Call for Papers: “Evolutionary Psychology: Beyond Adaptationist Just-So Stories?”

Since the evolutionary approach started to become a mainstream issue in psychology about two decades ago it has conquered almost all areas, from thinking to language, from education to family, from aggression to mating. This extraordinary success story suggests that evolutionary psychology is no mere further branch of our discipline (such as, say, personality psychology), but rather an integrative perspective for tentatively all sections of psychology. However, as is often the case in early developmental stages of scientific prosperity, theoretical problems of an evolutionary approach have remained somewhat undervalued. For instance, the (old) debate on whether adaptationism (circular post hoc explanations of present phenomena by reference to their past functionality – “otherwise they wouldn’t have survived!”) is a real danger for theoretical progress in evolutionary psychology is rarely to be found in current contributions. Do empirical studies from an evolutionary perspective add knowledge – or do they just reframe what is known already into “just-so” stories? The aim of this topical issue is to bring together a set of papers that tackle this question from both empirical and theoretical points of view. We are looking for original empirical articles that advance empirical knowledge on how an evolutionary perspective can be tested as well as review-type articles that focus on the discussion of the theoretical and empirical progress that has been made in the past 20 years. Invited are contributions that either demonstrate the empirical fruitfulness of an evolutionary approach (posing new questions, attracting new methods, establishing new transdisciplinary cooperations) or discuss theoretical questions (and possible solutions) entailed in this perspective – or both.

Contributions are invited electronically to:

Werner Greve (mailto:wgreve@uni-hildesheim.de).

There is a two-stage submissions process. Initially, authors are requested to submit only abstracts of their proposed papers. Authors requested to submit full papers should then do so. All papers will undergo full peer review.

Deadline for submission of abstracts is April 15, 2011 (Invitation to submission of full papers no later than May 15, 2011).

Deadline for submission of full papers is August 15, 2011.

The journal seeks to maintain a short turnaround time, with the final version of the accepted papers being due by November 15, 2011. The topical issue will be published as Issue 2 (2012).

The Zeitschrift für Psychologie / Journal of Psychology was founded in 1890 and is the second oldest psychology journal in the world. One of the founding editors was Hermann Ebbinghaus. Since 2007, it is published in English and is devoted to publishing topical issues that provide state-of-the-art reviews of current research in psychology.

Guidelines for article preparation:

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  Only English-language submissions can be considered.
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  Contributions must be original (not published previously or currently under review for publication elsewhere).
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  Regular articles should not exceed 45,000 characters and spaces in length, including references, figures, and tables (allowances for figures and tables should be deducted on the basis of size – approximately 1,250 characters for a quarter-page figure/table).
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  Other submission formats (research summaries, opinion pieces, etc.) may be considered, please contact the Editors for details.
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  Reference citations in the text and in the reference list should be in accordance with the principles set out in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) – see also any recent issue of the journal.

For detailed author guidelines, please see the journal’s website at www.hogrefe.com/journals/zfp/.