Instructions

  • Title
  • Summary
  • Psychological Processes
  • Social Area(s)
  • Intervention Technique(s)
  • FAQs

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Instructions for Submitting Research

In your descriptive title and summary, please avoid jargon and write in accessible language as much as possible.

Title

For the descriptive title, use this structure: “[Description of intervention] [Optional: Implementation form] [Effect] [DV] among [Population] [Time, e.g., over x period, if relevant].” For example:

  • Affirming values increased grades among middle-school Latino students over three years
  • Learning about how intelligence can grow with hard work, good strategies, and help from others across six class workshops improved math grades among seventh graders over the next semester and improved classroom motivation

In general, if your intervention is largely similar to an intervention exercise used in a prior study, the description of the intervention should be identical to that for the prior study, except marking what if anything of note has changed, such as comparing online vs. in-person delivery. For instance, compare:

  • Walton & Cohen, 2011: Reflecting on stories about belonging in the transition to college increased GPA, happiness, and health among African American college students over three years.
  • Yeager, Walton et al. 2016, Experiment 3: Reflecting on stories about belonging in the transition to college in an online, prematriculation exercise improved GPA and promoted social and academic integration among minority and first-generation college students over the first year of college.

Summary

The summary should help the reader understand the population at hand; the intervention, including how it was implemented and the psychological process (e.g., subjective construal) it was designed to address; and the primary outcome results (whether significant or not).

As much as possible, keep this short and avoid jargon. Readers will also have access to your full manuscript. Please do not reproduce all of the statistical or methodological details here.

Summaries included in the original supplemental material for Walton & Wilson (2018) varied in length depending on the complexity of the intervention and results. They ranged from 19 to 277 words. Please stay within this range, ideally shorter.

Your submission will be credited to you (“Posted by [name], [institutional affiliation]”)


Three Families of Psychological Process

Walton and Wilson grouped wise interventions into three families based on the basic motivation underlying meaning making upon which the intervention capitalized. Although interventions can cut across families, please select the family the intervention best fits. Click on each label to see how Walton and Wilson defined each category.

Psychologically Wise Interventions that Capitalize on the Need to Understand

Many interventions aim to help people interpret themselves and their circumstances in adaptive ways by capitalizing on the need to make sense of matters as best they can. These studies draw primarily on attribution theory, which assumes that people try to form rational impressions of the causes of their own and other people’s behavior (Weiner, 1985). They thus assume that people are responsive to information and experiences that suggest new ways of thinking. Because there is typically no single simple truth about subjective meanings, and because people’s views readily become self-fulfilling, this approach is less concerned with whether people’s interpretations are accurate in some objective sense than with facilitating reasonable perspectives that help people flourish (Abramson, Seligman, &Teasdale, 1978).

Want to learn more? Click for more from Walton & Wilson:

Psychologically Wise Interventions that Capitalize on the Need for Self-Integrity

Even as people strive to make sense of the world reasonably, they desire or are threatened by certain meanings. Among these is the desire to see oneself as decent, moral, competent, and coherent. Experiences that threaten this sense of self-integrity can give rise to a range of personal and social problems (Aronson, 1968; Sherman & Cohen, 2006; Steele, 1988).

Want to learn more? Click for more from Walton & Wilson:

Psychologically Wise Interventions that Capitalize on the Need to Belong

A third family of interventions capitalizes on people’s need to see themselves as connected to others so as to improve outcomes that go beyond a relationship or a sense of belonging itself, such as to improve well-being, health, or achievement.

Want to learn more? Click for more from Walton & Wilson:

The third basic motive arises from the fact that we are an inherently social species. People want to feel connected to others: to be accepted and included, to be valued members of social groups, and to contribute positively to the lives of others. Indeed, forming and maintaining social relationships is among our most important tasks from birth (Asch, 1952; Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Bowlby, 1988; Deci & Ryan, 2000; Dweck, 2017). When this need to belong is threatened, people can experience distress and dysfunction; some interventions bolster a sense of belonging and connection to improve functioning (e.g., Motto & Bostrom, 2001). Others leverage the need to belong to motivate positive behaviors, such as by casting a specific desired behavior as a way to strengthen a person’s relationships, social standing, or fit within a social community (e.g., Goldstein, Cialdini, & Griskevicius, 2008).

Social Area(s)

Please indicate the social area or areas that the intervention addresses most directly: Civic Relationships, Crime, Education, Health, Intergroup Relationships, Interpersonal Relationships, Retirement Savings, Poverty, Sustainability, Well-Being, Work

Intervention Technique(s)

Walton and Wilson identify four categories of intervention techniques. Review these categories and selection the technique or techniques that best represents your intervention. Click on each label to see how Walton and Wilson defined each category.

Direct labeling

Prompting new meanings

Increasing commitment through action

Active reflection exercises

FAQs

1. How should I report an intervention following the same participant sample across multiple studies or publications, such as an original report and a long-term follow-up published separately?

Please report them in a single entry. For an example, see Bugental & Schwartz, (2009).

2. How should I report multiple trials of the same intervention reported in the same paper but with different participant populations?

Please report them as separate entries. For an example, see Sherman et al., 2013, Study 1 and Sherman et al., 2013, Study 2.

3. How should I report two or more interventions reported in a single study compared against a common control condition?

Please write a separate entry for each intervention. In each title, add a dash followed by the label for the relevant intervention. In each summary, briefly reference the other intervention. For an example where two interventions produced different effects, see Yeager, Walton, et al. 2016 Experiment 1-Social Belonging and Yeager, Walton, et al., 2016 Experiment 1-Growth Mindset. For an example where two interventions produced similar effects, see Yeager, Walton, et al. 2016 Experiment 2-Social Belonging and Yeager, Walton, et al., 2016 Experiment 2-Growth Mindset.

4. How should I report two or more interventions that interact (e.g., in a factorial design) reported in a single study?

If the two (or more) interventions represent distinct psychological process paths, enter the study multiple times, once for each intervention/process path. However, use the identical title and summary, which should describe each intervention. For an example, see Ehret & Sherman, 2018.

5. How do I revise or update an intervention entry?

Enter the intervention as if it were a new entry but simply mark in the summary that this is a revision of an existing entry.