Aidan G. C. Wright, PhD

Beginning in the summer of 2023, Wright will be a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

Tell us a bit about your background: What is your area of research? What is your most recent journal-editing experience?

I suppose you could say that, as a psychopathologist, I am a generalist. More than anything, I am interested in how people should think about psychopathology; what it is; how it should be operationalized; how it should be studied; and, most important, how it can be leveraged to reduce its burden on individuals and society.

In my own work, I have specific areas of emphasis, such as the links between personality and psychopathology—which I explore by studying people in naturalistic settings and by using intensive longitudinal data—and the roles of social context and interpersonal functioning. But as a journal editor, I see my role as pitching a broad scholarly tent that welcomes diverse perspectives and modes of inquiry. Psychopathology is complex. No one theory or method is likely to crack its code, and I would like to see a plurality of approaches and perspectives represented in the pages of the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science (JoPaCS).

Previously, I was an associate editor at Clinical Psychological Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the Journal of Personality. At each journal, I was fortunate to serve alongside strong editors and editorial teams who worked hard to publish good research, be fair and consistent, and improve the science in the field. I hope I can do the same on each count here at JoPaCS during my tenure as editor-in-chief.

Briefly, what are your main priorities? For example, how will you grow readership, what type of scholarship would you like to see in the journal, and what kind of content are you hoping to attract?

The field of psychopathology is in the midst of several paradigm shifts. First, it is now widely recognized that traditional diagnoses do a poor job of organizing thinking about psychopathology and that a shift to basic mechanisms that are unlikely to be discretely and categorically distributed is needed. Second, psychopathology theory and research lack temporal specificity. That is, the timescales on which psychopathology plays out, either in the short term or across development, are not well understood. Acknowledging this situation means longitudinal work across multiple timescales needs to be prioritized. Third, theoretical models are poorly integrated across methods and levels of inquiry, and method variance seems to far outweigh substantive variance in studies. How psychopathology is understood should not depend so much on how it is studied if the goal is to find ecumenical truths. Tackling the challenge of multimethod inquiry is essential. Fourth, the science is too limited by who is doing it, who is being studied, and where it is being conducted. More and diverse perspectives need to contribute and be included. Again, if the goal is to discover fundamental insights, researchers need to broaden the lens and be more inclusive. Finally, psychopathology research needs to be more open and transparent. To that end, open science principles contribute to stronger, more replicable, and more trustworthy results.

Each of these paradigm shifts represents a significant challenge but also an exciting opportunity. My editorial priorities are aligned with these shifts in the field, and my hope is to lean into them by encouraging and prioritizing articles that address one or preferably more than one of these and, over time, de-emphasizing work that is not aligned with them. I would like to see work that focuses on domains or features of psychopathology but not diagnoses, examines processes over one or more timescales, uses multiple methods, and involves participants who are diverse in various ways. Submissions that fall into one or more of these categories would be more likely to be sent out for review than would those that do not. Nothing is absolute, but I want to encourage those doing work that fits within these priorities by letting them know that it will be well received here. Additionally, my associate editors and I will be working with authors to increase transparency and openness at the journal. I recognize this is a process, and I am looking for everyone to make meaningful good-faith steps in the right direction at this point.

Why is this journal important for the field? What is its relevance to society/public health? What are the hot issues in your area right now?

The journal, formerly known as The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology and the Journal of Abnormal Psychology but now titled JoPaCS, has a long and storied history in the field, going back well over 100 years. Some remarkable and important research has been published here, including Milgram’s (1963) famous study; Bandura and colleagues’ Bobo doll studies (e.g., Bandura et al., 1961, 1963); Festinger’s early work on cognitive dissonance (e.g., Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959); and, more recently, Hammen’s (1991) stress generation theory and even the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (Kotov et al., 2017). Obviously, too many important studies have been published in the journal to mention them all, but when looking forward, it is worth taking the time to also look back. The recent proliferation of journals means that clinical psychologists have many reasonable targets for publication of their work. But what JoPaCS has traditionally prized and many other journals lack is an emphasis on psychological richness. I would like JoPaCS to continue to be a place where psychological richness is appreciated and clinical psychologists in particular—or really anybody from any relevant discipline—can feel confident that they have the space to fully flesh out and dive into complex ideas. That does not mean all submissions have to be long, just that JoPaCS will be a place that will not hold authors to a three-paragraph introduction or shy away from messy results that do not follow a neat “just-so” story.

What challenges, if any, lie ahead for the field?

In many respects, the paradigm shifts I have enumerated are the most important challenges facing the field. Addressing them is easier said than done. For instance, shifting one’s workflow to include open science practices is challenging and takes time. I know that in my lab, this process has been a long one of trial and error. As another example, doing good multimethod work often requires establishing large teams of individuals who may not speak the same scholarly language. I have found enormous barriers to working across disciplines, even among motivated and smart individuals. My hope is that by emphasizing that work that addresses these challenges is highly valued in the field, the journal will incentivize researchers to take up the challenges and solve them.

At the same time, efforts to meet some of these challenges, especially that of transitioning to a fully transparent and open science, need more than just incentives to be successful: They require facilitation. I am eager to implement changes that makes adhering to open science practices easy for authors who want to submit to JoPaCS. Journals, including JoPaCS, need to be doing more to make transparent work easy to do. This will be a process that takes some time, but changes are already happening at JoPaCS, with the adoption of Level 2 of the Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines for empirical research (and Level 3 for registered replication reports), so stay tuned for upcoming changes.

Do you have plans for a special issue or changes to the editorial process? Have you introduced or are you planning to introduce any changes?

The first special issue is already underway, and several more are in the planning phases. As I noted earlier, I hope to fully transition the journal to open science practices over the course of my tenure. In addition, I am evaluating the journal’s editorial processes and hope to streamline them to enable much faster turnaround times on decisions. The long-standing article length limits and how length is counted may change.

Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(3), 575–582. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045925opens in new window

Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66(1), 3–11. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0048687opens in new window

Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2), 203–210. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0041593opens in new window

Hammen, C. (1991). Generation of stress in the course of unipolar depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 100(4), 555–561. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.100.4.555opens in new window

Kotov, R., Krueger, R. F., Watson, D., Achenbach, T. M., Althoff, R. R., Bagby, R. M., Brown, T. A., Carpenter, W. T., Caspi, A., Clark, L. A., Eaton, N. R., Forbes, M. K., Forbush, K. T., Goldberg, D., Hasin, D., Hyman, S. E., Ivanova, M. Y., Lynam, D. R., Markon, K., . . . Zimmerman, M. (2017). The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): A dimensional alternative to traditional nosologies. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126(4), 454–477. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000258opens in new window

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371–378. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040525opens in new window

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