Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Prior 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.

General submission guidelines

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.

Transparency and openness

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.

For example:

• We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions (if any), all manipulations, and all measures in the study, and we follow JARS (Appelbaum et al., 2018). All data, analysis code, and research materials are available at [stable link to repository]. Data were analyzed using R, version 4.0.0 (R Core Team, 2020) and the package ggplot, version 3.2.1 (Wickham, 2016). This study’s design and its analysis were not pre-registered.

Links to preregistrations and data, code, and materials should also be included in the author note.

Data, materials, and code

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).

For example:

• All data have been made publicly available at the [trusted repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].
• Materials and analysis code for this study are not available.
• The code behind this analysis/simulation has been made publicly available at the [trusted repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].

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.

• Download a quick guide on how to organize this information (PDF, 310KB)

Disclosure of prior uses of data

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.

Citation standards

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

Design and analysis transparency

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 analysis plans

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.

For example:

• This study’s design was preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI].
• This study’s design and hypotheses were preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI].
• This study’s analysis plan was preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI].
• This study was not preregistered.

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).

Replication and Registered Reports

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.

Section submission guidelines

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).

Attitudes and Social Cognition

To submit to the editorial office of Dolores Albarracín, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Word Document format (.doc).

Submit Manuscript to Attitudes and Social Cognition Section

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.

Type of manuscripts

• Empirical: Experimental, correlational, and qualitative studies may be considered, and a combination of different methods is strongly encouraged.
• Meta-analysis: Quantitative research synthesis.

Publication criteria

Major theoretical contribution and/or discovery demonstrated with rigorous methods.

Articles can make a major theoretical contribution by:               

• developing a new theory (new theory);
• developing a conceptualization of social-psychological phenomenon not previously studied within the field (new theory for new phenomenon);
• using an existing theory to explain a new phenomenon (existing theory for new phenomenon);
• making novel connections between two theories to address new empirical questions (combination of theories to address new phenomenon);
• providing a novel integration of phenomena under an existing theory originally designed to understand a different phenomenon in another area of research (theoretical integration to explain multiple phenomena);
• establishing the operation of psychological processes to explain a phenomenon that’s currently understood as implicating different processes (new processes to explain prior understanding of a phenomenon);
• conceptualizing the conditions that give way to different processes previously studied independently (novel identification of conditions under which different processes occur);
• conceptualizing moderators that explain conflicting predictions in the literature (identification of conditions that reconcile prior theoretical conflicts);
• introducing a new moderator that help us to understand the conditions under which a previously established phenomenon occurs (new moderator);
• introducing new elements to a theory that failed to explain a phenomenon (increasing generalizability via theoretical development);
• introducing a new theoretical construct and demonstrate its import (new construct);
• replicating seminal research that has made any of the contributions above, ideally contributing to explaining variability in past findings; or
• another theoretical contribution specified by the author (other).

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.

Statement of limitations following the abstract

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.

Statement of authors contributions

Please provide a statement of the contributions of each author in terms of conceptualization, design and data collection, and writing.

Length

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.

General conciseness of Methods and Results Sections

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.

Statement and table of limitations

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.

Statement of limitations

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.

Assessment of limitations

Internal validity

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.

Statistical validity

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

Generalizability to different methods

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.

Generalizability to field settings

Dimension: Was the phenomenon assessed in a field setting?
Assessment: No

Dimension: Are the methods artificial?
Assessment: Yes, the methods are highly artificial

Generalizability to times and populations

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.

Theoretical limitations

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.

Table of limitations

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.

Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes

Sandra L. Murray, PhD
Department of Psychology
University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Buffalo, NY, 14260-4110

Submit Manuscript to Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes Section

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.

Type of manuscripts

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.

Submission guidelines

1. Submissions can report a maximum of 5 studies in the manuscript text. Any studies conducted to test the study hypotheses that are not reported in the manuscript must be reported in the supplemental materials, with the results of these studies summarized briefly in the manuscript text. The reports of any such studies in the supplemental document should be complete, with the main measures of interest (those overlapping with measures reported in the main text) and associated results reported first, followed by a listing of any additional measures collected.
2. Introductory and discussion sections are limited to no more than 5,000 words in total (including general and study-specific introductions and discussions). This word count must be noted on the title page.
3. Results sections are to be written to be accessible to readers with general statistical expertise, relying on figures and explanatory text to communicate the findings and relegating any more complex and detailed justification of the statistical methods to tables, notes, and/or supplementary materials. Authors are to prioritize integrative analyses across data sets and/or meta-analyses whenever possible, also including the main measures of interest from any studies reported only in the supplemental materials.
4. Authors are to include a focused discussion of salient alternative explanations for the reported findings. Alternative explanations may include questions of construct validity (e.g., an alternative conceptualization of the meaning of a manipulation/measure), alternative/additional mechanisms or mediators, or alternative causal models, etc. Whenever possible, authors are to describe how the reported study design/data can be used to address such limitations and/or the type of study design/data needed to address such alternatives in the future. Details about analyses conducted to rule out alternative explanations can be provided in the supplementary online materials. Alternative explanations can be raised/addressed in the discussion text and/or tables. Information provided in tables will not contribute to the word limit.
5. Authors are to acknowledge (a) points of theoretical connection/disconnection to related theories and (b) how readily the findings may generalize to non-studied populations.
6. Authors are to embed tables and figures in the manuscript text.
7. Any supplementary online materials must include a table of contents.

Personality Processes and Individual Differences

To submit to the editorial office of Richard Lucas, PhD, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Word Document format (.doc).

Submit Manuscript to Personality Processes and Individual Differences Section

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:

• Include the author's postal address, e-mail address, telephone number, and fax number for future correspondence
• State that the manuscript is original, not previously published, and not under concurrent consideration elsewhere
• Indicate whether a previous version of the submitted manuscript was previously rejected from any section of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; and if so, identify the action editor handling the previous submission, provide the prior manuscript #, and describe how the present article differs from the previously rejected one
• State that the data were collected in a manner consistent with ethical standards for the treatment of human subjects
• Inform the journal editor of the existence of any published work using the same data (in whole or in part) as was used in the present manuscript; if such publications exist, describe the extent and nature of any overlap between the present submission and the previously published work
• Mention any supplemental material being submitting for the online version of the article

Authors are also required to embed tables and figures within the manuscript, instead of providing these after the references.

Manuscript preparation

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.

Masked review policy

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).

Word limits

Although papers should be written as succinctly as possible, there is no formal word limit on submissions.

Author contributions statements using CRediT

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:

• Conceptualization: Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
• Data curation: Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse.
• Formal analysis: Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
• Funding acquisition: Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
• Investigation: Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
• Methodology: Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
• Project administration: Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
• Resources: Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
• Software: Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
• Supervision: Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
• Validation: Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
• Visualization: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
• Writing—original draft: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
• Writing—review and editing: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision—including pre- or post-publication stages.

Authors can claim credit for more than one contributor role, and the same role can be attributed to more than one author.

Abstract and keywords

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.

References

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:

Journal article

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

Authored book

Brown, L. S. (2018). Feminist therapy (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000092-000

Chapter in an edited book

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.

Data set citation

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

Software/Code citation

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.

Tables

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.

Figures

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

• All color line art and halftones: 300 DPI
• Black and white line tone and gray halftone images: 600 DPI

Line weights

• Adobe Photoshop images
  • Color (RGB, CMYK) images: 2 pixels
  • Grayscale images: 4 pixels
• Adobe Illustrator Images
  • Stroke weight: 0.5 points

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:

• $900 for one figure
• An additional $600 for the second figure
• An additional $450 for each subsequent figure

Display equations

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:

• Go to the Text section of the Insert tab and select Object.
• Select MathType or Equation Editor 3.0 in the drop-down menu.

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.

Computer code

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.

In online supplemental materials

We request that runnable source code be included as supplemental material to the article. For more information, visit Supplementing Your Article With Online Material.

In the text of the article

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.

Submitting supplemental materials

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.

Permissions

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.

• Download Permissions Alert Form (PDF, 13KB)

Academic writing and English language editing services

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.

Publication policies

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.

See also APA Journals^® Internet Posting Guidelines.

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).

• Download Full Disclosure of Interests Form (PDF, 41KB)

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.

Ethical Principles

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.

• Download Certification of Compliance With APA Ethical Principles Form (PDF, 26KB)

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.

Other information

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.

• View Attitudes and Social Cognition Section Editorial Board
• View Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes Section Editorial Board
• View Personality Processes and Individual Differences Section Editorial Board

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Transparency and Openness Promotion

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.

For example:

• Level 1: Disclosure—The article must disclose whether or not the materials are posted to a trusted repository.
• Level 2: Requirement—The article must share materials via a trusted repository when legally and ethically permitted (or disclose the legal and/or ethical restriction when not permitted).
• Level 3: Verification—A third party must verify that the standard is met.

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:

• Attitudes and Social Cognition: Shinobu Kitayama, PhD
• Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes: Colin Wayne Leach, PhD
• Personality Processes and Individual Differences: Richard Lucas, PhD

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.

• Citation: Level 2, Requirement—All data, program code, and other methods developed by others must be cited in the text and listed in the References section.
• Data Transparency: Level 2, Requirement—Article states whether the raw and/or processed data on which study conclusions are based are posted to a trusted repository and how to access them. If the data cannot be made available, the article states the legal or ethical reasons why they are not available.
• Analytic Methods (Code) Transparency: Level 2, Requirement—Article states whether computer code or syntax needed to reproduce analyses in an article is posted to a trusted repository and how to access it. If it cannot be made available, the article states the legal or ethical reasons why it is not available.
• Research Materials Transparency: Level 2, Requirement—Article states whether materials described in the Method section are posted to a trusted repository and how to access them. If they cannot be made available, the article states the legal or ethical reasons why they are not available.
• Design and Analysis Transparency (Reporting Standards): Level 2, Requirement—Article must comply with APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS-Quant and/or MARS) and disclose 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).
• Study Preregistration: Level 2, Requirement—Article states whether the study design and (if applicable) hypotheses of any of the work reported was preregistered and, if so, how to access it. Access to the preregistration should be available at submission. Authors must submit a masked copy via stable link or supplemental material.
• Analysis Plan Preregistration: Level 2, Requirement—Article states whether any of the work reported was preregistered with an analysis plan and, if so, how to access it. Access to the preregistration should be available at submission. Authors must submit a masked copy via stable link or supplemental material.
• Replication: Level 3, Verification—The journal publishes replications and Registered Reports.

Other open science initiatives

• Open Science badges: Not offered
• Public significance statements: Not offered
• Author contribution statements using CRediT: Required
• Registered Reports: Published
• Replications: Published

Explore open science at APA.

Attitudes and Social Cognition Section

Inclusive study designs

• Diverse samples
• Registered Reports

Definitions and further details on inclusive study designs are available on the Journals EDI homepage.

Inclusive reporting standards

• Bias-free language and community-driven language guidelines (required)
• Author contribution roles using CRediT (required)
• Data sharing and data availability statements (required)
• Participant sample descriptions (required)

More information on this journal’s reporting standards is listed under the submission guidelines tab.

Other EDI offerings

ORCID reviewer recognition

Open Research and Contributor ID (ORCID) Reviewer Recognition provides a visible and verifiable way for journals to publicly credit reviewers without compromising the confidentiality of the peer-review process. This journal has implemented the ORCID Reviewer Recognition feature in Editorial Manager, meaning that reviewers can be recognized for their contributions to the peer-review process.

Masked peer review

This journal offers masked peer review (where both the authors’ and reviewers’ identities are not known to the other). Research has shown that masked peer review can help reduce implicit bias against traditionally female names or early-career scientists with smaller publication records (Budden et al., 2008; Darling, 2015).

Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes Section

Inclusive study designs

• Collaborative research models
• Diverse samples
• Registered Reports

Definitions and further details on inclusive study designs are available on the Journals EDI homepage.

Inclusive reporting standards

• Bias-free language and community-driven language guidelines (required)
• Author contribution roles using CRediT (required)
• Data sharing and data availability statements (required)
• Year(s) of data collection (recommended)
• Participant sample descriptions (required)
• Sample justifications (recommended)
• Constraints on Generality (COG) statements (recommended)
• Inclusive reference lists (recommended)

More information on this journal’s reporting standards is listed under the submission guidelines tab.

Pathways to authorship and editorship

Reviewer database diversification

This journal section encourages diversification of reviewer database through editorial team suggestions and calls from the editor at talks and conferences.

Other EDI offerings

ORCID reviewer recognition

Open Research and Contributor ID (ORCID) Reviewer Recognition provides a visible and verifiable way for journals to publicly credit reviewers without compromising the confidentiality of the peer-review process. This journal has implemented the ORCID Reviewer Recognition feature in Editorial Manager, meaning that reviewers can be recognized for their contributions to the peer-review process.

Masked peer review

This journal offers masked peer review (where both the authors’ and reviewers’ identities are not known to the other). Research has shown that masked peer review can help reduce implicit bias against traditionally female names or early-career scientists with smaller publication records (Budden et al., 2008; Darling, 2015).

Personality Processes and Individual Differences Section

Journal equity, diversity, and inclusion statement

Personality psychologists focus on the ways that people differ from one another. Appreciating these differences is essential for the quality of research and theory that the field produces. Yet it is clear that currently, neither the authors nor the participants in our journals reflect the diversity of the populations we seek to understand. This affects the conclusions that one can draw from this work, while also having broader impacts on equity and inclusion in science and beyond. Thus, identifying steps to improve this situation will be an important goal for our team.

The most immediate step will be to expand our efforts to recruit editors, editorial board members, and reviewers from diverse backgrounds. In addition, our team has been paying close attention to concerns raised about biases in the evaluation of work that includes samples from under-represented groups or from authors from under-represented backgrounds. For instance, studies with samples from under-represented groups have sometimes been criticized for a lack of generalizability, whereas samples of college students get a pass on this issue (Atherton, 2021). We pledge to watch for these problematic comments in reviews and decision letters to reduce the negative impact that such biases have. Anyone who has concerns about their experiences during the review process can contact the editor-in-chief at any time.

We also explicitly affirm the value of including samples that go beyond the typical college student and online convenience samples that have been the primary focus of research in many psychological journals. There are many different ways that a paper’s contribution can warrant publication in JPSP: PPID and testing ideas in under-studied samples is one of them.

Finally, we also believe that methodological diversity is important, both as a way of broadening the base of evidence that our journal publishes, but also as a way of broadening the perspectives on personality psychology that are represented. Thus, we are open to research that contributes to our understanding of personality processes and individual differences using a broad range of approaches including research that links personality psychology with theories and methodological approaches from other disciplines.

References

Atherton, O. E. (2021, July). Deconstructing Problematic Peer Reviews in Personality Psychology and Some Calls to Action. Biennial Conference of the Association for Research in Personality.

Inclusive study designs

• Diverse samples
• Registered Reports

Definitions and further details on inclusive study designs are available on the Journals EDI homepage.

Inclusive reporting standards

• Bias-free language and community-driven language guidelines (required)
• Author contribution roles using CRediT (required)
• Data sharing and data availability statements (required)
• Year(s) of data collection (recommended)
• Participant sample descriptions (recommended)
• Sample justifications (recommended)
• Constraints on Generality (COG) statements (recommended)
• Inclusive reference lists (recommended)

More information on this journal’s reporting standards is listed under the submission guidelines tab.

Pathways to authorship and editorship

Editorial fellowships

Editorial fellowships help early-career psychologists gain firsthand experience in scholarly publishing and editorial leadership roles. This journal offers an editorial fellowship program for early-career psychologists from historically excluded communities.

Other EDI offerings

ORCID reviewer recognition

Open Research and Contributor ID (ORCID) Reviewer Recognition provides a visible and verifiable way for journals to publicly credit reviewers without compromising the confidentiality of the peer-review process. This journal has implemented the ORCID Reviewer Recognition feature in Editorial Manager, meaning that reviewers can be recognized for their contributions to the peer-review process.

Masked peer review

This journal offers masked peer review (where both the authors’ and reviewers’ identities are not known to the other). Research has shown that masked peer review can help reduce implicit bias against traditionally female names or early-career scientists with smaller publication records (Budden et al., 2008; Darling, 2015).

Announcements

• New editor appointed

From Monitor on Psychology

• A broadening field
  The new editor of Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes strives for inclusivity (October 2013)

Editor Spotlight

• Read an interview with Editor Sandra Murray, PhD
• Read an interview with Editor Dolores Albarracín, PhD
• Read an interview with Editor Richard E. Lucas, PhD

Editorials

• Inaugural Editorial, Sandra L. Murray, JPSP: IRGP, 2024 (PDF, 112KB)
• Inaugural Editorial, JPSP: ASC, 2024 (PDF, 133KB)
• Richard E. Lucas, editor, JSPP-PPID section, November 2021 (PDF, 71KB)
• Colin Wayne Leach, editor, JPSP-IRGP section, December 2019 (PDF, 85KB)
• Shinobu Kitayama, editor, JPSP-ASC section, March 2017 (PDF, 30KB)
• Kerry Kawakami, editor, JPSP-IRGP section, January 2015 (PDF, 16KB)
• M. Lynne Cooper, editor, JPSP-PPID section, March 2016 (PDF, 30KB)

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• Toppled statues and peaceful marches: How do privileged group members react to protests for social equality?