Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ® publishes original papers in all areas of personality and social psychology and emphasizes empirical reports, but may include specialized theoretical, methodological, and review papers.
The journal is divided into three independently edited sections.
Attitudes and Social Cognition publishes articles concerning attitudinal and social cognitive processes (e.g., attitudes, beliefs, stereotyping and prejudice, cognition, emotion, and motivation) that take place in micro- and macrolevel social contexts.
Topics include, but are not limited to, attitudes, persuasion, attributions, stereotypes, prejudice, person memory, motivation and self-regulation, communication, social development, cultural processes, and the interplay of moods and emotions with cognition.
We accept papers using traditional social-personality psychology methods. However, we also strongly welcome innovative, theory-driven papers that utilize novel methods (e.g., biological methods, neuroscience, large-scale interventions, social network analyses, or "big data" approaches).
All papers will be evaluated with criteria that are consistent with those of the best empirical outlets in social, behavioral, and biological sciences.
Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes focuses on the psychology of (interpersonal, intragroup, intergroup) social relations and relationships, whether enduring or fleeting.
Submissions may address one type of social relation (e.g., close romantic relationships) or they may address multiple types of social relation (e.g., status within a team and across an institution). Submissions may employ one method or multiple methods. Submissions may examine one context or multiple contexts (e.g., countries, developmental period).
Although a multiplicity of methods and contexts will likely be considered a strength, all submissions should address the implications of the chosen method and context for the power and quality of inference.
For more on the orientation of the section please refer to the Editor's Editorial: Colin Wayne Leach, editor, JPSP-IRGP section, December 2019 (PDF, 85KB) .
Personality Processes and Individual Differences publishes research on all aspects of personality psychology. It includes studies of individual differences and basic processes in behavior, emotions, coping, health, motivation, and other phenomena that reflect personality.
Articles in areas such as personality structure, personality development, and personality assessment are also appropriate to this section of the journal, as are studies of the interplay of culture and personality and manifestations of personality in everyday behavior.
Disclaimer: APA and the editors of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology assume no responsibility for statements and opinions advanced by the authors of its articles.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology supports equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in its practices. More information on these initiatives is available under EDI Efforts.
The APA Journals Program is committed to publishing transparent, rigorous research; improving reproducibility in science; and aiding research discovery. Open science practices vary per editor discretion. View the initiatives implemented by this journal.
Each issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ® will honor one accepted manuscript per issue by selecting it as an “Editor’s Choice” paper. Selection is based on the discretion of the editor if the paper offers an unusually large potential impact to the field and/or elevates an important future direction for science.
Explore journal highlights: free article summaries, editor interviews and editorials, journal awards, mentorship opportunities, and more.
expand all Submission GuidelinesPrior to submission, please carefully read and follow the submission guidelines detailed below. Manuscripts that do not conform to the submission guidelines may be returned without review.
The editorial team of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology is committed to both transparency and rigor in conducting and reporting research. We believe that science advances through a cyclical and recursive process that includes both (i) a theory-building, exploratory/descriptive phase and (ii) a theory-testing, confirmatory phase. Further, we recognize that replication efforts are the part and parcel of the science that is empirically valid and socially responsible. We therefore support and encourage research that is informed by both phases. Guided by this overarching philosophy, we set out some concrete submission standards.
APA endorses the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines by a community working group in conjunction with the Center for Open Science (Nosek et al. 2015). Effective July 1, 2021, empirical research, including meta-analyses, submitted to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology must at least meet the “requirement” level (Level 2) for citation; data, code, and materials transparency; design and analysis transparency; and study and analysis plan preregistration. Authors should include a subsection in the method section titled “Transparency and Openness.” This subsection should detail the efforts the authors have made to comply with the TOP guidelines.
Links to preregistrations and data, code, and materials should also be included in the author note.
Authors must state whether data, code, and study materials are posted to a trusted repository and, if so, how to access them, including their location and any limitations on use. If they cannot be made available, authors must state the legal or ethical reasons why they are not available. Trusted repositories adhere to policies that make data discoverable, accessible, usable, and preserved for the long term. Trusted repositories also assign unique and persistent identifiers. Recommended repositories include APA’s repository on the Open Science Framework (OSF), ResearchBox.org, or authors can access a full list of other recommended repositories.
In a subsection titled “Transparency and Openness” at the end of the method section, specify whether and where the data and materials are available or note the legal or ethical reasons for not doing so. For submissions with quantitative or simulation analytic methods, state whether the study analysis code is posted to a trusted repository, and, if so, how to access it (or the legal or ethical reason why it is not available).
If you cannot make your data available on a public site, authors are required to follow current APA policy to make the materials and data used in a published study available in a timely manner to other researchers upon request.
If an author has multiple studies, the repository landing page should clearly identify how to access the specific type of information for each study and the links.
Upon submission of a manuscript, the authors must disclose any prior uses in published, accepted, or under review papers of data reported in the manuscript. The cover letter should include a complete reference list of these articles as well as a description of the extent and nature of any overlap between the present submission and the previous work.
Upon submission, all data sets, materials, and program code created by others must be appropriately cited in the text and listed in the reference section. Such materials should be recognized as original intellectual contributions and afforded recognition through citation.
Where possible, references for data sets and program code should include a persistent identifier assigned by digital archives, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
Data set citation example:
Campbell, Angus, and Robert L. Kahn. American National Election
Study, 1948. ICPSR07218v3.
Ann Arbor, MI: Interuniversity
Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1999.
http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07218.v3
Authors must adhere to the Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) (PDF, 220KB) . See also the specific section editorials and instructions on information to include in method and results sections. It is particularly important to provide justifiable power considerations and specific details related to sample characteristics.
Preregistration of studies and specific hypotheses can be a useful tool for making strong theoretical claims. Likewise, preregistration of analysis plans can be useful for distinguishing confirmatory and exploratory analyses. Investigators may preregister prior to conducting the research via a publicly accessible registry system (e.g., OSF, ClinicalTrials.gov, or other trial registries in the WHO Registry Network). There are many available templates; for example, AsPredicted.org; and APA, the British Psychological Society, and the German Psychological Society partnered with the Leibniz Institute for Psychology and Center for Open Science to create Preregistration Standards for Quantitative Research in Psychology (Bosnjak et al., 2022).
At the same time, we recognize that there may be good reasons to change a study or analysis plan after it has been preregistered, and thus encourage authors to do so when appropriate so long as all changes are clearly and transparently disclosed in the manuscript.
The journal also acknowledges that preregistration may not always be appropriate, especially in the exploratory phases of a research project. If authors choose to preregister their research and analyses plans, all documents should be succinct, specific, and targeted, as well as anonymized to maintain double-blind peer review.
Articles must state whether or not any work was preregistered and, if so, where to access the preregistration. Preregistrations must be available to reviewers; authors may submit a masked copy via stable link or supplemental material. Links in the method section should be replaced with an identifiable copy on acceptance.
Whether or not a study is preregistered, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology stresses the importance of transparency in reporting and expects researchers to fully disclose in their manuscript all decisions that were data-dependent (e.g., deciding when to stop data collection, what observations to exclude, what covariates to include, and what analyses to conduct after rather than before seeing the data).
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology acknowledges the significance of replication in building a cumulative knowledge base in our field. We therefore encourage submissions that attempt to replicate important findings, especially research previously published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Major criteria for publication of replication papers include (i) theoretical significance of the finding being replicated, (ii) statistical power of the study that is carried out, and (iii) the number and power of previous replications of the same finding.
Other factors that would weigh in favor of a replication submission include: pre-registration of hypotheses, design, and analysis; submissions by researchers other than the authors of the original findings; and attempts to replicate more than one study of a multi-study original publication.
Please note in the Manuscript Submission Portal that the submission is a replication article; submissions should include “A Replication of XX Study” in the subtitle of the manuscript as well as in the abstract. Replication manuscripts, if accepted, will be published online only and will be listed in the Table of Contents in the print journal.
Papers that make a substantial novel conceptual contribution and also incorporate replications of previous findings continue to be welcome as regular submissions.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology will also publish Registered Reports. Such submissions will consist of a detailed research proposal, including an abstract, introduction, hypotheses, method, planned analyses, and implications of the expected results.
We recommend that authors initially contact the editor before submitting a Registered Report. The proposed research will be reviewed and, if approved, should then be carried out in accordance with the proposed plan. For the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition section, all manuscripts and preregistered reports/proposals should be submitted only through the portal and not via email to the editorial office. We cannot provide feedback based on emails to the office or the editor. Instead, the triage/ preliminary review is designed to make rapid determinations of fit for the journal. In addition, the sample manuscripts may be useful for potential authors who wish to determine the types of papers that might be appropriate for JPSP: ASC.
To the extent that the study is judged to have been competently performed, the paper will be accepted (pending any necessary revisions) regardless of the outcome of the study.
Submit manuscripts to the appropriate section editor. Section editors reserve the right to redirect papers as appropriate. When papers are judged as better suited for another section, editors ordinarily will return papers to authors and suggest resubmission to the more appropriate section.
Rejection by one section editor is considered rejection by all; therefore a manuscript rejected by one section editor should not be submitted to another.
All three sections of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology are now using a software system to screen submitted content for similarity with other published content.
The system compares the initial version of each submitted manuscript against a database of 40+ million scholarly documents, as well as content appearing on the open web.
This allows APA to check submissions for potential overlap with material previously published in scholarly journals (e.g., lifted or republished material).
To submit to the editorial office of Dolores Albarracín, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Word Document format (.doc).
Dolores Albarracín, PhD
University of Pennsylvania
Annenberg Public Policy Center
200 S. 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
General correspondence may be directed to the editor's office.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition publishes articles concerning attitudinal and social cognitive processes (e.g., attitudes, beliefs, stereotyping and prejudice, cognition, emotion, and motivation) that take place in micro- and macrolevel social contexts.
Major theoretical contribution and/or discovery demonstrated with rigorous methods.
Articles can make a major theoretical contribution by:
Articles may also make empirical contributions via discovery, which involves the demonstration of a new, significant empirical phenomenon (e.g., a particular pattern of social behavior; a type of response not previously identified; and a new, surprising implication of an existing theory). Sometimes a new discovery goes hand in hand with a new conceptual development, but other times prior theories are used to draw new empirical implications. Given the scope of JPSP: ASC, discovery articles should still provide evidence of psychological processes.
Rigorous methods are defined by the literature at a particular time and include the validation of measures and experimental manipulation, sound statistical methods, and adequate statistical power.
Findings that have the potential to impact societal outcomes are encouraged. For example, a theoretical innovation or discovery will be seen as more significant if it has the potential to change how aspects of the social world may be modified with this knowledge. The inclusion of diverse samples, nationally representative samples, interventions, and behavioral endpoints or objective outcomes increase the potential impact of the research on contemporary society.
Of note, authors and reviewers will be asked to describe what criterion/a met by each manuscript. JPSP-ASC seeks to acknowledge the research context in evaluating manuscripts. In some cases, a single large-scale survey accompanied by a well-powered, pre-registered experiment may be appropriate for publication without further data. Similarly, studies with smaller, difficult to obtain samples may be appropriate in the context of other studies.
A statement of limitations should follow the abstract. Using up to 200 words, this statement should detail the internal, construct, statistical, and external validity limitations of the research for nonspecialized audiences.
Please provide a statement of the contributions of each author in terms of conceptualization, design and data collection, and writing.
We strongly recommend that introductory materials (the introduction and any introduction to studies) along with the discussion of findings (Discussion and General Discussion sections) total no more than 3,500 words.
The Methods and Results sections should be as concise as possible and details that might be of interest when replicating the study should appear in a supplement. For example, headings for each dependent measure within the Results section should typically be avoided. Materials should not be included in the Methods sections.
All empirical research has limitations, and we strive to avoid overclaiming and communicate the boundaries of our knowledge to the public, including the press. The examples of a statement and a table of limitations below were developed based on a published paper. Authors may find different ways of conveying the same information and provide further details as required by the research they report. The general goal is to convey limitations as completely and succinctly as possible.
Connor, P., Weeks, M., Glaser, J., Chen, S., & Keltner, D. (2023). Intersectional implicit bias: Evidence for asymmetrically compounding bias and the predominance of target gender. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(1):22-48. 10.1037/pspa0000314. Epub 2022 May 19. PMID: 35587425.
Our research examined implicit evaluations of complex social targets who differ in demographic dimensions such as gender, race, and social class. Although we examined implicit measures of bias, the absence of behavioral measures makes our results silent to overt consequences of bias or interpersonal interactions in the real world. Our conclusions about the dominance of gender and class had high statistical power and should be reproducible with similar US samples in the short term. However, evolving social conditions for different demographic groups may change these findings in the longer term. The analyses concerning the absence of interactions among dimensions are less highly powered and need to be replicated with larger samples or more sensitive experimental methods. Also, although the studies were conducted with both headshots and full-body photographs, we did not study target differences in behavior, including how members of different groups communicate and themselves respond to different perceivers. Similarly, we did not study the different contexts of social targets, including differential levels of exclusion that can affect how they are perceived beyond their photographs.
Dimension: Is the phenomenon diagnosed with experimental methods?
Assessment: Yes
Dimension: Is the phenomenon diagnosed with longitudinal methods?
Assessment: No
Dimension: Were the manipulations validated with manipulation checks, pretest data, or outcome data?
Assessment: Outcome data in Study 1 and pretest data in Study 2
Dimension: What possible artifacts were ruled out?
Assessment: We ruled out the possibility that our results were due to using headshots instead of full-body photographs displaying richer information. We also ruled out the possibility that low levels of racial bias produced our results.
Dimension: Was the statistical power at least 80%?
Assessment: It was for the main effects but not for interactions
Dimension: Was the reliability of the dependent measure established in this publication or elsewhere in the literature?
Assessment: Yes, we obtained split-half reliability coefficients in this paper.
Dimension: If covariates are used, have the researchers ensured they are no affected by the experimental manipulation before including them in comparisons across experimental groups?
Assessment: Not applicable
Dimension: Were the distributional properties of the variables examined and did the variables have sufficient variability to verify effects?
Assessment: Yes
Dimension: Were different experimental manipulations used?
Assessment: We used headshots and full-body photos. However, we did used a single measure of bias, which is implicit. We used only the IAT and no other measures of attitudes. We did not use measures of behavior.
Dimension: Was the phenomenon assessed in a field setting?
Assessment: No
Dimension: Are the methods artificial?
Assessment: Yes, the methods are highly artificial
Dimension: Are the results generalizable to different years and historic periods?
Assessment: This was not tested, but, given changing contexts of social biases, results may be different for other historic periods.
Dimension: Are the results generalizable across populations (e.g., different ages, cultures, or nationalities)?
Assessment: This was not tested, but, given that all studies included US samples, results will likely differ in other populations.
Dimension: What are the main theoretical limitations?
Assessment: Our studies tested hypotheses about additive and interactive combinations of demographic attributes as well as differences in the dominance of some attributes versus others. However, imitations include (a) the lack of consideration of different contexts in which intersectional biases might emerge and (b) lack of investigation of the underlying processes leading to our results.
To ensure that limitations are properly considered and concisely communicated, the manuscript should include a table of limitations in which authors will list points of uncertainty, including aspects of reproducibility and generalizability to future and different settings as well as different samples. One paragraph of the General Discussion should complement the content of the table, explaining how the methods and sampling may shape the conclusions that can be drawn from the present work, boundaries of the current theory, and/or new hypotheses stemming from these considerations. This table, which does not count toward the limit of 3,500 words, should be creatively used to offset the word limit and respond to reviewers’ concerns.
Sandra L. Murray, PhD
Department of Psychology
University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Buffalo, NY, 14260-4110
Please submit manuscripts to the editorial office of Sandra L. Murray, PhD, electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Microsoft Word (.docx) or LaTex (.tex) as a zip file with an accompanied Portable Document Format (.pdf) of the manuscript file.
General correspondence may be directed to the editor's office.
Relationships between people, whether between friends, romantic partners, parents and children, coworkers, ingroups, outgroups, communities, or cultural groups, constitute the essential fabric of human existence. Submissions to JPSP:IRGP should advance understanding of how such relationships function; submissions that increase our understanding of how such relationships function in different sociocultural contexts will be especially welcomed.
In evaluating submissions (both original research and meta-analyses), our editorial team will prioritize science that offers novel theoretical insights and makes new and important discoveries that further our understanding of the relationships that unite/ divide humanity. Published articles will represent the best (i.e., most theoretically innovative and empirically rigorous) of the papers that our community of scholars submits.
Published articles will be written to reach the widest possible audience, putting a premium on the concise and clear communication of theory and limiting the number of studies presented in the manuscript itself to those that provide the most methodologically rigorous tests of the study hypotheses (to a maximum of 5). In evaluating submissions, our editorial team will hold high, but attainable standards. We will heavily weigh the difficulty of the hypothesis test, recognizing that especially rigorous/intensive methodologies may yield compelling conclusions with fewer than 5 studies. That is, all else being equal, we will prioritize the quality of the studies over the quantity of the studies. We will also recognize that papers can make innovative theoretical contributions without addressing every alternative or mechanism and that nonsignificant or anomalous effects can arise even when the overall support for the study hypotheses is robust.
Submissions can make innovative theoretical contributions in a number of ways (adapted from JPSP: ASC), including:
(a) developing a new theory and offering new evidence to support it, (b) using an existing theory to explain a new phenomenon, (c) making novel connections between two theories to address new empirical questions, (d) using an existing theory to integrate previously unconnected phenomena, (e) providing a new mechanistic explanation for established phenomena, (f) conceptualizing moderators that explain conflicting predictions in the literature or help us understand the conditions under which an established phenomenon occurs,(g) introducing new elements to a theory that failed to explain a phenomenon, (h) introducing a new theoretical construct and demonstrating its importance, and (i) examining an existing/new theory or phenomenon in an understudied population because the power of our explanatory models rests on research that represents the diversity of human experiences.
To submit to the editorial office of Richard Lucas, PhD, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Word Document format (.doc).
Richard Lucas
Department of Psychology
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
General correspondence may be directed to the editor's office.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Personality Processes and Individual Differences now requires that a cover letter be submitted with all new submissions.
The cover letters should:
Authors are also required to embed tables and figures within the manuscript, instead of providing these after the references.
Review APA's Journal Manuscript Preparation Guidelines before submitting your article.
Double-space all copy. Other formatting instructions, as well as instructions on preparing tables, figures, references, metrics, and abstracts, appear in the Manual. Additional guidance on APA Style is available on the APA Style website.
Cumulative line numbers must be included with all submissions.
The journal has adopted a policy of masked review for all submissions. The cover letter should include all authors' names and institutional affiliations. The first page of text should omit this information but should include the title of the manuscript and the date it is submitted. Every effort should be made to see that the manuscript itself contains no clues to the authors' identity, including grant numbers, names of institutions providing IRB approval, self-citations, and links to online repositories for data, materials, code, or preregistrations (e.g., Create a View-only Link for a Project).
Although papers should be written as succinctly as possible, there is no formal word limit on submissions.
The APA Publication Manual (7th ed.) stipulates that “authorship encompasses…not only persons who do the writing but also those who have made substantial scientific contributions to a study.” In the spirit of transparency and openness, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has adopted the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to describe each author's individual contributions to the work. CRediT offers authors the opportunity to share an accurate and detailed description of their diverse contributions to a manuscript.
Submitting authors will be asked to identify the contributions of all authors at initial submission according to this taxonomy. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, the CRediT designations will be published as an author contributions statement in the author note of the final article. All authors should have reviewed and agreed to their individual contribution(s) before submission.
CRediT includes 14 contributor roles, as described below:
Authors can claim credit for more than one contributor role, and the same role can be attributed to more than one author.
All manuscripts must include an abstract containing a maximum of 250 words typed on a separate page. After the abstract, please supply up to five keywords or brief phrases.
List references in alphabetical order. Each listed reference should be cited in text, and each text citation should be listed in the references section.
Examples of basic reference formats:
McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development. Psychological Review, 126(1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000126
Brown, L. S. (2018). Feminist therapy (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000092-000
Balsam, K. F., Martell, C. R., Jones. K. P., & Safren, S. A. (2019). Affirmative cognitive behavior therapy with sexual and gender minority people. In G. Y. Iwamasa & P. A. Hays (Eds.), Culturally responsive cognitive behavior therapy: Practice and supervision (2nd ed., pp. 287–314). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000119-012
All data, program code and other methods must be cited in the text and listed in the References section.
Alegria, M., Jackson, J. S., Kessler, R. C., & Takeuchi, D. (2016). Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES), 2001–2003 [Data set]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20240.v8
Viechtbauer, W. (2010). Conducting meta-analyses in R with the metafor package. Journal of Statistical Software, 36(3), 1–48. https://www.jstatsoft.org/v36/i03/
Wickham, H. et al., (2019). Welcome to the tidyverse. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(43), 1686, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01686
All data, program code, and other methods must be appropriately cited in the text and listed in the references section.
Use Word's insert table function when you create tables. Using spaces or tabs in your table will create problems when the table is typeset and may result in errors.
Preferred formats for graphics files are TIFF and JPG, and preferred format for vector-based files is EPS. Graphics downloaded or saved from web pages are not acceptable for publication. Multipanel figures (i.e., figures with parts labeled a, b, c, d, etc.) should be assembled into one file. When possible, please place symbol legends below the figure instead of to the side.
Resolution
Line weights
APA offers authors the option to publish their figures online in color without the costs associated with print publication of color figures.
The same caption will appear on both the online (color) and print (black and white) versions. To ensure that the figure can be understood in both formats, authors should add alternative wording (e.g., “the red (dark gray) bars represent”) as needed.
For authors who prefer their figures to be published in color both in print and online, original color figures can be printed in color at the editor's and publisher's discretion provided the author agrees to pay:
We strongly encourage you to use MathType (third-party software) or Equation Editor 3.0 (built into pre-2007 versions of Word) to construct your equations, rather than the equation support that is built into Word 2007 and Word 2010. Equations composed with the built-in Word 2007/Word 2010 equation support are converted to low-resolution graphics when they enter the production process and must be rekeyed by the typesetter, which may introduce errors.
To construct your equations with MathType or Equation Editor 3.0:
If you have an equation that has already been produced using Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 and you have access to the full version of MathType 6.5 or later, you can convert this equation to MathType by clicking on MathType Insert Equation. Copy the equation from Microsoft Word and paste it into the MathType box. Verify that your equation is correct, click File, and then click Update. Your equation has now been inserted into your Word file as a MathType Equation.
Use Equation Editor 3.0 or MathType only for equations or for formulas that cannot be produced as Word text using the Times or Symbol font.
Because altering computer code in any way (e.g., indents, line spacing, line breaks, page breaks) during the typesetting process could alter its meaning, we treat computer code differently from the rest of your article in our production process. To that end, we request separate files for computer code.
We request that runnable source code be included as supplemental material to the article. For more information, visit Supplementing Your Article With Online Material.
If you would like to include code in the text of your published manuscript, please submit a separate file with your code exactly as you want it to appear, using Courier New font with a type size of 8 points. We will make an image of each segment of code in your article that exceeds 40 characters in length. (Shorter snippets of code that appear in text will be typeset in Courier New and run in with the rest of the text.) If an appendix contains a mix of code and explanatory text, please submit a file that contains the entire appendix, with the code keyed in 8-point Courier New.
APA can place supplemental materials online, available via the published article in the PsycArticles ® database. Please see Supplementing Your Article With Online Material for more details.
Authors of accepted papers must obtain and provide to the editor on final acceptance all necessary permissions to reproduce in print and electronic form any copyrighted work, including test materials (or portions thereof), photographs, and other graphic images (including those used as stimuli in experiments).
On advice of counsel, APA may decline to publish any image whose copyright status is unknown.
Authors who feel that their manuscript may benefit from additional academic writing or language editing support prior to submission are encouraged to seek out such services at their host institutions, engage with colleagues and subject matter experts, and/or consider several vendors that offer discounts to APA authors.
Please note that APA does not endorse or take responsibility for the service providers listed. It is strictly a referral service.
Use of such service is not mandatory for publication in an APA journal. Use of one or more of these services does not guarantee selection for peer review, manuscript acceptance, or preference for publication in any APA journal.
For full details on publication policies, including use of Artificial Intelligence tools, please see APA Publishing Policies.
APA policy prohibits an author from submitting the same manuscript for concurrent consideration by two or more publications.
APA requires authors to reveal any possible conflict of interest in the conduct and reporting of research (e.g., financial interests in a test or procedure, funding by pharmaceutical companies for drug research).
In light of changing patterns of scientific knowledge dissemination, APA requires authors to provide information on prior dissemination of the data and narrative interpretations of the data/research appearing in the manuscript (e.g., if some or all were presented at a conference or meeting, posted on a listserv, shared on a website, including academic social networks like ResearchGate, etc.). This information (2–4 sentences) must be provided as part of the author note.
See APA’s Publishing Policies page for more information on publication policies, including information on author contributorship and responsibilities of authors, author name changes after publication, the use of generative artificial intelligence, funder information and conflict-of-interest disclosures, duplicate publication, data publication and reuse, and preprints.
It is a violation of APA Ethical Principles to publish “as original data, data that have been previously published” (Standard 8.13).
In addition, APA Ethical Principles specify that “after research results are published, psychologists do not withhold the data on which their conclusions are based from other competent professionals who seek to verify the substantive claims through reanalysis and who intend to use such data only for that purpose, provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and unless legal rights concerning proprietary data preclude their release” (Standard 8.14).
APA expects authors to adhere to these standards. Specifically, APA expects authors to have their data available throughout the editorial review process and for at least 5 years after the date of publication.
Authors are required to state in writing that they have complied with APA ethical standards in the treatment of their sample, human or animal, or to describe the details of treatment.
The APA Ethics Office provides the full Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct electronically on its website in HTML, PDF, and Word format. You may also request a copy by emailing or calling the APA Ethics Office (202-336-5930). You may also read "Ethical Principles," December 1992, American Psychologist, Vol. 47, pp. 1597–1611.
See APA’s Publishing Policies page for more information on publication policies, including information on author contributorship and responsibilities of authors, author name changes after publication, the use of generative artificial intelligence, funder information and conflict-of-interest disclosures, duplicate publication, data publication and reuse, and preprints.
Visit the Journals Publishing Resource Center for more resources for writing, reviewing, and editing articles for publishing in APA journals.
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APA endorses the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines by a community working group in conjunction with the Center for Open Science (Nosek et al. 2015). The TOP Guidelines cover eight fundamental aspects of research planning and reporting that can be followed by journals and authors at three levels of compliance.
As of July 1, 2021, empirical research, including meta-analyses, submitted to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology must, at a minimum, meet Level 2 (Requirement) for all aspects of research planning and reporting. Authors should include a subsection in their methods description titled “Transparency and Openness.” This subsection should detail the efforts the authors have made to comply with the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines.
The list below summarizes the minimal TOP requirements of the journal. Please refer to the Center for Open Science TOP guidelines for details, and contact the editors with any further questions:
Authors must share data, materials, and code via trusted repositories (e.g., APA’s repository on the Open Science Framework (OSF)), and APA encourages investigators to preregister their studies and analysis plans prior to conducting the research. There are many available preregistration forms (e.g., the APA Preregistration for Quantitative Research in Psychology template, ClininalTrials.gov, or other preregistration templates available via OSF). Completed preregistration forms should be posted on a publicly accessible registry system (e.g., OSF, ClinicalTrials.gov, or other trial registries in the WHO Registry Network). Trusted repositories adhere to policies that make data discoverable, accessible, usable, and preserved for the long term. Trusted repositories also assign unique and persistent identifiers.
A list of participating journals is also available from APA.
The following list presents the eight fundamental aspects of research planning and reporting, the TOP level required by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and a brief description of the journal's policy.