review and assessment of the field of user psychology; 1980. It should serve as a good starting point for anyone interested in …