The ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'' is a monthly
peer-reviewed
Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research.
Content
Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such as s ...
published by the
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
that was established in 1965. It covers the fields of
social
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not.
Etymology
The word "social" derives from ...
and
personality psychology
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that examines personality and its variation among individuals. It aims to show how people are individually different due to psychological forces. Its areas of focus include:
* construction of a c ...
. The
editors-in-chief
An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies.
The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...
are
Shinobu Kitayama
Shinobu Kitayama (born March 9, 1957) is a Japanese social psychologist and the Robert B. Zajonc Collegiate Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. He is also the Social Psychology Area Chair and Director of the Culture & Cognition ...
(
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
; ''Attitudes and Social Cognition Section''), Colin Wayne Leach (
Barnard College
Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...
; ''Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes Section''), and
Richard E. Lucas (
Michigan State University
Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...
; ''Personality Processes and Individual Differences Section'').
The journal has implemented the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines. The TOP Guidelines provide structure to research planning and reporting and aim to make research more transparent, accessible, and reproducible.
Contents
The journal's focus is on empirical research reports; however, specialized theoretical, methodological, and review papers are also published. For example, the journal's most highly cited paper, cited over 90,000 times, is a statistical methods paper discussing mediation and moderation.
Articles typically involve a lengthy introduction and literature review, followed by several related studies that explore different aspects of a theory or test multiple competing hypotheses. Some researchers see the multiple-experiments requirement as an excessive burden that delays the publication of valuable work, but this requirement also helps maintain the impression that research that is published in JPSP has been thoroughly vetted and is less likely to be the result of a
type I error
In statistical hypothesis testing, a type I error is the mistaken rejection of an actually true null hypothesis (also known as a "false positive" finding or conclusion; example: "an innocent person is convicted"), while a type II error is the fa ...
or an unexplored
confound
In statistics, a confounder (also confounding variable, confounding factor, extraneous determinant or lurking variable) is a variable that influences both the dependent variable and independent variable, causing a spurious association. Con ...
.
The journal is divided into three independently edited sections. ''Attitudes and Social Cognition'' addresses those domains of social behavior in which cognition plays a major role, including the interface of cognition with overt behavior, affect, and motivation. ''Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes'' focuses on psychological and structural features of interaction in dyads and groups. ''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.
Abstracting and indexing
The journal is abstracted and indexed in:
According to the ''
Journal Citation Reports
''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publicationby Clarivate Analytics (previously the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters). It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science-Core Collect ...
'', the journal has a 2020
impact factor
The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as i ...
of 7.673.
Replicability
JPSP is one of the journals analyzed in the Open Science Collaboration's
Reproducibility Project after JPSP's publication of questionable research for mental time travel (Bem, 2011). (See
replication crisis
The replication crisis (also called the replicability crisis and the reproducibility crisis) is an ongoing methodological crisis in which the results of many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to reproduce. Because the reproducibili ...
and
"Feeling the Future" controversy).
The journal refused to publish refuting replications performed by
Ritchie's team, in relation to an earlier article they published in 2010 that suggested that psychic abilities may have been involved (backward causality).
In popular culture
Non-fiction author
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell (born 3 September 1963) is an English-born Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1996. He has published seven books: '' The Tipping Point: How Little T ...
writes frequently about findings that are reported in the journal. Gladwell, upon being asked where he would like to be buried, replied "I'd like to be buried in the current-periodicals room, maybe next to the unbound volumes of the ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'' (my favorite journal)."
Doonan, S. (2008). ''Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You''. Simon & Schuster: New York, NY.
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References
External links
* {{Official website, http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/psp/
Social psychology journals
Personality journals
Publications established in 1965
English-language journals
Monthly journals
American Psychological Association academic journals
Differential psychology journals