Call for Papers
The Social Psychology of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election
Update: Given the events that occurred after the November 6, 2020 election, ASAP is extending the due date for manuscripts for the special issue on the Social Psychology of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election to April 30, 2021 to allow for work addressing post-election events and in recognition of the challenges authors face in completing manuscripts during a pandemic. Topics could include Stop the Steal protests, the insurgence at the U.S. Capitol Building, legal attempts to overturn election results, and a host of other topics.
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy (ASAP), a journal of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), is issuing a Call for Papers on the Social Psychology of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. This collection will be the fifth in ASAP's series on U. S. Presidential elections, continuing a tradition that began with our collection on the 2004 election and continued with the 2008, 2012, and 2016 campaigns.
In addition to regular submissions, ASAP will also consider Registered Reports for this issue. Registered Reports involve two stages of manuscript submission. At Stage 1, authors submit a proposal (i.e., introduction and method sections) that provides justification for the work and details how they plan to conduct the research (this stage precedes data collection). If the justification and proposed methods are sufficient, the editor will issue an In Principal Acceptance (IPA). This is a guarantee that if the completed work is faithful to the Stage 1 proposal, ASAP publish the manuscript, regardless of results. Data collection occurs after receiving the IPA. Authors submit the final paper as a Stage 2 report. Review of the Stage 2 report focus on clarity and adherence to approved protocols. For more information on ASAP’s Registered Report policies, please see https://osf.io/k9prf/.
Potential areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Studies of candidates, including analyses of political addresses and debates and/or systematic comparisons between present candidates and those in prior campaigns, using analytic approaches informed by psychological theory and methods.
- Studies of the electorate, or parts of the electorate, including studies of political decision making (e.g., heuristics and biases, the role of emotion, voting vs. not voting) as well as studies of personality, values, and political ideology.
- Studies of social biases, such as racism, sexism, and/or religious intolerance in the campaigns, in advertisements sponsored by political action committees, in media coverage of the campaigns, and in political behavior.
- Studies of secular trends in presidential campaigns that are informed by or relate to social psychological issues.
- Analyses of the effects of negative campaigns (e.g., appeals to fear, anger, and distrust) as well as studies of the effects of political discourse on large-scale social behavior.
- Studies of media framing and effects, including conventional and social media, direct as well as indirect (e.g., dynamic, viral) effects, and studies of bias in news, talk radio, and satirical programming.
- Bifurcations within and between political parties as well as relationships between economic inequality and political power.
- Studies of the nature and effects of disenfranchisement and differential enfranchisement, studies of policies and programs that affect voter participation, including those which facilitate and/or discourage voting.
- Studies of how political culture and identity, including political party membership, influence or are influenced by the election.
- Studies focusing on international issues relevant to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, such as the rise of far-right political movements, COVID-19, climate change, and Black Lives Matter.
ASAP will also consider, as a companion to the U.S. election issue, articles addressing other international elections that broadly fit the criteria above.
Please direct inquiries to ASAP Editor Chris Aberson. Submit manuscripts by April 30, 2021 for full editorial consideration. Registered Report Stage 1 proposals should be submitted by September 1, 2020 with Stage 2 reports submitted by April 30, 2021. Please direct all submissions to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/asap.