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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Zeng, W. (2008). China’s challenge. Nature, 452(7190), 1028–1029.
A journal article with 2 authors
Lubenov, E. V., & Siapas, A. G. (2009). Hippocampal theta oscillations are travelling waves. Nature, 459(7246), 534–539.
A journal article with 3 authors
Winn, J. N., Rusin, D., & Kochanek, C. S. (2004). The central image of a gravitationally lensed quasar. Nature, 427(6975), 613–615.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Farhan, A., Gulati, J., Groβe-Wilde, E., Vogel, H., Hansson, B. S., & Knaden, M. (2013). The CCHamide 1 receptor modulates sensory perception and olfactory behavior in starved Drosophila. Scientific Reports, 3, 2765.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Häussler-Combe, U. (2014). Computational Methods for Reinforced Concrete Structures. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH.
An edited book
Jeusfeld, M. A., & Karlapalem, K. (Eds.). (2015). Advances in Conceptual Modeling: ER 2015 Workshops AHA, CMS, EMoV, MoBID, MORE-BI, MReBA, QMMQ, and SCME, Stockholm, Sweden, October 19-22, 2015, Proceedings (1st ed. 2015, Vol. 9382). Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Moemeka, E., & Moemeka, E. (2015). Layout and Custom Controls. In E. Moemeka (Ed.), Real World Windows 10 Development (pp. 135–178). Apress.

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, February 26). Baby Sea Turtles Starved Of Oxygen By Beach Microbes. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/baby-sea-turtles-starved-oxygen-beach-microbes/

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). Program Administration at the Atterbury Job Corps Center in Indiana (B-130515). 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
Cannon, J. R. (2012). Microwave-supported acid hydrolysis for proteomics [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Maryland, College Park.

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
Carey Goldberg With. (2000, December 16). Russia’s Doctors Are Beggars At Work, Paupers at Home. New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zeng, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Lubenov & Siapas, 2009; Zeng, 2008).

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

  • Two authors: (Lubenov & Siapas, 2009)
  • Three authors: (Winn et al., 2004)
  • 6 or more authors: (Farhan et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of Personality and Social Psychology
AbbreviationJ. Pers. Soc. Psychol.
ISSN (print)0022-3514
ISSN (online)1939-1315
ScopeSocial Psychology
Sociology and Political Science

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