science

Psychological Bulletin

Psychological Bulletin is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Psychological Bulletin rather than just read about it. In short: The Psychological Bulletin is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes evaluative and integrative research reviews and interpretations of issues in psychology, including both qualitative (narrative) and/or quantitative (meta-analytic) aspects. The outgoing editor-in-chief is Blair T.

Key takeaways

Psychological Bulletin belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Psychological Bulletin to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Psychological Bulletin from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Psychological Bulletin is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes evaluative and integrative research reviews and interpretations of issues in psychology, including both qualitative (narrative) and/or quantitative (meta-analytic) aspects. The outgoing editor-in-chief is Blair T. Johnson and the incoming one is Stefan G. Hofmann.

History The journal was established by Johns Hopkins psychologist James Mark Baldwin in 1904, immediately after he had bought out James McKeen Cattell's share of Psychological Review, which the two had established ten years earlier. Baldwin gave the editorship of both journals to John B. Watson, when scandal forced him to resign his position at Johns Hopkins in 1920. Ownership of the Bulletin passed to Howard C. Warren, who eventually donated it to the American Psychological Association, which continues to own it to the present day.

Abstracting and indexing The journal is abstracted and indexed by MEDLINE/PubMed, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Science Citation Index. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2024 impact factor of 19.8.

References

External links Official website

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Psychological Bulletin

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Psychological Bulletin claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Psychological Bulletin before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Psychological Bulletin ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Psychological Bulletin

In research: Psychological Bulletin appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Psychological Bulletin in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Psychological Bulletin is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American Psychological Association academic journals, Bimonthly journals, English-language journals, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Psychological Bulletin outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Psychological Bulletin in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Psychological Bulletin means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Psychological Bulletin out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Psychological Bulletin in simple terms?

Why does Psychological Bulletin matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Psychological Bulletin?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Psychological Bulletin.