How to format your references using the American Psychologist citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Psychologist. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Butlin, R. (2006). Comment on “Transitions to asexuality result in excess amino acid substitutions.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 313(5792), 1389; author reply 1389.

A journal article with 2 authors

Delbarco-Trillo, J., & Ferkin, M. H. (2004). Male mammals respond to a risk of sperm competition conveyed by odours of conspecific males. Nature, 431(7007), 446–449.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mitchell, J. F., Stoner, G. R., & Reynolds, J. H. (2004). Object-based attention determines dominance in binocular rivalry. Nature, 429(6990), 410–413.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Rodriguez-Viciana, P., Tetsu, O., Tidyman, W. E., Estep, A. L., Conger, B. A., Cruz, M. S., McCormick, F., & Rauen, K. A. (2006). Germline mutations in genes within the MAPK pathway cause cardio-facio-cutaneous syndrome. Science (New York, N.Y.), 311(5765), 1287–1290.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Jufer, M. (2013). Electric Drives. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Berry, S. (2008). Phase Transitions of Simple Systems (B. Smirnov, Ed.; Vol. 42). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Cussó, R. (2016). From statistics to international quantification: a dialogue with Alain Desrosières. In I. Bruno, F. Jany-Catrice, & B. Touchelay (Eds.), The Social Sciences of Quantification: From Politics of Large Numbers to Target-Driven Policies (pp. 55–65). Springer International Publishing.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for American Psychologist.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, July 3). Robots Could Use 3D Printing To Build Mars Bases Before Astronauts Arrive. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/robots-could-use-3d-printing-build-mars-bases-astronauts-arrive/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. (1973). Protest Against Award of Data Processing and Mailing Contract (B-179127). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Stangl, B. L. (2010). The mediation of cognitive task performance in post-menopausal women: An examination of the effects of DHEA upon cognition [Doctoral dissertation]. George Washington University.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Koblin, J. (2017, April 26). How Hulu And ‘Tale’ Revived 2 Careers. New York Times, C1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Butlin, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Butlin, 2006; Delbarco-Trillo & Ferkin, 2004).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Delbarco-Trillo & Ferkin, 2004)
Three authors: (Mitchell et al., 2004)
6 or more authors: (Rodriguez-Viciana et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	American Psychologist
Abbreviation	Am. Psychol.
ISSN (print)	0003-066X
ISSN (online)	1935-990X
Scope	General Medicine General Psychology