Cogent Psychology

Research suggests that “one-size-fits-all” approaches are often insufficient to changing people’s behaviours and beliefs. Instead, different interventions are most effective for different folks.

Given this, this special issue seeks to highlight empirical research that advances our basic understanding of tailored and personalized approaches to persuasion and behaviour change. Tailored approaches reflect interventions/messages whose features are systematically altered to match the characteristics of their target audience. Examples include (but are not limited to):

• Personalizing print or online communications to consider a person’s demographic or cultural background (e.g., demographic tailoring; cultural tailoring)
• Tailoring behaviour-change interventions to a person’s health beliefs (e.g., risk perceptions, self-efficacy) or stage of behaviour change (e.g., using the transtheoretical model)
• Aligning persuasive messages to the basic motivations or values of message recipients (e.g., motivational matching, moral reframing, regulatory fit)
• Personality-based approaches to tailored communication (e.g., matching persuasive messages to traits like extroversion, agreeableness)

For this special issue, articles should focus on at least one of the following areas of interest:

• Elucidating how and when to best use tailoring/personalization. This can be through the examination of moderators or by seeking to establish best practices in applying such interventions.
• Clarifying the psychological mechanisms that underlie the successful application of tailoring/personalization.
• Introducing methodological advances to improve how we study tailored/personalized interventions.
• Describing novel applications of tailoring/personalization, such as by incorporating new technologies or delivering interventions to underrepresented populations.

Studies are not limited to any behavioural domain, and may, for instance, reflect health communication, environmental messaging, consumer advertising, political messaging, etc.

To promote rigorous cumulative knowledge-production, submissions are encouraged to incorporate open science practices, such as preregistration and open sharing of study materials and data.

We welcome different types of submissions, including:

• Research Articles
• Registered Reports
• Brief Replication Reports
• Review Articles
• Brief reports

Please follow the general instructions for authors at Cogent Psychology to format and submit your manuscript.

Manuscripts must be submitted in English.

Instructions for AuthorsSubmit an Article