INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS AND GROUP PROCESSES EDITORIAL

The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP) has a well-deserved reputation for being one of the premier journals in the field of social and personality psychology. The role of the second section of JPSP, Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes (IRGP), has been to publish research that makes a significant theoretical or methodological contribution to our understanding of how relationships, groups, and cultures impact cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. This section has historically focused on programmatic research that investigates such topics as interpersonal attraction and its development, emotions, group processes, decision making, intergroup relations, aggression, and prosocial behavior. As the incoming editor, I plan to honor this role and will continue to encourage submission of a broad range of research related to interpersonal and group processes. My first important act as the new editor is to thank Jeff Simpson and the previous editorial team for their dedication and hard work these past six years. Although taking the reins from this outstanding group is a daunting prospect, I have assembled a team of top-notch scholars to serve as Associate Editors, and I am sure that they will be up to the task. Our new Associate Editors are Reginald Adams, Cameron Anderson, Eli Finkel, Shelly Gable, Cheryl Kaiser, Aaron Kay, Shinobu Kitayama, Colin Wayne Leach, Jon Maner, Paula Pietromonaco, and Toni Schmader. One of the primary goals of our editorial team is to focus on inclusivity. A common lament of editors is that good reviewers are hard to find (Funder, 1992). Ideally, everyone who publishes research and benefits from the publication process should carry a fair share of the burden. It follows that both senior and early career scientists, and members of a variety of different social groups, should be included in the review process. As such, one of our principal aims is to recruit a diverse set of board members and reviewers who reflect the growing ethnic and gender diversity in the field. A further goal for our new editorial team is to encourage the submission of high-quality multidisciplinary experiments that create a bridge between social psychology and other areas of research. Recent advances in our field have been fueled by collaborations that include theorizing and methods from a variety of other areas such as neuroscience, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, animal behavior, psychophysiology, sensation and perception, and genetics. Taking a multidisciplinary approach not only helps us better understand basic interpersonal and intergroup processes, but it also increases the impact that social psychology has on other fields (Yang & Chiu, 2009). Interdisciplinary collaborations can greatly facilitate knowledge integration and the development of broader theories of human processes, so we encourage this growing cohort of interdisciplinary scientists to submit their best work to JPSP: IRGP. As an additional goal, we hope to decrease the amount of time that a manuscript spends under review by adopting a number of important new strategies. First, I have enlisted a greater number of associate editors to evaluate submissions, reducing individual burdens for each editor and allowing for a better alignment between manuscript topics and the expertise of each editor. Second, in accordance with recent initiatives at other top journals (e.g., Social Psychological and Personality Science and Journal of Experimental Psychology: General ), there are now strong norms in place regarding expectations for both editors and reviewers that will promote shorter lags in the process. Third, in accordance with recommendations made by the previous editor, we now request that articles be shorter, more focused, and more streamlined. Avoiding redundancies and other unnecessary verbiage is likely to increase an article’s impact and also speed up the review process. Fourth, members of the editorial board will now be rewarded when they submit a review on time. Although board members at this journal are expected to review a set number of manuscripts per year, this number will decrease for each review received by the assigned due date. Finally, continuing a practice adopted by the previous editorial board, we hope to save authors valuable time by not pursuing external review of a manuscript if we