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104 Personality Psychology Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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Personality psychology is a fascinating field of study that explores the complexities of human behavior and individual differences. If you're tasked with writing an essay on this subject, you may be wondering where to start. To help you get inspired, here are 104 personality psychology essay topic ideas and examples:

• The Big Five personality traits: How do they influence behavior?
• Analyzing the impact of personality on career success
• The role of genetics in shaping personality traits
• Exploring the relationship between personality and mental health
• Narcissism: A closer look at this personality trait
• The influence of culture on personality development
• Personality disorders: Causes and treatment options
• The connection between personality and social relationships
• Personality differences between introverts and extroverts
• How childhood experiences shape personality traits in adulthood
• The psychology of self-esteem: How does it impact personality?
• The impact of trauma on personality development
• Personality and creativity: Are they linked?
• The role of personality in leadership effectiveness
• Exploring the concept of self-actualization in personality psychology
• The influence of birth order on personality traits
• The connection between personality and emotional intelligence
• Personality traits and risk-taking behavior
• The impact of personality on decision-making processes
• The psychology of personality assessment tools
• The role of personality in academic achievement
• The link between personality and physical health
• Exploring the concept of self-concept in personality psychology
• Personality differences between men and women
• The relationship between personality and job satisfaction
• The impact of personality on coping mechanisms in times of stress
• The role of personality in romantic relationships
• Exploring the concept of self-efficacy in personality psychology
• Personality traits and their influence on political beliefs
• The connection between personality and consumer behavior
• The impact of personality on learning styles
• The psychology of personality disorders: A case study of Borderline Personality Disorder
• Personality traits and their influence on career choice
• The role of personality in criminal behavior
• Exploring the concept of self-regulation in personality psychology
• The connection between personality and substance abuse
• The impact of personality on parenting styles
• Personality traits and their influence on communication styles
• The role of personality in conflict resolution
• Exploring the concept of self-monitoring in personality psychology
• The link between personality and job performance
• The psychology of personality disorders: A case study of Antisocial Personality Disorder
• Personality traits and their influence on consumer decision-making
• The impact of personality on leadership styles
• The connection between personality and risk perception
• The role of personality in intercultural communication
• Exploring the concept of self-handicapping in personality psychology
• Personality traits and their influence on social media use
• The link between personality and academic motivation
• The psychology of personality disorders: A case study of Narcissistic Personality Disorder
• Personality traits and their influence on organizational citizenship behavior
• The impact of personality on conflict management styles
• The connection between personality and job satisfaction
• The role of personality in team dynamics
• Exploring the concept of self-affirmation in personality psychology
• Personality traits and their influence on romantic relationship satisfaction
• The link between personality and stress management techniques
• The psychology of personality disorders: A case study of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder
• Personality traits and their influence on social support networks
• The impact of personality on goal-setting behavior
• The connection between personality and emotional regulation
• The role of personality in organizational culture
• Exploring the concept of self-compassion in personality psychology
• Personality traits and their influence on job seeking behavior
• The link between personality and creativity in the workplace
• The psychology of personality disorders: A case study of Histrionic Personality Disorder
• Personality traits and their influence on organizational commitment
• The impact of personality on employee engagement
• The connection between personality and conflict resolution strategies
• The role of personality in job crafting
• Exploring the concept of self-determination in personality psychology
• Personality traits and their influence on job performance evaluations
• The link between personality and organizational justice perceptions
• The psychology of personality disorders: A case study of Schizoid Personality Disorder
• Personality traits and their influence on job satisfaction
• The impact of personality on organizational citizenship behavior
• The connection between personality and leadership effectiveness
• The role of personality in team cohesion
• Exploring the concept of self-awareness in personality psychology
• Personality traits and their influence on job burnout
• The link between personality and organizational commitment
• The psychology of personality disorders: A case study of Paranoid Personality Disorder
• Personality traits and their influence on job search behaviors
• The impact of personality on employee turnover rates
• The connection between personality and workplace incivility
• Exploring the concept of self-esteem in personality psychology
• Personality traits and their influence on job performance appraisals
• The link between personality and organizational citizenship behavior
• The psychology of personality disorders: A case study of Schizotypal Personality Disorder
• Personality traits and their influence on job satisfaction surveys
• The impact of personality on organizational commitment levels
• The connection between personality and workplace deviance
• The role of personality in job search strategies
• Personality traits and their influence on job stress levels
• The psychology of personality disorders: A case study of Avoidant Personality Disorder
• The impact of personality on employee engagement levels

These essay topic ideas and examples are just a starting point for exploring the fascinating world of personality psychology. Whether you're interested in the Big Five personality traits, the impact of personality on career success, or the link between personality and mental health, there are endless possibilities for research and analysis in this field. So pick a topic that interests you, dive into the literature, and start writing your own unique contribution to the study of personality psychology.

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Home — Essay Samples — Psychology — Personality Psychology

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The 4 Major Personality Perspectives

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Amy Morin, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and international bestselling author. Her books, including "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do," have been translated into more than 40 languages. Her TEDx talk,  "The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong," is one of the most viewed talks of all time.

Aaron Johnson is a fact checker and expert on qualitative research design and methodology. 

Psychoanalytic Perspective

Humanistic perspective, trait perspective, social cognitive perspective.

The study of personality is one of the significant topics of interest in psychology. Numerous personality theories exist, and most major ones fall into one of four major perspectives. Each of these perspectives on personality attempts to describe different patterns in personality, including how these patterns form and how people differ on an individual level.

This article discusses four of the major perspectives on personality, the theorists associated with each theory, and the core ideas that are central to each perspective. Learning more about these theories can give you greater insight into the many different aspects of human personality.

The psychoanalytic perspective of personality emphasizes the importance of early childhood experiences and the unconscious mind . This perspective on personality was created by psychiatrist Sigmund Freud who believed that things hidden in the unconscious could be revealed in a number of different ways, including through dreams, free association, and slips of the tongue.

Neo-Freudian theorists , including Erik Erikson, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Karen Horney, believed in the importance of the unconscious but disagreed with other aspects of Freud's theories.

Major Theorists

Below are the most prominent psychoanalytic perspective theorists:

• Sigmund Freud : Stressed the importance of early childhood events, the influence of the unconscious, and sexual instincts in the development and formation of personality.
• Erik Erikson : Emphasized the social elements of personality development, the identity crisis , and how personality is shaped over the course of the entire lifespan.
• Carl Jung : Focused on concepts such as the collective unconscious , archetypes , and psychological types.
• Alfred Adler : Believed the core motive behind personality involves striving for superiority, or the desire to overcome challenges and move closer toward self-realization. This desire to achieve superiority stems from underlying feelings of inferiority that Adler believed were universal.
• Karen Horney : Focused on the need to overcome basic anxiety, the sense of being isolated and alone in the world. She emphasized the societal and cultural factors that also play a role in personality, including the importance of the parent-child relationship.

Modern Relevance

Classical Freudian psychoanalysis is viewed with skepticism and there has been an overall decline in the approach in recent years. While many of Freud's theories have fallen out of favor, the psychodynamic tradition is still an essential part of psychology.

Research has shown that psychodynamic approaches can be an effective tool for self-examination. This approach to treatment can also help foster long-term emotional growth.

The humanistic perspective of personality focuses on psychological growth, free will, and personal awareness. It takes a more positive outlook on human nature and is centered on how each person can achieve their individual potential.

The following are the most influential humanistic perspective theorists:

• Carl Rogers : Believed in the inherent goodness of people and emphasized the importance of free will and psychological growth. He suggested that the actualizing tendency is the driving force behind human behavior.
• Abraham Maslow : Suggested that people are motivated by a hierarchy of needs . The most basic needs are centered on things necessary for life such as food and water, but as people move up the hierarchy these needs become centered on things such as esteem and self-actualization.

Humanistic psychology continues to have a tremendous influence today, particularly in psychotherapy. The field of positive psychology, which is focused on helping people live better lives, has also grown out of the humanist tradition.

Humanistic therapy can effectively treat various mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, substance use, interpersonal issues, and personality disorders.

The trait perspective of personality is centered on identifying, describing, and measuring the specific traits that make up human personality . By understanding these traits, researchers believe they can better comprehend the differences between individuals.

Below are the most important trait perspective theorists:

• Hans Eysenck : Suggested that there are three dimensions of personality: 1) extraversion-introversion, 2) emotional stability-neuroticism, and 3) psychoticism.
• Raymond Cattell : Identified 16 personality traits that he believed could be utilized to understand and measure individual differences in personality.
• Robert McCrae and Paul Costa: Introduced the big five theory , which identifies five key dimensions of personality: 1) extraversion, 2) neuroticism, 3) openness to experience, 4) conscientiousness, and 5) agreeableness.

Trait theory is still a standard approach for understanding human personality. Today, many experts agree that personality is composed of a number of broad dimensions, although they don't completely agree on the labels for each dimension.

However, modern researchers are now also interested in understanding more about how these traits develop and how understanding them can help improve mental well-being.

For example, research has found that while people may have certain traits, these qualities don't necessarily serve as accurate predictors of behavior. Contemporary research may focus more on understanding how these traits shape people's behavior rather than just labeling the existing traits.

The social cognitive perspective of personality emphasizes the importance of observational learning , self-efficacy, situational influences, and cognitive processes.

According to this approach, personality is shaped by observation, imitation, and modeling. Cognitive factors such as attention, attitudes, motivation, and emotion also play a pivotal role. The interaction between the individual, their environment, and their thoughts contributes to their personality and behavior.

The main proponent of the social cognitive perspective is:

• Albert Bandura : Emphasized the importance of social learning, or learning through observation. His theory emphasized the role of conscious thoughts including self-efficacy , or our own beliefs in our abilities.

The social cognitive perspective remains relevant today in understanding how learning occurs in social contexts. It also allows researchers and educators to consider the dynamic between the individual, their environment, and their behavior. 

Social cognitive theory is also utilized in the field of public health to develop programs aimed at health promotion. Understanding how observational learning and self-efficacy influence health behaviors allows researchers to create programs that foster healthier behaviors and choices.

A Word From Verywell

Many theories have been proposed to describe and explain human personality. Four of the most prominent are the psychoanalytic, humanistic, trait, and social-cognitive perspectives.

One important thing to remember is that no single theory alone explains every aspect of personality. Instead, each of these theories has played a part in adding to our understanding of different aspects of personality, their causes, and how they shape behavior and individual experiences.

Mcwilliams N. Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process . Guilford; 2011.

Barenbaum N, Winter D. Personality . In: Freedheim D, ed. Handbook of Psychology: History of Psychology . John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2013:198-223.

Paris J.  Is psychoanalysis still relevant to psychiatry?   Can J Psychiatry . 2017;62(5):308-312. doi:10.1177/0706743717692306

Shedler J.  The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy .  Am Psychol . 2010;65(2):98-109. doi:10.1037/a0018378

Osafo hounkpatin H, Wood AM, Boyce CJ, Dunn G. An existential-humanistic view of personality change: co-occurring changes with psychological well-being in a 10 Year cohort study . Soc Indic Res. 2015;121(2):455-470. doi:10.1007/s11205-014-0648-0

Rogers CR. The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change . TACD Journal . 1989;17(1):53-65. doi:10.1080/1046171x.1989.12034347

Kaufman SB. Self-actualizing people in the 21st century: Integration with contemporary theory and research on personality and well-being .  Journal of Humanistic Psychology . November 2018. doi:10.1177/0022167818809187

Elliott R.  Research on person-centred/experiential psychotherapy and counselling : summary of the main findings . In: Lago C, Charura D, eds. McGraw-Hill/Open University Press; 2016:223-232.

Fleeson W, Jayawickreme E. Whole trait theory . Journal of Research in Personality . 2015;56(0092-6566):82-92. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2014.10.009

Revelle W. Hans Eysenck: Personality theorist . Personality and Individual Differences . 2016;103:32-39. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2016.04.007

Boyle GJ, Stankov L, Martin NG, Petrides KV, Eysenck MW, Ortet G. Hans J. Eysenck and Raymond B. Cattell on intelligence and personality . Personality and Individual Differences . 2016;103:40-47. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2016.04.029

McCrae RR, Costa Jr. P. Introduction to the empirical and theoretical status of the five-factor model of personality traits . In: Personality Disorders and the Five-Factor Model of Personality . American Psychological Association; 2013:15-27. doi:10.1037/13939-002

McCrae RR, Sutin AR.  A five-factor theory perspective on causal analysis .  Eur J Pers . 2018;32(3):151–166. doi:10.1002/per.2134

Fleeson W, Jayawickreme E.  Whole trait theory .  J Res Pers . 2015;56:82-92. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2014.10.009

Robinson MD, Klein RJ, Persich MR. Personality traits in action: A cognitive behavioral version of the social cognitive paradigm . Personality and Individual Differences . 2019;147:214-222. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2019.04.041

Bandura A. Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspectiv e. Asian Journal of Social Psychology . 1999;2(1):21-41. doi:10.1111/1467-839x.00024

Smith Y, Garcia-Torres R, Coughlin SS, et al. Effectiveness of social cognitive theory-based interventions for glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis .  JMIR Res Protoc . 2020;9(9):e17148. doi:10.2196/17148

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Journal scope statement

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.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion

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 .

Open science

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 .

Editor’s Choice

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.

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Author and editor spotlights

Explore journal highlights : free article summaries, editor interviews and editorials, journal awards, mentorship opportunities, and more.

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), 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).

• 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 reregister 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, 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.

• 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.

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.

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.

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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Authors are to embed tables and figures in the manuscript text.
• 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

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.

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.

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.

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

Line weights

• Color (RGB, CMYK) images: 2 pixels
• Grayscale images: 4 pixels
• 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

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.

• 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

• Collaborative research models
• Year(s) of data collection (recommended)
• Sample justifications (recommended)
• Constraints on Generality (COG) statements (recommended)
• Inclusive reference lists (recommended)

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.

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.

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.

• Participant sample descriptions (recommended)

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.

Announcements

• Call for JPSP-IRGP editor nominations
• 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
• 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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Essays About Psychology: Top 12 Examples and Prompts

Need a psychology research paper idea ? Check out these provoking example essays about psychology to get your writing started.

Psychology is a broad field focusing on the mind and behavior. It’s also concerned with individuals’ consciousness and subconscious.  This branch of science has many subdivisions, such as developmental, social, forensic , and cognitive . Because it’s applicable in various fields, psychology is one of the most popular college courses in the US . 

If you are studying psychology in college, the odds are high that you will need to complete an essay or research paper at some point in your education.  Consider these twelve essay examples and eighteen prompts to get inspired and start writing your essay. 

For help with your essays , check out our round-up of the best essay checkers .

12 Example Essays About Psychology

1. the epidemic of mental illness: why by marcia angell, 2. is the internet making us crazy what the new research says by tony dukoupil, 3. the dark psychology of social networks by jonathan haidt and tobias rose-stockwell, 4. the benjamin franklin effect by david mcraney, 5. caring for your introvert by jonathan rauch, 6. the stanford prison experiment by dr. saul mcleod, 7. why your brain is not a computer by matthew cobb, 8. introduction to psychology by seema r, 9. meaning and definition of industrial psychology by shreyas kammar, 10. do not let negative feelings destroy our lives by anonymous on papersowl, 11. psychology. health behavior change & reflection coursework by anonymous on ivypanda, 12. fields of psychology by seema r, essay prompts about psychology, 1. what is antisocial personality disorder, and how is it treated, 2. the rise of schizophrenia or other serious mental disorders, 3. the role of media and video games in violent behavior, 4. the main factors that impact problem-solving abilities in child development, 5. can serious physical illnesses cause post-traumatic stress disorder, 6. the impact of parenting styles on human development, 7. what stops panic attacks effectively, 8. what is causing the rise in anorexia among children, 9. do teenagers face anxiety in high school, 10. how does low self-confidence hurt athletes, 11. my favorite branch of psychology, 12. psychological disorders: definitions and treatments, 13. how do religious beliefs affect someone’s behavior, 14. analyzation of a psychology theory or experiment, 15. the different careers in psychology, 16. do family relationships affect a child’s behavioral development, 17. effects of racism , 18. a historical figure in psychology.

“It seems that Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, at least as judged by the increase in the numbers treated for it. The tally of those who are so disabled by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times between 1987 and 2007—from one in 184 Americans to one in seventy-six. The rise is even more startling for children—a thirty-five-fold increase in the same two decades.”

Angell describes the realities behind mental illness statistics. She then explores why problems like anxiety disorders, depression, and similar issues are rising. Finally, she proposes that they are possibly being diagnosed more frequently than before, more so than becoming more prevalent. You might find our list of books on psychology for beginners helpful.

“The first good, peer-reviewed research is emerging, and the picture is much gloomier than the trumpet blasts of Web utopians have allowed. The current incarnation of the Internet—portable, social, accelerated, and all-pervasive—may be making us not just dumber or lonelier but more depressed and anxious, prone to obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit disorders, even outright psychotic. Our digitized minds can scan like those of drug addicts, and normal people are breaking down in sad and seemingly new ways.”

In this essay, Dukoupil points out the mental health concerns of constant exposure to social media and other technology. He explores new research into the abnormal psychology disorders this exposure is creating.

“The problem may not be connectivity itself but rather the way social media turns so much communication into a public performance. We often think of communication as a two-way street. Intimacy builds as partners take turns, laugh at each other’s jokes, and make reciprocal disclosures. What happens, though, when grandstands are erected along both sides of that street and then filled with friends, acquaintances, rivals, and strangers, all passing judgment and offering commentary?”

Social media has a dark side, which is what Haidt and Rose-Stockwell explore in this essay. What started as a positive way to build social connections has turned into a public facade that pushes people toward mental health issues. You might also be interested in these essays about sociology .

“The Misconception: You do nice things for the people you like and bad things to the people you hate. The Truth: You grow to like people for whom you do nice things and hate people you harm. Benjamin Franklin knew how to deal with haters.”

In this social psychology essay, McRaney explores how Benjamin Franklin’s people skills created a psychological phenomenon known as the Benjamin Franklin Effect. This theory says that a person who has done someone a favor is more likely to do that person another favor than they would be had they received a favor . McRaney delves into the psychology behind this theory.

“My name is Jonathan, and I am an introvert. Oh, for years I denied it. After all, I have good social skills. I am not morose or misanthropic. Usually. I am far from shy. I love long conversations that explore intimate thoughts or passionate interests. But at last I have self-identified and come out to my friends and colleagues. In doing so, I have found myself liberated from any number of damaging misconceptions and stereotypes. Now I am here to tell you what you need to know in order to respond sensitively and supportively to your own introverted family members, friends, and colleagues.”

Rauch, a self-proclaimed introvert, explores what it means to be one and how people can best care for one. After reading this article, you will be well-equipped for any social interaction involving an introvert.

“The study may also lack population validity as the sample comprised US male students. The study’s findings cannot be applied to female prisons or those from other countries. For example, America is an individualist culture (were people are generally less conforming) and the results may be different in collectivist cultures (such as Asian countries).”

This informative essay talks about the Stanford Prison Experiment and how it impacted the field of psychology as a whole. McLeod also provides some critical evaluation of the study and its findings.

“There are indeed theoretical approaches to brain function, including to the most mysterious thing the human brain can do – produce consciousness. But none of these frameworks are widely accepted, for none has yet passed the decisive test of experimental investigation. It is possible that repeated calls for more theory may be a pious hope. It can be argued that there is no possible single theory of brain function, not even in a worm, because a brain is not a single thing. (Scientists even find it difficult to come up with a precise definition of what a brain is.).”

In this essay, Cobb takes on the ideology that the brain is nothing more than a complex computer. He looks at the current research and draws an opinion on how much more complex the human brain is than simply calling it a computer.

“ Psychology is relatively a young science and yet within a brief span it has made tremendous progress. Psychology touches almost every facet of our lives. There is hardly any single aspect of human life where psychology has not made its contribution.”

Unlike most psychology introductions with a direct description and definition, this short essay shows the importance of the subject. Seema R makes this possible by talking about essential industries where psychology makes a unique contribution and how psychologists define behavior. Seema’s findings include behavior is a physical and mental process that helps people adapt to different situations in their environment.

 “It is the study of people at work. It deals with the aptitudes, attitudes, and interests of the people at work… It studies the varied methods of performing manual operations for the better utilisation and the least waste of efforts through human engineering.”

This essay aims to understand the importance of industrial psychology in handling human relations in the workplace. Kammar begins the piece by sharing psychology’s exact meaning and follows it with other definitions from prominent industrial psychology textbook authors. The author then concludes that industrial psychology is research done in a company to create ways to improve industrial workers’ efficiency.

“The World Health Organization has said that depression is a common illness worldwide, with more than 300 million affected… Negative feelings are harmful to our mental health and take away the ability to enjoy our lives.”

The author’s purpose for writing the essay is to let everyone know what and how to deal with negative feelings. In addition, it is to prevent these feelings from worsening and turning into depression. To strengthen the credibility of the essay, the author uses statistics from the World Health Organization and a popular movie related to the topic, “ I Have a Black Dog ” by Will Hutchinson.

“Being mindful of my health habits also enabled me to cultivate self-monitoring techniques and, more importantly, to make health-enhancing behavior. This approach worked because the energy and determination of behavior change came from deep within my heart.”

The essay differs from the examples in this list as it’s from the author’s own experience and how psychology played a role in their journey to becoming a better person.  The author shares their drive to improve and maintain healthy behaviors for a better, more active, happier life. The essay starts with the author sharing the cause and effect of their unhealthy habits, what methods they used, and the struggles they faced along the way. The writer also identifies what helped them the most to achieve a positive change in their behavior.

“ Psychology is no longer a subject of academic interest taught in colleges and universities, but its impact has been felt in business, industry, clinics, guidance centers, and education. Psychologists do many things depending on their field of specialization” 

Psychology is a vast field of behavioral study that shows constant growth and development in its subfields. The work and method that the psychologist will use depend on what field they belong to. To help readers better understand the difference between prominent fields of psychology , Seema R writes an informative essay that defines and differentiates each area of specialization of the subject. You might also be interested in our round-up of the best Carl Jung books .

If you are looking for psychology essay topics, here are some prompts for inspiration.

If you are looking for informative essay topic ideas, you could build an exciting essay around defining and exploring treatments for antisocial personality disorder. This disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, causes the individual to ignore the needs and feelings of others and show no remorse for doing wrong. Many serial killers have this disorder, one of the most damaging psychological disorders. Your essay could explore causes and treatments.

Are severe mental disorders, like schizophrenia, on the rise? First, research this topic and then build an essay around it. You will find that rates of this mental disorder are on the rise. After doing the research , determine why this increase might be happening. Then, explore ideas for treatment that might help combat the issue.

Do violent video games and movies cause violent behavior? Do they hurt the development of a child’s psychological well-being enough that the child can commit atrocious crimes? The APA warns that it is a risk factor for aggressive behavior. Answering these questions in your essay could address an important social issue while helping you craft a topical piece, as this type of media is an integral part of modern society.

What factors support children in becoming problem solvers and improve their critical thinking skills? Some research indicates that the school setting is primarily the most impactful. Still, you will also find some research that says parents and familial upbringing play a significant role. After researching, decide what you feel is the most crucial factor. Then, build your paper around that thesis as you prove your choice. You can also provide practical advice to help teachers and parents better teach problem-solving to the children they impact.

Many people think of PTSD as affecting people who have been to war or suffered a traumatic accident or incident, but some research has found that chronic illness can lead to PTSD symptoms . You could build an essay around this, discussing why this is and how doctors could better serve patients by understanding the connection. With an understanding of the link between PTSD and chronic illness, doctors may be able to help their patients not only recover from physical diseases but also the psychological effects of those illnesses.

Parents come in all shapes and sizes, and all have distinct parenting styles. Explore how different parenting techniques impact a child’s development. You can choose a selection of well-researched parenting styles and compare the outcomes with regard to child development. You may also choose to compare your findings to your own upbringing.

A panic attack can stop you in your tracks and make normal functioning impossible. Knowing how to stop a panic attack is vital to protecting the health and well-being of the individual. Explore various ideas for controlling a panic attack and helping someone achieve a positive mental state, such as deep breathing, meditation, or even taking a walk. Discuss why these tactics work and how someone can remember to use them during an attack.

Over half of all teenage girls and a third of adolescent boys have an eating disorder, and most suffer from anorexia. Explore what factors make teens more likely to try to control their weight in this unhealthy manner. Is it our growing dependence on social media and the perfect body image it portrays, or is it a change in our biological makeup? The statistics surrounding teen eating disorders are clear and established, but the cause is not. Consider using your essay to explore the potential causes of this serious issue.

High school is a challenging time for teenagers growing into adults and facing increasing academic pressure, which can result in anxiety. According to the National Institutes of Health , one out of three teenagers will suffer an anxiety disorder. This statistic shows that teenagers do, in fact, face anxiety in high school. Your essay could explore why this is true, include strategies teachers could use to reduce stress and comment on the overall impact of this anxiety on developing adolescents.

Sports psychology can be interesting to explore. In one study , researchers found that athletes’ physical prowess helped their athletic ability between 45% and 48%, while psychological health increased their ability by 79% to 85%. Based on statistics like this, create an essay that explores the impact of self-confidence on performance. 

Psychology has many branches. Choose what interests you the most and tell your readers why you find the field interesting. You can also include how the field’s lessons can be applied in everyday life. Always remember to have a good structure and do proper research to understand the topic and clearly explain it to your readers.

Personality, anxiety, PTSD, and depression are the most common psychological disorders many individuals experience. Writing an essay about these conditions is an excellent way to show how psychology helps people overcome their disorders. In using this prompt, add relevant information such as signs one is suffering from the condition or how to support someone with the illness. If you choose depression as a topic, see our guide on how to write essays about depression.

Beliefs have a significant impact on a person’s behavior. Use this prompt to give your perspective or share your experience on how an individual’s religious beliefs can affect how they think and shape the way they live. In addition, you can delve into the psychological impacts of religion and discuss whether it helps or hinders a person’s mental well-being.

Writing an essay about theories and experiments in psychology is challenging. For this prompt, you will not only choose a popular psychology theory to write about, such as “ Piaget’s Theory of Development ” or the “ Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development ,” but also experiments conducted worldwide to discover how the brain works and why psychological disorders exist. Consider commenting on how well the theory has been absorbed into our society and whether it remains credible.

Since psychology is a popular course, writing about different careers in psychology is an exciting topic. Include jobs such as a forensic psychologist, child psychologist, trauma counselor, or behavioral therapist. Use this prompt to write about a psychologist’s typical duties and responsibilities in a specific field. You can also add how much they earn and what other job opportunities become available through psychology . This topic can encourage your readers to pick a psychology career they want to pursue. 

Teenage pregnancy, rebellion, mental illness, and falling into bad habits are often the result of broken families and bad parenting. Use this prompt to show how vital a good family relationship is in a child’s development. You can add news, blogs, or interview someone willing to share their experiences to make your essay more credible.

Do you need topics on writing about family? Then, check out our 20 engaging essay topics about family.

Racism is a timely and controversial topic in social psychology . Use this prompt to show the effects of racism on an individual or country and add positive initiatives to reduce the violence it causes.

Essay writing tips : Add statistics and recent or popular news about racism to make your arguments reasonable and your essay credible.

Writing about a pertinent person in the history of psychology is one of the most straightforward but fascinating prompts. You should gather the person’s biography and professional history as well as their theories and influence on the subject. Consider famous individuals like Harry Harlow, Sigmund Freud, and other renowned psychologists of which the general public is already aware.

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips!

Psychology Discussion

Personality: short essay on personality.

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Short Essay on Personality!

In daily life the term personality is very freely used by people with different meanings. Some people refer to the physical appearance like height, weight, colour, body built, dress, voice, etc. Some other people refer to intellectual qualities like intelligence, activeness, way of speech, thinking and reasoning abilities, etc.

It is also referred to social characteristics like sociability, generosity, kindness, reservedness, etc. On the basis of these characteristics they judge people as strong or weak personalities, good and bad personalities, etc.

In this way we all make personality judgments about the people we know. A major part of coming to understand ourselves is developing a sense of what our personality characteristics are. We even form impressions about personalities of people we do not know, but have only read about. As we shall see, these everyday uses of the term are quite different from the meaning psychologists give to the term personality.

The term personality has been derived from a Latin word ‘persona’- means ‘mask’. In olden days, while playing dramas, in order to give good effects to the roles played by them, the Greek actors used to wear masks.

The psychologists continue to use the term personality to indicate that, the real or inner qualities of a person will be different from, that of the qualities seen apparently. Hence, defining and understanding the personality is not very easy as it appears. It is very difficult to define personality in a precise way. Different psychologists have defined personality in their own ways. Two comprehensive definitions widely accepted are quoted here under:

GW Allport defines that, ‘personality is the dynamic organisation, within the individual of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustment to his environment’.

According to this definition the different psychological traits which determine the adjustment of the individual are organised into a dynamic (changeable or modifiable) unit. So there will be flexible adjustment with the environment.

Eysenck defines that, “personality is the more or less stable and enduring organisation of a person’s character, temperament, intellect and physique which determines his unique adjustment to the environment.”

Most of the definitions of personality have tried to Consider the totality of the person, that means, all the abilities, tendencies and other characteristics, both inherent as well as acquired, which are more or less consistent, and distinguishable from the people are included in the personality.

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Personality

Psychology of Personality essay

Psychologyof Personality

Psychologyis the study of mind and behaviour of an individual. Personality is abranch of psychology that deals with analysing the way an individualperceive and reacts to different circumstances. It deals withdetermining individual’s mood, attitude and behaviour.Personalities of people vary from one person to another due togenetic and environmental differences. Personality measurement refersto the quantitative description of the characters of a person. Theneed for personality measurement arises under different circumstancessuch as in a research study where there is the need to develop tests,in helping mental psychologies to determine the type of mentalillness a person is suffering from and also in determining if aperson is suitable for a given job in a workplace.

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Differenttechniques are used in measuring the levels of personality. Thesetechniques include clinical method, psychometric and experimentalmethod, observation, use of interviews, and projection method.

Psychometricmethod deals with qualitative assessment and only talks aboutparticular traits. It works on the principle of self-recording andanalysing of responses. The main benefit of this method is that itgives more valid judgments. It is also cheap and easy to administerthe program. The technique faces some challenges during testing sinceit requires every individual to be associated with pothers. Theclinical technique of measuring individual’s personality requiresthat the psychologist is the one to conduct the data collection froma person. However, data collected is not reliable. Throughobservations, a person can easily get an impression regarding his/herattitudes, moods and feelings. The observation made is systemized togive a clear picture of how people react and behave under differentcircumstances. This method is cheap and helps in saving time.However, it faces some critics since its results entirely depend onthe quality and judgment of the observer.

Themajor theoretical approaches to personality psychology include thetrait theory, psychodynamic theory, behavioural theory, humanistictheory and social theory.

Behaviouraltheory

Abehavioural theory of personality was established by psychologistsB.F Skinner, Edward Thorndike, John Watson and Pavlovian. It statesthat individual’s personality is achieved through learning wherebyreinforcements and punishment are the core contributors to thesuccess. It is divided into two classical and operant conditioningtheories. This theory not only focuses on individuals` behaviours butalso on how they relate to each other in the learning set up. AlbertBandura also contributed to this theory. He emphasized onself-efficacy and quality perceptions among people(Nigg, 2000).Despite having some significant advantages in the society, thistheory has also its own some weaknesses. They include lack ofacknowledgement of active human agency, failure to give procedures tobe followed in rewarding for a particular goal, and finally lack ofthe ability to explain differences that exist in people whenlearning, such as style used and how personality influences theirlearning process.

Traittheory

Thepeople who formulated this theory are Gordon Allport and HansEysenck. Trait theories assumes that people`s behaviours aredetermined by some stable traits. These traits make one to behave andreact in a given manner regardless of the situation or theenvironment. Genetic differences in people are the key cause ofdifferences in their characters. It is called psychometric theorysince it employs psychometric techniques. Allport in his contributionto trait theory, emphasized on three factors that influence aperson’s behaviour which include internal cognitive of theindividual, uniqueness and mutational factors. In 1937, Allportstated that personality in an individual is determined by biologicalfactors during birth and enhanced by environmental conditions inwhich he grows.

Strengthand weaknesses of the theory

Justlike other theories, trait theory has its benefits and challenges.This theory is straightforward and easily understandable. This is thekey strength associated with it. It relies on analysis of difficultpersonality related data which other theories tends to ignore.Different scientists such as Freudian, argue that in this theory ofpersonality, the analysis of data is subjected to influencing thefinal results according to their judgment. However, such cases arenot in found in other theories such as the trait theory(Carducci, 2009).Having such benefits, this theory also has its shortcomings. Thistheory does not explain how, when and why different behaviors developin an individual. It does not explain the source of negative traitsin an individual and the possible measures that can be applied tocontrol them.

Psychodynamictheory

Itwas developed by Sigmund Freud. He analysed personality in threedifferent parts basic instincts gratification, the ego which createsa link between the demands, and society constraints. The finalsection is the superego where social and parented related values areinternalized. Freud in his theory analysed a conflict situation andused it to determine the personality of individuals(Carducci, 2009).He contributed greatly to developing a psychoanalytic method whichwas used in hospitals to determine unconsciousness in people’sthoughts using technique such as free association among others. Thistheory is regarded as helpful in the development of childhoodpersonality

Humanistictheory

Thisis the work of Abraham Maslow, Rogers, and Kelly. Maslow uses hishierarchy of need to explain personality. In this pyramid, there arephysiological needs at the bottom which include food and air, thensafety needs, love and belonging, self-esteem and then lastlyself-actualization which occupies the top position. This theorymotivates human beings to go for higher needs progressively. Maslowstates that people’s ultimate goals are reached when theyself-actualize. A self-actualized person is one who is accepted to bewho he is he is appreciative, independent, believes in accuracyperceptions among others. George Kelly in his theory states thatpeople have different ways of analyzing, predicting and interpretingdifferent happenings. He believes that personality is created throughinteraction among ourselves and the environment in which we exist.The postulate is the key element of this theory. Rodgers in histheory, states that human being have one main goal to achieve intheir life and this is to self-actualize just as Abraham Maslow. Fromhis point of view, it is evident that we live to achieve theself-actualization goal in our daily lives.

Sociallearning theory

Thistheory was developed by Albert Bandura. He states that people learnmainly through making an observation on how others behave and actregarding attitudes. This theory explains that human behaviour isusually a continuous process and is recognized through cognitive andenvironmental factors. Four components that promote the success of anindividual learning according to this theory are attention,retention, reproduction and motivation(Nigg, 2000).Attention entails being keen with factors that can either reduce orincrease attention capability, for example, prevalence anddistinctiveness. In retention, one should be in a position toremember the information he gained when pairing the attention.Rehearsal and formation of mental images are some of the ways toapply to enhance the retention capacity. Reproduction requires one tobe able to reproduce the information in the form of an image.Finally, there is a need to motivate yourself intrinsically bylooking at the past results. The advantages of this theory includeease to understand. This is because it entails observing andrehearsing to allow ones memory to remember when the need arises.This theory also allows integration with some social cognitivetheories that enhances individual’s learning abilities(Larsen, &amp Buss, 2008).Finally, it gives an accurate picture on how behaviors are learned.The disadvantages of this theory include the following: it does notexplain all behaviors, it also does not explain differences inbehaviors from one person to another, it emphasizes more incidencesthat happen rather than focusing on what the observer will do orreact to what he observes, and finally, it assumes changes inenvironment and individual as a whole.

Personalityassessment tools

Wetend to describe our friends differently. Some of them are termed associal and active while others are recognize as being shy. The reasonbehind this is the possession of different personalities, which canbe measure by use of two main tools Myers- Briggs and NEO-PI-Rtechniques. The NEO-PI-R model gives a detailed personality of adultsbasing on the five-factor model: Openness to experience,Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Conscientiousness. TheMyers Brigg model’s development entirely depends on Carl Jung’stheory of personality. Despite its popularity, the technique has beencriticized due to lack of statistical validation and being slowregarding reliability. It measures individuals’ personalitydepending on the perceiving function, judgmental aspect, attitudes,and lifestyle that he prefers. On attitude, it measures extraversionand introversion aspects in him. Introversion indicates that theperson is shy and inward depended while extroversion indicates thathe is sociable and outgoing person. Sensing and intuition lie underperceiving function. Here individual’s capability to use his fivesenses is the key factor to be measured. Thinking and feelingidentifies if a person has emphatically nature in him or not. Lastlyperceiving and judging aspects are primarily evaluated to determineif a person is in a position to relate to the outside world.

Despitethe two main techniques described above, there are other tools usedto evaluate personalities in people which include 16PF, EysenckPersonality Questionnaire Minnesota Multiphase Personality Inventory,and Rorschach test. Rorschach test works by utilizing ten inkblots.It was developed by Herman Rorschach. Individuals under the test areasked different questions related to the inkblots. The aim ofRorschach test is to test a person’s ability to control hisemotions, attitudes and thoughts. Minnesota Multiphase PersonalityInventory is currently on a wide use, both in clinical andnon-clinical set ups(Pervin, 2015).It was first developed in 1943, and the first update took place in1989. It core aim was to diagnose different personality disorders.However, it has attained more use today, for example in occupationalscreenings for careers. 16PF works by factor theory of personality.It helps in therapy planning and diagnosing of psychiatric disorders.Doctors can measure emotional stability, anxiety and behavioralproblems that exist in a person.

TheoreticalModels of personality development.

Personalitydevelopment refers to the process by which individual’s behavioursand attitudes continue to develop making him to be different fromothers. Theoretical models of development include Piget’s Stage ofCognitive Development in which he states that development of childrenis categorized into four main stages, which progressively changetheir ways of thinking. Freud’s Structural Model of personality inwhich he states that libido is the core driving factor towards changein behaviour and personality in a person. He talks about personalityin three states Id, ego, and super-ego. Freud’s stage ofpsychosexual development is another theoretical model of development.Under this model, Freud suggested that people tend to develop inparticular stages which are of exogenous zones and incompletion ofthis stages leads to problems in a person’s personality when he isan adult. Kohlberg’s stage of moral development is a theoreticalmodel that aims at helping a person to grow regarding moral thinking.The final model is Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial development. Itis developed from psychosexual development stages of Freud. It talksabout how the personality of a person is influenced by socialrelationships in the society.

Thestudy of personalities of different people in the society is a factorthat is of very significant. The reason behind this is that it helpspeople to learn on how to relate with others since they can knowtheir attitudes, moods, and their reaction to differentcircumstances, emotions, and general behaviours. Understanding eachother creates a good environment regarding socializing. Psychologistsshould help to identify evaluate and measure people’s personalityto enhance better relationships in the societies.

Carducci,B. J. (2009).&nbsp Thepsychology of personality: Viewpoints, research, and applications .John Wiley &amp Sons.

Larsen,R. J., &amp Buss, D. M. (2008). Personalitypsychology.&nbsp Jastrebarsko:Naklada Slap .

Nigg,J. T. (2000). On inhibition/disinhibition in developmentalpsychopathology: views from cognitive and personality psychology anda working inhibition taxonomy.&nbsp Psychologicalbulletin ,&nbsp 126 (2),220.

Pervin,L. A. (Ed.). (2015).&nbsp Goalconcepts in personality and social psychology &nbsp(Vol.23). Psychology Press.

Personality Assessment: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Self-Assessment and the US Population Analysis

Mbti instrument in collegial relationships.

The personality assessment performed with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument has allowed me to identify my characteristics. Based on the outcomes, my personality type can be described as protective because my result is referred to as ISFJ-T (Introversion, Sensing, Feeling, Judging-Thinking). Neck et al. (2020) propose this scoring mechanism and note that the division into two types in each of the categories makes it possible to distinguish between the basic types of temperament, which, in turn, are the most pronounced. When evaluating my result, I can notice that I feel empathy for people, and I am always ready to help my loved ones and protect them, guided by inner convictions and feelings. While analyzing this information, one can argue that through such an assessment, one can uncover individual character traits to compile a particular personality type as objectively as possible. In addition, the proposed evaluation criteria are applicable to any person, which increases the range of application of the instrument and allows it to be used in different environments and communities. As a result, despite the limited number of assessment parameters, general ideas about each person can be obtained.

Dividing the personality assessment into 16 possible variations allows for compiling individual data for each citizen. Neck et al. (2020) provide national statistics for the United States in which they present the division of the population into relevant groups in accordance with a specific type. My result is in the group of the most common type; according to the authors, the ISFJ type occurs in 9-14% of the general American population (Neck et al., 2020, p. 53). Since my judging and thinking criteria overlap, I may note that I fall under both groups (ISFJ and ISTJ); in the latter case, the percentage of citizens with the same result is the highest in the country (11-14%) (Neck et al., 2020, p. 53). Thus, my personality type is not unique, which, however, allows me to identify my individual characteristics and evaluate the features inherent in me as a member of society.

Productive interaction with colleagues in the workplace requires compliance with various communication conventions and adherence to ethical standards. Long-term close collaboration brings people together, but in some situations, for instance, in culturally diverse teams, additional approaches to communication optimization are needed. As Cole and Salimath (2013) state, diversity management is a process that includes a wide range of initiatives to promote to build a positive interaction in which all parties involved feel free, open, and engaged. In this regard, knowing a coworker’s Myers-Briggs type can help one communicate and ensure effective interaction on both a professional and personal level. Given the differences between people, taking into account the characteristics of a colleague’s personality may contribute to performing immediate tasks productively and eliminating potential interpersonal conflicts that slow down the work process. Therefore, this personality assessment tool is a valuable instrument to apply in the workplace.

Knowing a coworker’s Myers-Briggs type allows one to establish a mode of interaction with him or her, which does not violate the personal beliefs of a colleague and does not create discomfort in communication. For instance, a pronounced introverted rather than extroverted personality type is a reason to exclude close relationships based on active involvement in dialogues. Similarly, a decision-making algorithm also depends on the corresponding parameter; being guided by feelings rather than rational thinking can explain the relevant working principles that a colleague adheres to, and these positions may become a background for establishing positive communication. According to Cole and Salimath (2013), any pressure based solely on the beliefs of one party is counterproductive in creating a supportive work environment. In other words, ignoring specific personal characteristics is not the right decision in building an effective workflow. As a result, a particular Myers-Briggs type is an auxiliary tool in establishing collaboration with colleagues.

In some cases, knowing about a particular type of colleague’s personality may not improve mutual communication but, conversely, slow down the joint workflow. By not wanting to interact with an employee who has distinctive behaviors, an individual can show discontent and the lack of commitment, which, as Cole and Salimath (2013) argue, are obvious factors in ineffective diversity management. In case colleagues cannot work together due to different personality types, the task of line managers is to find rational solutions to resolve potential disagreements, up to the division of coworkers into different departments. Being mentally prepared for unpleasant communication complicated by distinctive perceptions of different situations, one employee may deliberately provoke another, thereby demonstrating an unwillingness to work together. This outcome is extremely undesirable because the efficiency of the workflow is reduced, and the microclimate in the team is deteriorating.

Thus, understanding and accepting differences between personality types are prerequisites for productive and well-coordinated teamwork. Ignoring these distinctions may negatively affect organizational results, create a tense atmosphere in the team, and become an occasion for the implementation of crucial management interventions.

Cole, B., & Salimath, M. (2013). Diversity identity management: An organizational perspective . Journal of Business Ethics , 116 (1), 151-161. Web.

Neck, C. P., Houghton, J. D., & Murray, E. L. (2020). Organizational behavior: A skill-building approach (2 nd ed.). SAGE.

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How Marsha Linehan Created DBT to Help Us

Dialectical behavior therapy: solutions for emotionally sensitive people..

Updated June 27, 2024 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer

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Dialectical behavior therapy can be transformative for anyone dealing with intense emotions. Extensive research has proven its effectiveness for all kinds of mental health issues.

DBT was originally developed to treat suicide and self-harm . For people with persistent suicidal ideation, DBT can be lifesaving.

Many people on the DBT therapy journey have struggled with suicidal thoughts their whole lives. Then suddenly, one day, something bad happens and they listen for their suicidal thoughts—and realize those thoughts have been replaced with skills from DBT.

DBT Was Created by Dr. Marsha Linehan

Dr. Marsha Linehan is the creator of DBT. As a young woman, she was in emotional agony. At eighteen, Linehan was put in a secure psychiatric hospital to keep her from harming herself. She lived there for two years. In her memoir, Building a Life Worth Living , she describes how her faith and a sense of purpose drove her recovery.

After being released from the psychiatric facility, Linehan set out to create the treatment she needed. She got her PhD in research psychology as part of her lifelong journey to help people grow out of a tormented existence into a meaningful life.

In 1993, after years of research, trial and error, and creativity , Linehan published Cognitive-Be­havioral Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder , introducing the world to dialectical be­havior therapy.

To create DBT, Linehan drew from cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical philosophy , and Buddhist psychology.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Linehan started her research by treating suicidal patients with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The basic idea of CBT is to change your thinking and behavior to change your emotions.

As you grow up, you develop core beliefs about yourself. These core beliefs can be intensely painful, like I am worthless, or I am unlovable, or something is wrong with me. They drive our brains to have automatic thoughts in response to our environment.

For example, suppose you are starting a new job, and the people aren’t friendly. If you have a core belief about no one liking you, you might have the automatic thought of everyone here hates me. However, if you believe people tend to like you, your automatic thought might be something like—these people don’t seem friendly. I wonder what’s going on?

So much agony grows out of negative core beliefs. In cognitive behavioral therapy, the therapist works with you to challenge those core beliefs. This transforms the kind of automatic thoughts you have, significantly reducing your suffering.

In her research, Linehan found CBT’s focus on change was too invalidating for her suicidal clients. They felt unseen. Many emotionally sensitive people are so used to having their experiences invalidated that the emphasis on challenging core beliefs can feel like another round of “You’re overreacting.” The logic-oriented strategies of CBT were not the cure for this population.

Acceptance Vs. Change

Linehan then tried therapies focused on acceptance instead of change. These approaches support and validate the client’s painful life experiences in a way CBT does not.

My personal mental health journey started with psychodynamic therapy, focused on acceptance. Some excellent therapists helped me understand why I was so emotional and suicidal. My pain was vali­dated. They helped me understand I had good reasons for being so sensitive.

I knew how I got here, but I didn’t know how to do anything differently. I felt doomed by my past. How would I ever be able to change anything? I wanted someone to show me how. I wanted a tool kit—with tools I could apply to every situation. It turns out this experience is common for many people who end up in DBT.

According to Linehan’s research, therapy that focuses on acceptance and validation leaves people who have suicidal urges feeling stuck and frustrated.

With this knowledge, Linehan determined that DBT needed to include profound acceptance as well as targeted strategies for change. People like me (and maybe you?) need to feel deeply accepted and understood as we are. We also need tools and guidance for changing our lives.

Dialectical Philosophy

Dialectical thinking recognizes that two opposing truths can be true at the same time. It’s the op­posite of black-and-white thinking or all-or-nothing thinking. I think of it as brain yoga because it makes your brain more flexible.

Balancing a stance of acceptance while pushing for change is very dialectical. When a colleague pointed out the dialectical nature of the treatment Linehan was developing, she responded, “What are Dialectics?”

And voilà! After Linehan visited the philosophy department at the University of Washing­ton, dialectical philosophy became a central part of the treatment. Linehan decided that a dialec­tical perspective must be incorporated into every aspect of the therapy.

Buddhist Psychology

Buddhist psychology is based on the teachings of the Buddha. In the fifth century BCE, a prince named Siddhartha Gautama set out to understand the causes of human suffering and how to over­come them. How do we resolve the suffering caused by death, aging, and disease? Loss? And longing?

Siddhartha’s search for these answers led him to many teachers. After years of searching, learning, and practicing the teachings of many gurus, he sat under a bodhi tree, faced numerous challenges, and . . . ultimately, he achieved enlightenment. He was free from the endless cycles of craving and suffering that plague all humans. He became a Buddha (enlightened one) through mindfulness , nonattachment, and accepting the impermanence of all things.

I think of the Buddha as the first great psychologist. His teachings are highly Effective for reduc­ing suffering in this life. Mindfulness is foundational to his teachings. These mindfulness strategies have become popular in Western psychology because they are so effective. The first unit of DBT is devoted to powerful Mindfulness practices that can create significant shifts in the way we live our lives.

This is an excerpt from Diana Partington’s book "DBT for Life: Skills to Transform the Way You Live."

Diana Partington, LPC, author of DBT for Life: Skills to Transform the Way You Live, is dedicated to making DBT skills fun and easy to learn.

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