PSYCH 150: Psychology of Personality

About this Guide

This paper requires 3 articles from these journals: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Personality Psychology, American Journal of Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bull., Journal of Educational Psychology,Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Comparative Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology (all versions), Culture and Psychology

This guide has been archived

Please note: this course guide was created during a previous semester, and is no longer being actively maintained. For a list of current course guides, please see http://lib.berkeley.edu/alacarte/course-guides.

Overviews:

Dictionary of Psychology from Oxford Reference Online

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences provides scholarly overviews on various topics in psychology. For this class, these are particularly relevant

Trying to get a deeper overview of research on a topic?

Annual Reviews in Psychology and Annual Reviews in Clinical Psychology are good starting places -- they provide literature reviews of important and emerging areas of research.

Find articles

PsycINFO
Core index to articles in psychology.
PubMed
Indexes journals in medicine, psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience.
ProQuest Social Sciences
Is your topic interdisciplinary? This searches core indexes in the social sciences such as sociology, political science, and education in addition to psychology.
Academic Search Complete
Another interdisciplinary database, but strong in psychology and its related fields.
PsychiatryOnline
Contains the DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and several full-text psychiatry journals and e-books.
Web of Science
Includes the Science and Social Sciences Citation Index. These let you find "forward citations" -- update your research by finding articles that cite an article.

Search Tips

Power search features for most article databases:

Use synonyms -- there are many ways to express a concept (teenager or teenagers or adolescent)
Use truncation to get different forms of the word, for example teenage* will retrieve teenagers, teenager, teenaged, etc.
Use quotation marks when you want an "exact phrase"
Restrict by date -- most will let you find only the most current five years if you chose that limit.

PsycInfo Advanced Searches:

Use "controlled vocabulary" (also called descriptors or subject headings) if the database has them. The PsycInfo Thesaurus is a very powerful tool. It helps you identify articles that are about a topic, not just that have the word in the abstract. For example, if you are looking for the cause of a certain psychological problem, the descriptor "etiology" finds material that looks at causality.
Use the special "limits" or "fields" that the database offers. They really do help you make a more focused and powerful search. PsycInfo lets you use many helpful limits including:
- Methodology-- are you interested in literature reviews? Empirical studies? Clinical trials? Quantitative or qualitative studies?
- Population -- do you want research based on humans? Males vs. females?
- Age of subjects -- adolescents? children? old people?
- Publication type -- do you want articles? dissertations? books?

UC eLinks and Citation Linker

Sometimes the database you search doesn't link to the fulltext -- it only gives the citation. Click the UC e-links button to see if Berkeley has it online, and if not, it will check for a print version. And if we don't have it at all, it lets you request it through Interlibrary Loan.

What if there isn't a UC e-links button??? Sometimes you find an article in a bibliography, a book or a footnote -- and you want to see if we have it. The Citation Linker searches through our online databases to see if it's available fulltext. If not, it sets up a search for the paper journal in Melvyl. And if we don't have it at Berkeley, it lets you request it through Interlibrary Loan.

PsycINFO to RefWorks

Search PsycINFO.
Select the desired references by checking the box to the left of each citation.
After all the desired citations have been selected, click on RefWorks
You will be asked if you want the records added, if so click on Export to RefWorks. (If you have a pop up blocker, it will then confirm that you do want to open RefWorks.)
RefWorks then displays the last citations you added, and you can choose to add them to a specific folder . Or you can just leave them in the Last Imported folder. (If you want to create a new folder, just click on Folder and the drop down arrow will let you select make a new one.

Citation Management Tools

Citation management tools help you manage your research, collect and cite sources, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but any are easier than doing it by hand! The Library offers workshops on Endnote, Zotero, and Refworks! Or contact your librarian for individual help.

Zotero: A free plug-in that works exclusively with the Firefox browser: keeps copies of what you find on the web, permits tagging, notation, full text searching of your library of resources, works with Word, and has a free web backup service.
RefWorks - free for UC Berkeley users. It allows you to create your own database by importing references and using them for footnotes and bibliographies. Use the RefWorks New User Form to sign up.
EndNote: may be purchased from UC Berkeley's Software Central for about $80.

It's always good to double check the formatting -- sometimes the software doesn't get it quite right.

Connecting from Off Campus?

You can access UCB Library resources from off campus or via your laptop or other mobile device using one of two simple methods. (NOTE: Using EndNote? Use VPN, not the Proxy Server)

Proxy Server
After you make a one-time change in your web browser settings, the proxy server will ask you to log in with a CalNet ID or Library PIN when you click on the link to a licensed resource. See the setup instructions, FAQ, and Troubleshooting pages to configure your browser.

VPN (Virtual Private Network)
After you install and run the VPN "client" software on your computer, you can log in with a CalNet ID to establish a secure connection with the campus network.

Ask a Librarian 24/7 Chat

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Google Scholar and UC e-links

Set up your proxy server access by following the directions at http://proxy.lib.berkeley.edu/. When you get to a point where you are accessing resources that the Library pays for, you will be prompted for your CalNet ID and password.
Change your “Scholar Preferences.” Access these by clicking on the link next to the search box.
In search box next to "Library Links," type in University of California Berkeley and click on “Find Library”
Check box next to "University of California Berkeley - UC-eLinks
Click on "Save Preferences" at bottom of page