Editorial statement: Towards a broad, consequential and trustworthy social psychology
Correspondence to: Vivian L. Vignoles, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
E-mail: [email protected]
It is a great honour to address you in our new capacity as editors of the European Journal of Social Psychology (EJSP). With this editorial, we announce a change of stewardship of the EJSP, we outline our vision for the journal, and we extend an invitation to join us in shaping its future.
We are taking the baton from the 12th editorial team, ably led by Ernestine Gordijn and Tom Postmes. We had the good fortune of working with them as associate editors, along with Stéphanie Demoulin, Gerald Echterhoff, Tobias Greitemeyer, Aarti Iyer, Dominique Muller, Patricia M. Rodriguez Mosquera, Kai Sassenberg, and Thomas Webb, supported administratively by Wolfgang and Sibylle Classen. The outgoing team has left the journal in excellent shape, as indicated by its steady stream of submissions and increasingly impactful published articles. Importantly, this has been achieved in an environment of fierce competition for readership and during a period of a challenging scrutiny of our field's stature in the family of sciences. We are grateful to Ernestine and Tom and to our fellow associate editors whose dedication to the journal, professionalism, and collegiality will continue to inspire us.
- Firstly, we believe that the advancement of any scientific discipline depends on the availability of—and opportunities for dialogue among—diverse perspectives. A strength of EJSP from its inception has been its breadth, providing a space for the exchange of ideas from different theoretical and methodological perspectives, originating in different geographical regions of Europe and beyond. We intend to maintain and enhance this inclusive orientation. We invite contributions from across the range of topics and methodological approaches in social psychology, including those that link social psychology to other disciplines. Such contributions may include review papers as well as empirical articles, exploratory (i.e. theory building) as well as hypothetico-deductive (i.e. theory testing) research, qualitative as well as quantitative studies, and secondary as well as primary data analyses. Thus, we will seek to represent the thematic and methodological richness of our discipline, aiming to make the journal a forum for dialogue among different schools of thought from all corners of the world. We welcome contributions that expand our theoretical horizons, that increase our methodological arsenal, that use innovative analytical approaches, and that reveal new ways in which social psychology can help to improve socially and personally consequential outcomes. We would especially welcome contributions that seek to ‘join the dots’, providing integration between theoretical perspectives, using mixed methodologies, or adopting a dynamic perspective that incorporates multidirectional influences over a period of time, to enrich our understanding of the complexities of social phenomena.
- Secondly, we believe that scientific progress requires careful adherence to the highest standards of integrity and methodological rigour. In this regard, we welcome recent initiatives to improve the trustworthiness of research in social and personality psychology. We especially welcome the increasing trend towards archiving and—where possible—sharing of study materials and data in social psychology, and our new policy on archiving and sharing can be found in the EJSP Author Guidelines. However, we also recognise that no single set of standards will be equally applicable to different types of research. Hence, our expectation is that authors should identify and follow guidelines for best practice according to the kinds of research that they are conducting (examples include but are not limited to Asendorpf et al., 2013; Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011; Funder et al., 2014; Judd, Yzerbyt, & Muller, 2014; Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006; Matsumoto & van de Vijver, 2011; Schreiber, Nora, Stage, Barlow, & King, 2006; Tracy, 2010; Yardley, 2008; see also papers in Sassenberg, Muller, & Klauer, 2014). Cutting across all of these approaches, a sine qua non for maintaining the trustworthiness of social psychological science is transparency about the goals, methods, and findings, as well as the limitations, of research that is reported.
- Finally, in order to foster dialogue and to maximise the societal impact of our research, it is essential that authors express their ideas clearly. We encourage authors of potential EJSP papers to address their writing to a broad audience, not all of whom will share their area of specialism. Writing for a broad audience means neither oversimplification nor ‘dumbing down’ the complexity of research. Rather, it requires efforts to explain it fully, writing in plain English where possible, avoiding jargon that is unnecessary, and offering precise definitions of technical terms where they are essential (Billig, 2011). Clear and self-explanatory writing will be even more important if we wish to make our theoretical ideas and our research findings accessible to researchers in other disciplines, as well as for policy makers and practitioners who may use our research to inform their actions.
To foster a broad and inclusive vision of social psychology within the pages of the journal, we have assembled a significantly enlarged editorial team. The size and the composition of the team should facilitate handling diverse contributions expertly and efficiently. Now, it is your turn. We invite you to consider EJSP as an outlet for your best work, the work that intrigues and aims to be consequential to a wide audience. We hope to be able to call on you as reviewers who will advise us and provide constructive feedback to authors. Finally, we hope that you will find it worthwhile to support the journal as readers and advocates among your students, colleagues, and other professionals. We look forward to working with you towards advancing the journal in the next 3 years.
- Radmila Prislin (San Diego State University)
- Vivian L. Vignoles (University of Sussex)
- Gerd Bohner (University of Bielefeld)
- Juan M. Falomir-Pichastor (University of Geneva)
- Eva G. T. Green (University of Lausanne)
- Vera Hoorens (University of Leuven)
- Thomas Kessler (Friedrich Schiller University, Jena)
- Małgorzata Kossowska (Jagiellonian University)
- François Ric (University of Bordeaux)
- Fabio Sani (University of Dundee)
- Lilach Sagiv (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
- Clifford Stevenson (Queen's University, Belfast)
- Nicole Tausch (University of St. Andrews)
- Ayşe K. Üskül (University of Kent)
- Alberto Voci (University of Padova)
- Eva Walther (University of Trier)
- Martijn van Zomeren (University of Groningen)
