Writing Conventions for Psychology
APA 7 is the house style, down to the heading levels
Psychology runs on APA — five levels of heading, an unstructured abstract of roughly 250 words, and a reference list rather than a bibliography. Departments usually grade formatting explicitly, so a paper that is right on substance and wrong on hanging indents still loses marks.
Report effect sizes and intervals, not p-values alone
A bare “p < .05” reads as incomplete. Journals following the APA Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) expect the test statistic, degrees of freedom, an exact p-value, an effect size, and a confidence interval, so a reader can judge magnitude rather than just significance.
First person is allowed and preferred over false modesty
APA explicitly favors “we administered the questionnaire” over “the questionnaire was administered by the researchers.” Use “I” for single-authored work. What APA discourages is the editorial “we” standing in for people in general.
Tense moves with the section
Method and Results are past tense — you did this, and this happened. The Discussion shifts to present tense for what the findings mean and for established theory, and to past tense when you summarize what you observed.
Bias-free language is a formatting rule, not a preference
APA specifies “participants” rather than “subjects,” and asks you to describe people at the level of specificity the study actually used. Follow the community’s own preference on person-first versus identity-first language rather than applying one rule everywhere.
Causal language is reserved for experimental designs
Correlational and cross-sectional studies get “was associated with” and “predicted,” never “caused” or “led to.” Reviewers read the Discussion specifically to see whether your claims outrun your design, and this is where most revision requests land.
