“Psychology and Aging: European Perspectives”

The psychology of aging and geropsychology are among the key fields of research and knowledge within the community of European psychologists. Europe is aging and demographics show that there is a continuous decline in birth rates while there is a continuous increase in life expectancies in most European countries. The aging population challenges all European societies on interrelated dimensions most notably with respect to prosperity and living standards, health prevention and provision, social participation, caregiving as well as the relations between generations. Geropsychology aims at providing sound research-based knowledge about the mental and behavioral processes underlying human aging as well as expertise about training, education and interventions that will help to promote quality of living and subjective well-being both at the individual as well as the societal level.

The Standing Committee of Geropsychology of EFPA aims at advancing and strengthening the awareness, understanding and knowledge in the field of aging psychology and geropsychology both in research, and in applied fields of psychology. The Standing Committee on Geropsychology of EFPA and its member associations is aiming to:

• –
  Clarify and develop the challenges and potentials of aging for individuals and society;
• –
  Raise awareness of ageism and its consequences for European societies;
• –
  Promote active and healthy aging;
• –
  Alleviate the consequences of health-related losses in old age; and
• –
  Contribute to improvement of professional competence of psychologists in this field.

The special issue Psychology and Aging: European Perspectives is committed to these aims to bring together timely and innovative theoretical or review papers, from both academic and research fields as well as psychological practice in the fields of healthy active aging.

We are interested in theoretical or review papers that explore, discuss, and concretize the above aims, in particular papers that contribute to:

1. 1
   Develop our understanding of mental and behavioural processes of aging in a life-span perspective;
2. 2
   Raise awareness of positive and negative views on aging and its health-related consequences related to ageism;
3. 3
   Explore the relationships within and between different fields of aging research (e.g., cognition, memory, personality, caregiving, health, stereotypes) to provide direction for future integration within psychology;
4. 4
   Provide examples of how psychology, as an academic discipline, profession, and professional associations can contribute to healthy aging;
5. 5
   Describe how geropsychology can be integrated in the professional training of psychologists across Europe.

Cross-cutting topics are: biological and health psychology, human rights and psychology.

Deadlines and Contact Details

Questions regarding the special issue should be directed to the special issue Guest Editors:

• Frieder R. Lang, frieder.lang@fau.de
• Matthias Kliegel, matthias.kliegel@unige.ch
• Isabelle Albert, isabelle.albert@uni.lu

Associate Guest Editors are:

• Constanza Paul (Portugal), Jasminka Despot Lucanin (Croatia) and Lars Larsen (Denmark).

Deadline for submission of full papers is January 31, 2019

The journal seeks to maintain a short turnaround time, with the final version of the accepted papers being due by

July 31, 2019.

Manuscript Preparation and Submission

Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the journal’s author guidelines available on the journal’s website at

http://www.hogrefe.com/j/ep

All manuscripts should be submitted via the online submission system:

http://www.editorialmanager.com/ep