Law and Human Behavior

Law and Human Behavior , the official journal of APA Division 41 (American Psychology-Law Society), is a multidisciplinary forum for empirical manuscripts examining the interface between human behavior and the law, the criminal justice and legal system, and the legal process.

The journal publishes original, theory-driven, quantitative and qualitative research from a variety of fields, including law, psychology, psychiatry, criminal justice, political science, sociology, education, and communication. Meta-analytic reviews of previous research results also are encouraged.

Occasionally, the journal publishes methodological or theoretical papers. Although pure legal analysis falls outside the scope of the journal, we strongly encourage authors to situate their research in the law and discuss implications for criminal justice and/or legal policies and practice.

Editor-in-Chief Bradley D. McAuliff, JD, PhD, and the editorial team are seeking submissions on diverse topics, including: forensic treatment, psychopathy, violence risk assessment, bias and discrimination in legal contexts, confessions and interrogation, cultural issues in the law, deception detection, gendered violence, jurors and juries, plea-bargaining, probation, parole, and more. We are looking for articles that deepen our understanding of current issues, as well as articles that expand the scope of inquiry about human behavior in legal contexts.

For a complete list of topics, additional information about the journal, and instructions on how to submit your manuscript, please visit the call for papers page.

Calls for papers

Editor’s Choice

One article from each issue of Law and Human Behavior will be highlighted as an “Editor’s Choice” article. Selection is based on the recommendations of the associate editors, the paper’s potential impact to the field, the distinction of expanding the contributors to, or the focus of, the science, or its discussion of an important future direction for science. Editor’s Choice articles are featured alongside articles from other APA published journals in a bi-weekly newsletter and are temporarily made freely available to newsletter subscribers.

Author and editor spotlights

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

expand all Submission Guidelines

Submission

Law and Human Behavior ® uses a software system to screen submissions for similarity with other published content. The system compares each submission against a database of 25+ million scholarly publications and generates a similarity report for the Editorial Team.

Please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Microsoft Word or Open Office format.

Prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association using the 7 th edition. Manuscripts may be copyedited for bias-free language (see Chapter 5 of the Publication Manual). APA Style and Grammar Guidelines for the 7 th edition are available.

David DeMatteo, JD, PhD, ABPP (Forensic)
Drexel University, United States
Email

The corresponding author must provide a complete email address because the editorial office handles all correspondence electronically.

Masked review policy

Law and Human Behavior uses masked review for all submissions. The cover letter should include all authors’ names and institutional affiliations.

Authors should not include any personal information (name, affiliation, etc.) anywhere in the manuscript. They should mask any clues to their 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).

This journal is participating in the STM Peer Review Taxonomy Pilot. This pilot aims to identify and standardize definitions and terminology in peer review practices across publishers to help make the peer review process for articles and journals more transparent and enable the community to better assess and compare peer review practices between different journals.

The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:

Manuscript preparation

Prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association using the 7th edition. Manuscripts may be copyedited for bias-free language (see Chapter 5 of the Publication Manual).

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. Instructions regarding the preparation of display equations, computer code, and tables appear at the end of these submission instructions.

Additional guidance on APA Style is available on the APA Style website.

Authors who think that their submission may benefit from additional academic writing or language editing should 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 required for publication in an APA journal and does not guarantee selection for peer review, manuscript acceptance, or preference for publication.

Open science badges

Articles are eligible for open science badges recognizing publicly available data, materials, and/or preregistration plans and analyses. These badges are awarded on a self-disclosure basis.

At submission, authors must confirm that criteria have been fulfilled in a signed badge disclosure form (PDF, 42KB) that must be submitted as supplemental material. If the Editorial Team confirms that all criteria have been met, the form will then be published with the article as supplemental material.

Authors should also note their eligibility for the badge(s) in the cover letter.

For all badges, items must be made available on an open-access repository with a persistent identifier in a format that is time-stamped, immutable, and permanent. For the preregistered badge, this is an institutional registration system.

Data and materials must be made available under an open license allowing others to copy, share, and use the data, with attribution and copyright as applicable.

Available badges are:

Open Data Badge

Open Data:
All data necessary to reproduce the reported results that are digitally shareable are made publicly available. Information necessary for replication (e.g., codebooks or metadata) must be included.

badge-open-data-protected-access

Open Data: Protected Access:
A “PA” (Protected Access) notation may be added to open data badges if sensitive, personal data are available only from an approved third-party repository that manages access to data to qualified researchers through a documented process. To be eligible for an open data badge with such a notation, the repository must publicly describe the steps necessary to obtain the data and detailed data documentation (e.g. variable names and allowed values) must be made available publicly. View a list of approved protected access repositories .

Open Materials Badge

Open Materials:
All materials necessary to reproduce the reported results that are digitally shareable, along with descriptions of non-digital materials necessary for replication, are made publicly available.

Preregistered Badge

Preregistered:
At least one study's design has been preregistered with descriptions of (a) the research design and study materials, including the planned sample size; (b) the motivating research question or hypothesis; (c) the outcome variable(s); and (d) the predictor variables, including controls, covariates, and independent variables. Results must be fully disclosed. As long as they are distinguished from other results in the article, results from analyses that were not preregistered may be reported in the article.

Preregistered+Analysis Badge

Preregistered+Analysis Plan:
At least one study’s design has been preregistered along with an analysis plan for the research — and results are recorded according to that plan.

Note that it may not be possible to preregister a study or to share data and materials. Applying for open science badges is optional.

Abstract and keywords

On page two, all manuscripts must include a structured abstract (300 words maximum) that has each of the following sections:

Please supply three to five keywords after the abstract. Carefully consider keywords that will help a reader to find and retrieve your article.

Public Significance Statements

Authors must provide 2–3 brief sentences regarding the public significance of their study or meta-analysis. This statement will appear at the end of the Abstract online and in print, and thus augments the Abstract content. There is no need for authors to restate what they did and found—instead they should describe the theoretical and practical implications of their work in language a lay audience will understand. These statements are intended to increase dissemination and use by larger, more diverse audiences.

Examples of Public Significance Statements include

To be maximally useful, these statements of public significance should not simply be sentences lifted directly from the manuscript. They should provide a bottom-line, take-home message that is accurate and easily understood. In addition, they should be able to be translated into media-appropriate statements for use in press releases and on social media. The editorial team will carefully review all Public Significance Statements to make sure they meet these standards prior to final acceptance and publication.

Journal Article Reporting Standards

Authors are required to follow the APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) for quantitative or qualitative, meta-analysis, and mixed methods research. Updated in 2018, the standards offer ways to improve transparency in reporting to ensure that readers have the information necessary to evaluate the quality of the research and to facilitate collaboration and replication. The new JARS:

JARS-Qual are of use to researchers using qualitative methods like narrative, grounded theory, phenomenological, critical, discursive, performative, ethnographic, consensual qualitative, case study, psychobiography, and thematic analysis approaches. The guidelines focus on transparency in quantitative and mixed methods reporting, recommending descriptions of how the researcher’s own perspective affected the study as well as the contexts in which the research and analysis took place.

Openness and transparency

Authors should state all sources of financial support for the conduct of the research (e.g., This research was supported by Award XX from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Institute of Child Health and Human Development) in the author note. If the funding source was involved in any other aspects of the research (e.g., study design, analysis, interpretation, writing), then clearly state the role. If the funding source had no other involvement other than financial support, then simply state that the funding source had no other role other than financial support.

Authors should also provide a conflict of interest statement in the author note disclosing any real or potentially perceived conflict(s) of interest, including financial, personal, or other relationships with other organizations or companies that may inappropriately impact or influence the research and interpretation of the findings. If there are no conflicts of interest, this should be clearly stated.

Authors should provide a data availability statement indicating whether the data, methods used in the analysis, code, and materials used to conduct the research will be made available to any researcher for purposes of reproducing the results or replicating the procedure. In both the author note and at the end of the method section, either specify where that material will be available or note the ethical or legal reasons for not doing so.

Preregistration of studies and analysis plans can be useful for distinguishing confirmatory and exploratory analyses. We encourage researchers to preregister their studies and analysis plans prior to conducting the research (e.g., Open Science Framework, ClinicalTrials.gov). If any aspect of the study is preregistered, include the registry link in the author note.

Authors who have posted their manuscripts to preprint archives, such as PsyArXiv, prior to submission should include a link to the preprint in the author note.

Research disclosures

The method section of each manuscript must contain a detailed description of the study participants, including (but not limited to) the following:

The method section also must include a statement describing how informed consent was obtained from the participants (or their parents/guardians), including for secondary use of data if applicable, and indicate that the study was conducted in compliance with an appropriate Internal Review Board (masked for peer-review).

In the method section or supplemental materials, authors should report:

Authors may use StatCheck to detect inconsistencies in the reporting of inferential statistics.

Law and Human Behavior has instituted a policy that data coding needs to be performed by a minimum of two coders for at least 51% (but preferably all) of participants' responses or related qualitative data. Ideally, coders are blind to hypotheses, condition, or any other information that could result in systematic bias. In addition, authors must compute and report reliability statistics that take into account chance agreement (e.g., Cohen’s kappa).

Registered reports, null results, and replications

In addition to full-length research papers reporting novel findings, the journal publishes registered reports, negative findings, and replications, regardless of result. Preregistration of replication studies is strongly recommended, but not required.

Registered reports require a two-step review process. The first step is the submission of the registration manuscript. This is a partial manuscript that includes:

The partial manuscript will be reviewed for rigor and methodological approach. If accepted, this amounts to provisional acceptance of the full report regardless of the study’s outcomes. The second step of the process will consist of reviewing the full manuscript for adherence to the registered design (authors must report any deviations in the full manuscript).

References

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

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. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20240.v8

All data, program code and other methods must be appropriately cited in the text and listed in the References section.

Tables

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.

Figures

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.

Resolution

Line weights