Et al

Some of you were asking about 'et al'. As you know, this is often used to shorten the researchers' names in a text, so you might see a reference to Rahe et al (1970).

The convention in psychology writing (such as articles and textbooks) is for one or two names to be given in full - e.g. Miller (1956), Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) - but any more than that get reduced to the first name from the publication plus 'et al'.

Apparently the latin origin of the term is the word alius meaning 'other'. Et al is an abbreviation of the plural et alli, so it means 'and others'. However, it would be unusual in speech or writing to actually say 'and others'; the convention would be to say 'and colleagues', e.g. "Lazarus and colleagues investigated the transactional nature of stress...".

Hope that clears it up!