Editor Spotlight

Rex Wright, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Texas, Denton, where he helped build the behavioral science PhD program.

Guido Gendolla, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Geneva, where he directs the Geneva Motivation Lab.

Both Drs. Wright and Gendolla have edited books and served as associate editors to journals concerning motivational psychology. They have also been active in the Society for the Study of Motivation.

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

Rex:
I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology at the University of Texas in Austin and my PhD in psychology at the University of Kansas via the social psychology training program. I received postdoctoral training in health psychology and psychophysiology at SUNY–Stony Brook.

The central thrust of my work has always been motivational. Specifically, I investigate the determinants and cardiovascular consequences of momentary effort. I have co-edited two books with motivation focuses, served as associate editor of the journal Motivation and Emotion, and co-edited two special issues of that journal.

My co-editor Guido and I were both heavily involved in establishing the Society for the Study of Motivation (SSM) and are committed to promoting its mission. We agreed to co-edit Motivation Science as a service to members of the motivation science community.

Guido:
Since 2003, I am a professor of psychology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where I hold the chair for motivation psychology and direct the Geneva Motivation Lab. I earned my diploma in psychology and my PhD at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, and my habilitation in psychology at the University of Erlangen, Germany.

Most of my research focuses on implicit and explicit affective influences in motivation and self-regulation. I am most interested in the psychophysiology of effort mobilization. My basic training was in social psychology, but it was always concerned with motivational processes in and outside social context.

Besides preparing numerous ad hoc reviews, and serving as a member on several editorial boards, I was incoming editor and associate editor of the journal Social Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Sozialpsychologie). I am action editor of the International Journal of Psychophysiology and have co-edited two books on motivation and self-regulation.

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?

Rex:
We want to make Motivation Science a premier publication outlet for the full range of scholars and research scientists whose work addresses motivation issues. The motivation science community is a diaspora of sort, including people housed in diverse professional units. Motivation Science can play a role in pulling members of this group together.

We plan to grow the journal by developing a reputation for quality and reaching out aggressively to people in all quarters of the motivation science community. Targets for outreach will include not only people with different focuses in psychology, but also people in organizational units outside of psychology. We intend to market using a variety of mechanisms, including ones that require live involvement on our part.

Guido:
We also strive for fast editorial decisions. We want to give authors feedback as soon as possible (ideally within 40 days) and have thus shortened the review time. To achieve fast decisions based on editorial expertise, we have also implemented an editorial system in which members of our new editorial board will occasionally work as action editors if submissions fall into their area of expertise rather than ours.

We now have two article formats (regular articles and brief reports) for both empirical and conceptual/theoretical papers. For empirical contributions, we prefer manuscripts that present theory-driven research involving tests of clearly derived hypotheses. We will be open to newer approaches to statistical inference as well as conventional ones, and replication studies are welcome. We also welcome strong theoretical papers and literature reviews that permit clear conclusions and have straightforward and substantive implications, as well as high quality reactive commentaries to published work.

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?

Rex:
The journal is enormously important because of its undivided focus on motivation, the breadth of its intended audience, and its ambition. Other motivation journals split their focus between motivation and additional focuses, such as learning and emotion. The other journals also tend to target subgroups within the broader motivation research community. Motivation Science aspires to become the reference publication for the motivation science community as a whole.

The journal's relevance to society and public health is immense. Motivation is fundamental to the human condition. It is concerned with what moves individuals from repose, what leads them to move in one direction instead of another, what leads them to engage more and less vigorously, and what leads them to persist in different measures across time.

Most human behavior occurs in social circumstances. Thus, understandings of motivational processes have profound implications for phenomena in society at large. The understandings are relevant to health because aspects of behavior relate to health outcomes. Consider for example behavioral vigor. This can impact physiological responses that — in turn — can impact health risk.

Concerning hot issues, a great deal of creative research is being conducted, addressing the full range of motivation concerns listed above. Around the globe, and working from a variety of training perspectives, investigators are studying processes involved in determining the presence, direction, intensity, and persistence of action.

Guido:
After about two decades that were dominated by cognitivism, the last 10 years have seen a strong revitalization of motivation research. Motivational and self-regulative processes are again in the center of psychological research and have received the interest of people applying psychological science, like clinical psychologists, educational psychologists, or people working in human resources — to name a few.

What was lacking was a journal that is really specialized in motivation research. We hope that Motivation Science will fill that gap and develop to be a reference outlet for research on motivation.

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

Rex:
I see the biggest challenges as having to do with communication and coordination. For a long while, scholars and research scientists with interests in motivation have been scattered about — housed in different professional units or "silos". Being scattered, they tended to develop their ideas and research programs in isolation of one another. We need to reduce the isolation.

Guido:
To develop a reference journal for motivation research, it is necessary to "motivate" people to submit their best relevant research. For any new journal, this is at least at the beginning a big challenge. But we are confident that we can cope with this. We have something to offer: Fast editorial decisions by motivation experts from the editorial board and a readership that is eager to learn about new insights in motivation science.

Do you have plans for a special issue or changes to the editorial process? Are you making any changes?

Rex:
Yes, we have in the works a special issue on multidisciplinary approaches. It is being co-edited by Arie Kruglanski and Tory Higgins. We expect to develop at least one special issue a year moving forward.

We have made several changes, the biggest concerning editorial board members. Members agreed to serve as action editor for up to five manuscripts per year. The idea is to make action editor assignments for submissions that are especially well-suited to board member competence.

Guido:
A more detailed articulation of our vision, goals, and changes for Motivation Science can be found in our editorial "Gathering the Diaspora: Aims and Visions for Motivation Science" (PDF, 17KB), that is published in the 2016 September issue of the journal.

We are looking for more special issues covering hot topics in motivation research in the future.

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