Call for Papers: Psychological Perspectives on Culture Change (American Psychologist)
Call for Papers: Psychological Perspectives on Culture Change
Important Dates
Paper proposals due: March 31, 2020
Decisions on paper proposals: April 30, 2020
Manuscripts due: July 31, 2020
Guest Editors:
Michael E. W. Varnum, PhD, Arizona State University
Igor Grossmann, PhD, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Advisory Editor:
Lillian Comas-Díaz, PhD, American Psychologist Associate Editor
Aims of the Special Issue
The goals of this special issue are (a) to draw together research and theory from the emerging psychology of cultural change to promote a deeper and more systematic understanding of cultural dynamics and (b) to promote a more rigorous approach to this research enterprise going forward. We are especially interested in manuscripts that provide theoretical explanations for specific patterns of change that are relevant to psychologists and lay people alike (e.g., e.g., increasing levels of anxiety, decreasing levels of prejudice yet increasing frequency of hate crimes) and manuscripts that provide insight into the dynamics of cultural change writ large (e.g., Why do some shifts occur rapidly vs. slowly? What factors might make a society more susceptible to change in general?). To meet the goal of increasing rigor in this emerging field, we also ask that authors include where feasible concrete predictions for the future using time series forecasting methods. This is especially encouraged if your manuscript presents original research and is also strongly encouraged if your manuscript reviews a previous program of research that did not contain forecasts. By doing so, we hope to encourage a shift from the current largely descriptive/postdictive approach to studying cultural change to a truly predictive science.
Background
We live in an era of dramatic change and upheaval, a reminder that human societies are not static. How and why do cultures change? In recent years, psychological scientists and others have begun to quantify large-scale changes in our psychology, behavior, norms, and societies.
This increasing focus on cultural change has been enabled by the Big Data revolution, greater access to archival sources, and the integration of theory and methods from a variety of fields outside of psychology, including econometrics, computer science, and evolutionary biology. This has led to a number of discoveries about how our cultures are changing.
Yet a number of key challenges and opportunities remain for this emerging field. Can psychological scientists move beyond documenting patterns of change to testing theories about the causes of such shifts? Beyond explaining the past, how can behavioral scientists approach forecasting what human minds and societies might look like in the future? Our hope in this special issue is to begin to address these questions and to lay out a roadmap (both theoretical and methodological) for researchers to follow in the future.
Manuscript Submission
Paper proposals are due March 31, 2020 and should be emailed to one of the guest editors:
Michael E. W. Varnum, PhD: mvarnum@asu.edu
Igor Grossmann, PhD: igrossma@uwaterloo.ca
Decisions on proposals and invitations to submit full manuscripts will be emailed to potential contributors by April 30, 2020.
Full manuscripts should comply with American Psychologist’s submission guidelines (including manuscript length) which can be found on the American Psychologist home page. Manuscripts should be submitted electronically via the journal submission portal by the deadline of July 31, 2020.
