Hannes Zacher, PhD

Zacher is a professor of work and organizational psychology at Leipzig University in Germany.

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

I am a professor of work and organizational psychology at Leipzig University in Germany. My postdocs, PhD students, and I work at the world’s first Institute of Psychology, founded by Wilhelm Wundt in 1879. In my research program, I investigate aging at work and career development, occupational health and well-being, and environmental sustainability in organizations. I am particularly interested in testing theories of adult lifespan development in the context of work and organizations. For example, in my research, I have shown that younger and older adults react differently to work stressors because of age-related differences in experience, emotion regulation, future time perspective, and health.

I have previously served as associate editor of the journals Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, and Group & Organization Management. I have also edited special issues on aging and retirement in the journals Acta Psychologica and Work, Aging and Retirement. I am a coeditor of the books Work Across the Lifespan (Baltes, Rudolph, & Zacher, 2019) and Age and Work: Advances in Theory, Methods, and Practice (Zacher & Rudolph, 2022).

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?

My main priorities are to increase both the impact and the openness of research published in Psychology and Aging, the premier journal in the psychological science of aging and adult lifespan development. My editorial team and I will continue to publish high-quality empirical articles, meta-analyses, and systematic reviews, as well as theory development and methodological articles. I am hoping to attract excellent manuscript submissions from all psychological disciplines, including those that focus on basic principles of aging and adult lifespan development and those that investigate these principles in applied settings, including clinical, health, educational, and organizational contexts. In the journal, I would like to see rigorous experimental, intervention, longitudinal, experience sampling, and qualitative studies, as well as meta-analyses and systematic reviews that implement open science practices (e.g., preregistration, open data and materials) and significantly contribute to theory development and cumulative science.

I would also like to see more studies on aging and adult lifespan development among historically and systematically underrepresented and excluded groups and individuals, such as people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and individuals with disabilities. Each article should clearly articulate the problem in the literature that it attempts to address and how it contributes to the literature above and beyond what is already known. Previous use of the same data set and variables must be transparently acknowledged, and data overuse and smallest publishable unit publication strategies (e.g., “salami slicing”) are discouraged. Authors submitting studies that focus on psychological phenomena exclusively among middle-aged or older adults must make a strong case for not comparing their findings with findings based on data collected from younger adults.

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?

Aging and adult lifespan development are topics that are relevant for all disciplines in psychological science, both basic and applied. For nearly 40 years, Psychology and Aging has been the premier outlet for high-quality, rigorous research in this area; it is highly cited across psychological disciplines and also well beyond psychological science. Cumulative empirical evidence from the psychological science of aging and adult lifespan development is highly relevant for policymakers, public health officials, and organizations facing demographic changes. Populations around the globe are aging and, at the same time, becoming more and more age diverse. Accordingly, some of the hot issues in this area include efforts to prevent and mitigate cognitive decline with age and dementia and to promote healthy and active aging; age discrimination; digitalization, artificial intelligence, and technology use in different age groups; age diversity; intersectionality; and social justice. Psychology and Aging is the ideal outlet for high-quality research on these and other important topics related to age and aging.

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

The psychological science of aging and adult lifespan development faces challenges similar to those faced by the field of psychology as a whole, especially the need to become more open, transparent, and inclusive. Psychology and Aging is at the forefront of addressing these needs. The journal already uses the Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines developed by the Center for Open Science and endorsed by the American Psychological Association. Although preregistration is not going to be mandatory for Psychology and Aging in the foreseeable future, I strongly encourage authors to preregister their hypotheses and methods and to openly share their data, code, and materials to make findings reproducible and to support replication efforts.

My vision for the journal also strongly emphasizes diversity and inclusiveness in terms of both content of scholarship and contributors to Psychology and Aging. My editorial team and I welcome submissions from basic and applied sciences, multidisciplinary research efforts, and a variety of methodological approaches. I actively promote the participation of individuals from historically and systematically underrepresented and excluded groups as authors, reviewers, editorial board members, and associate editors.

A challenge that is more specific to the psychological science of aging and adult lifespan development is that existing longitudinal data sets in the field tend to be heavily overused, and the overlap of data and variables across published articles is often not sufficiently clear. More openness and transparency are needed in this regard, as are more long-term longitudinal studies with large samples, multisource data, and sound measures, as well as coordinated data analysis efforts that integrate data from multiple independent studies. Last but not least, research on aging is in great need of more formalized theory development (as opposed to verbal theories) and, to this end, should increasingly adopt computational modeling approaches to precisely model dynamics across the adult lifespan.

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?

So far, I have made two key changes to the journal’s submission guidelines. First, Psychology and Aging is now accepting only fully masked manuscripts, such that neither the authors’ nor the reviewers’ identities are revealed to the other parties. I initiated this change in the hope of establishing an even more open, inclusive, and equitable review process. Second, authors are now required to include a data transparency statement and table in their cover letter and, in anonymous form, in the manuscript itself if they make use of data and variables that have previously been published. My hope is that this policy prevents the overuse of large data sets and, thus, the dependency among published articles, as well as discourages smallest publishable unit publication strategies. In particular, I would like authors, based on sound theoretical considerations, to include multiple relevant predictors and outcomes instead of selecting and correlating just two variables from a large archival data set. When authors cast a wider net and commit to transparent reporting, articles will have a stronger impact and make greater theoretical contributions.

Furthermore, my editorial team and I will soon accept applications for up to three editorial fellows starting in 2025. In line with APA’s Racial Equity Action Plan, these editorial fellowships are designed to offer journal leadership training for early-career psychologists who are from or who work with and advocate on behalf of underrepresented groups, particularly Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, as well as members of other communities that have been historically underrepresented in leadership roles across research and publishing.

My editorial team and I are planning several special issues that will appear in the coming years. We currently have a call for a special issue on age-related processes in daily life. Other special issues will focus on aging, technology, and digitalization; age-related changes in the representational quality of episodic memory; aging, work, and retirement; aging, diversity, intersectionality, and inclusion; and the application of computational modeling approaches in the psychological science of aging and adult lifespan development.

Baltes, B. B., Rudolph, C. W., & Zacher, H. (Eds.). (2019). Work across the lifespan. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/C2016-0-04055-Xopens in new window

Zacher, H., & Rudolph, C. W. (Eds.). (2022). Age and work: Advances in theory, methods, and practice. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003089674opens in new window