Psychology Today: Good to Read, Bad to Cite
Good to read
Here’s the cover of a recent edition of Psychology Today magazine. Professionally presented with an attractive image and cover design, we see articles on a variety of clinical topics.
- The Dark Side of Social Media article is written by Mike Mariani, a writer for popular magazines like The Atlantic and Newsweek.
- Who Says It First? The Sexual Politics of I Love You article is written by Jenna Birch, a freelance journalist.
- When Your Partner is Transgender is written by Alysia Abbott, a writer for The Boston Globe newspaper and Vogue magazine.
- The Real Narcissists is written by Rebecca Weber, a journalist who has written for Forbes and Family Circle magazines.
Do you see the pattern here?
Psychology Today articles are written, primarily, by professional writers, not psychology professionals.
This is what makes Psychology Today a good read!
- Professional writers often write better than professional psychologists, especially for a general audience.
- They write at a lower reading level and their goal is to make their writing engaging and informative.
- They are great sources of often reliable information in an easy to digest format for the general public.
Bad to Cite
Here is why it’s a bad idea to cite and reference a popular magazine like Psychology Today, Time, or Newsweek.
They are not considered scholarly sources for psychology professionals or students studying to become psychology professionals.
Popular magazines, web sites, and newspapers do not publish original scholarly research. They publish articles about the research, not the original research.
Psychology professionals publish their research in peer-reviewed journals, known as primary sources, not in magazines, newspapers, or on web sites.
Steps to take
If you want to establish your professional credibility and support your written statements with scholarly evidence, follow these steps.
- Search for sources using Summon in the university library. Summon is as easy to use as Google. Use Google as your search engine on the web for your personal interests. Use Summon in the library for your professional interests.
- Learn to use Summon effectively. Type in key words and restrict your search to current, scholarly resources. Summon will search through thousands of scholarly resources you can use to credibly support your written statements.
- For maximum credibility, cite peer-reviewed journal articles or professional textbooks. These are the resources that psychology professionals use in their writing.
- Save popular psychology magazines and web sites for your personal reading. They can be entertaining and informative resources. Avoid citing these “secondary sources” because they only talk about or interpret, and possibly misinterpret, original research.
- If your popular psychology resources do not include links, citations or references to scholarly research, and rely on the author’s grasp or recall of source material, find better sources for your personal reading!
