PSPB Editorial Philosophy
Our new team of four took the reins in January 2017; some things have changed at Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB), but most have not. PSPB has always been a place for newer, creative ideas, and we will continue to seek papers that showcase creativity, progress, and innovation. We will continue the practice of seeking the highest quality, most rigorous, most informative manuscripts in personality and social psychology. We encourage you to submit to PSPB. PSPB began in the mid-1970s, a mimeographed chapbook held together with two staples, filled with Society business, opinion pieces, newsletter items, and empirical articles. To appreciate how excellent PSPB was from the very start, see the first formal issue. It has come a long way; over four decades, PSPB has become an important and widely distributed outlet for empirical research articles, with occasional items of special interest. We thank Duane Wegener, Lee Fabrigar, and the team of Associate Editors for maintaining PSPB’s high standards and profile in the field. The implicit goal of PSPB is to promote scientific progress in social-personality psychology. Progress in science emerges from a tension between innovation and selection. Ideas are considered, concepts are operationalized, data are collected and analyzed, and the results are described and interpreted. The publication of an article is by no means the final word on scientific contribution (Fisher, 1947). Once a paper is accepted by the editorial team, PSPB’s reading public begins the process of postpublication review. What do the data mean? Are they interpreted reasonably? How can we use other research to interpret these findings? Can we believe the conclusions? SPSP recently published a statement on scientific progress which began “Science advances largely by correcting errors, and scientific progress involves learning from mistakes. By eliminating errors in methods and theories, we provide a stronger evidentiary basis for science that allows us to better describe events, predict what will happen, and solve problems” (SPSP Board of Directors, 2016). PSPB plays a fundamental role in this process. But PSPB also receives, selects, and promotes new and innovative ideas, methods, and findings. Proposing innovative ideas or methods on one hand, and selecting out errors and mistakes on the other, represents two important scientific values. We will be guided by both. Social-personality psychology is a community of scientists, working to develop theory, create manipulations and interventions, and solve puzzles and human problems. Scientists compare theories with data and compare theories with each other; we are skeptical and selective (and sometimes slow) to consider confirmations and disconfirmations. This is what separates science from other practices (Thagard, 1978), and PSPB is one place for this to happen. What is quality research; what is an informative paper? There are many, many ways to make scientific contributions. At PSPB, there will be no litmus test for what is an acceptable paper—each paper will be evaluated based on its particular aims and merits. The general standard will be information value—what can we learn from this paper? (see also Funder et al., 2014). This standard will be applied to theories, hypotheses, research designs, data sets, and replications; the editorial team, as informed by the reviews, will make judgments about publication based on the value and importance of the paper, and this judgment will be based on what we can reasonably learn from the work. Logic, theoretical clarity and care, scholarly review, methodological rigor, statistical power, careful design, and careful interpretation of results are all important, and we intend to celebrate (and select) them because they make a contribution informative. Each submission will be evaluated based on its particular aims and merits; the more clearly authors explain what they did and why—what they found and how—the better reviewers, editors, and readers can engage in the collective process of criticism and the growth of knowledge. Peer review and the editorial decisions that rely on it are a human process, and thus imperfect. However, as in all human endeavor, imperfection prevents neither beauty nor truth. When authors make the aims and merits of their work clear, they best enable honest and constructive evaluation by reviewers and editors. When reviewers and editors make the basis of their evaluation clear, they best enable honest and constructive re-evaluation by authors. At its best, peer review is a principled (sometimes passionate) intellectual exchange. This is the standard we aim to achieve. There has been a great deal of discussion lately about the honest and transparent reporting of research. This has been a creative era of suggestions, nostrums, bans, cures, and desiderata. Over the last few years, SPSP has instituted a number of requirements and recommendations to guide honest and transparent reporting (see Kashy, Donnellan, Ackerman, & Russell, 2009). Following the 2013 SPSP Presidential Task Force on Publication and Research Practices, SPSP’s statement of Best Practices and its recommendations for “improving the dependability of research in personality and social psychology” (Funder et al., 2014) informed current PSPB 752103 PSPXXX10.1177/0146167217752103Personality and Social Psychology BulletinCrandall et al. editorial2018