Call for Papers

The aim of this special issue is to bring together advances in the domain of social cognition in moments of psychological crisis. Despite the insights we have on social cognition and the understanding of others under “normal” circumstances, we have little consistent knowledge about how social cognition is affected in psychological crises. Such crises may be triggered by global health and environmental threats, but also difficult situations on a smaller scale like exposure to unknown or threatening others, relationships or family strains. We encourage works especially in the domain of perception and understanding of others (e.g., empathy, theory-of-mind, perspective taking, imitation, social learning, etc.) with a focus on how moments of crisis impact social behavior in interpersonal, dyadic, or small group contexts. Welcome are submissions that focus on the broad impact of social cognition in moments of crisis, or a comparison of social cognitions under “normal” and crises circumstances. We appreciate a range of data (e.g., laboratory and field data) and methodologies (e.g., behavioral studies, meta-analyses, computational modeling, eye-tracking, physiology, EEG/ERP, fMRI) insofar as this allows us to assess the broad impact of crises on the understanding of others.

Expression of Interest

Please send a single pdf-document with a short description of your planned contribution (400–600 words) by January 15, 2021 to Dana Schneider (dana.schneider@uni-jena.de) or Heather Ferguson (h.ferguson@kent.ac.uk), with the subject line “Submission for Special Issue –Understanding Others in Moments of Crisis”. The description should highlight the relevance to the special issue and include a summary of the research questions, methods (sample and sample size, design, if applicable manipulations, measures), and first results. The Guest Editors strongly encourage all interested authors to submit an expression of interest, but manuscripts may also be submitted without it. If you have any questions, for example, regarding the potential fit of a submission, please contact the Guest Editors via e-mail.

Guidelines and Article Types

Social Psychology is an international journal with a 5-year Impact Factor of 2.776 (2019). The journal publishes original empirical and theoretical contributions to basic research in social psychology. This special issue follows standard guidelines of Social Psychology, for details please refer to the “Instructions to authors” available at https://www.hogrefe.com/eu/journal/social-psychology. Accordingly, there will be three different types of articles: Original Articles that report empirical and/or theoretical contributions (max. 8,000 words), Research Reports that present concise innovative empirical findings (max. 2,500 words), and Replications that report successful or failed replications of existing research (max. 2,500 words). In line with the new policy of Social Psychology, authors are encouraged to pre-register their studies and/or share their materials and data.

Timeline and Submission

The Social Psychology’s submission portal will open to our Special Issue from February 15, 2021. When submitting your manuscript please add the special issue information in the comments section as “SI: Understanding Others in Moments of Crisis”. Please submit your manuscript until June 15, 2021.

Submission link: http://www.editorialmanager.com/sopsy

Papers acceptable for publication that cannot be published in this special issue may be considered for publication in a regular issue of Social Psychology, unless authors explicitly decline this option. Social Psychology offers a rapid and transparent peer-review process and a short time-lag between acceptance of papers and publication.