How to format your references using the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 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

Inglis, T. (2014). Developed nations must not fear sending Ebola help. Nature, 514(7524), 537.

A journal article with 2 authors

Brecht, M., & Schmitz, D. (2008). Neuroscience. Rules of plasticity. Science (New York, N.Y.), 319(5859), 39–40.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dicke, M., van Loon, J. J. A., & de Jong, P. W. (2004). Ecology. Ecogenomics benefits community ecology. Science (New York, N.Y.), 305(5684), 618–619.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Esch, H. E., Zhang, S., Srinivasan, M. V., & Tautz, J. (2001). Honeybee dances communicate distances measured by optic flow. Nature, 411(6837), 581–583.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

da Silva, L. S., Simões, R., & Gervásio, H. (2012). Design of Steel Structures. Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG.

An edited book

Wu, J.-Z. (2015). Vortical Flows (H.-Y. Ma & M.-D. Zhou, Eds.). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Gouyon, J.-B. (2016). ‘You Can’t Make a Film About Mice Just by Going Out into a Meadow and Looking at Mice’: Staging as Knowledge Production in Natural History Film-making. In M. Willis (Ed.), Staging Science: Scientific Performance on Street, Stage and Screen (pp. 83–103). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

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 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, July 24). Exactly How Big Is Pluto? IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/and-now-see-pluto-little-differently/

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. (2016). Transportation Security: TSA Has Taken Actions to Address Transportation Security Acquisition Reform Act Requirements (GAO-16-285). 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

San, K. A. (2017). Synthesis of Alkanethiolate-Capped Metal Nanoparticles Using Alkyl Thiosulfate Ligand Precursors for Selective Catalytic Reactions [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Vecsey, G. (2009, December 5). Reason to Believe But Also To Be Cautious. New York Times, D1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Inglis, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Brecht & Schmitz, 2008; Inglis, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Brecht & Schmitz, 2008)
Three authors: (Dicke et al., 2004)
6 or more authors: (Esch et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Abbreviation	J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.
ISSN (print)	0022-3514
ISSN (online)	1939-1315
Scope	Social Psychology Sociology and Political Science