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
Cash, W. (2006). Detection of Earth-like planets around nearby stars using a petal-shaped occulter. Nature, 442(7098), 51–53.
A journal article with 2 authors
Hector, A., & Hooper, R. (2002). Ecology. Darwin and the first ecological experiment. Science (New York, N.Y.), 295(5555), 639–640.
A journal article with 3 authors
Soung, Y. H., Pruitt, K., & Chung, J. (2014). Epigenetic silencing of ARRDC3 expression in basal-like breast cancer cells. Scientific Reports, 4, 3846.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Ternes, M., Lutz, C. P., Hirjibehedin, C. F., Giessibl, F. J., & Heinrich, A. J. (2008). The force needed to move an atom on a surface. Science (New York, N.Y.), 319(5866), 1066–1069.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Taha, A.-E. M., Hassanein, H. S., & Ali, N. A. (2011). LTE, LTE-Advanced and WiMAX. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Zobel, C. W., Altay, N., & Haselkorn, M. P. (Eds.). (2016). Advances in Managing Humanitarian Operations. Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Rihmer, Z., & Gonda, X. (2016). Temperament in Suicidal Behaviour. In P. Courtet (Ed.), Understanding Suicide: From Diagnosis to Personalized Treatment (pp. 43–51). 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 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2014, August 1). NASA Scientists Claim “Impossible” Space Travel Engine Could Actually Work. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/nasa-scientists-claim-impossible-space-travel-engine-could-actually-work/

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. (1997). Air Traffic Control: Complete and Enforced Architecture Needed for FAA Systems Modernization (AIMD-97-30). 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
Clovis, D. J. (2010). The thayer valve and its effect on a generation and beyond [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
LISA W. FODERARO; Reporting for this article was contributed by Ford Fessenden, as well as by Kathleen McGrory in Westchester, Akhtar, F., Sophia Chang on, Koblin, J., Nate Schweber in, Lazo, A., & Connecticut, A. S. in. (2006, March 19). That Sound You Hear? The Market Coming Down to Earth. New York Times, 14CN5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Cash, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Cash, 2006; Hector & Hooper, 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Hector & Hooper, 2002)
  • Three authors: (Soung et al., 2014)
  • 6 or more authors: (Ternes et al., 2008)

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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