Journal: Gerontology
Submission Deadline: December 15, 2025
Humans are wired for social interaction and consequently much of how we think and feel is shaped by our social world. Social connectedness in older age has been consistently linked to better cognitive function, reduced risk of depression, and greater longevity, highlighting its fundamental role in healthy ageing. Yet maintaining social connectedness is not always easy, and understanding what contributes to social frailty is important.
This Call for Papers welcomes original research, reviews, and brief reports that explore how older adults maintain—or struggle to maintain—social connectedness in the face of cognitive, emotional, and societal challenges. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Resilience and Vulnerability in Social Cognition: Normal adult ageing disrupts some aspects of social cognition, and an important focus is understanding the factors that might protect against, or exaggerate, these difficulties, and how such changes contribute to social frailty, including loneliness and social disengagement.
- Antecedents and Consequences of Self-Perceptions of Aging: Negative self-perceptions of aging are associated with greater loneliness, whereas more positive perceptions are related to greater social network diversity. More research is needed to understand precisely how these self-perceptions of ageing are modulated by the social environment, as well as potential implications for social frailty.
Please select the option “Call for Papers: The Aging Mind in a Social World” when submitting your manuscript and mention this Call for Papers in your cover letter.
As a hybrid journal, Gerontology supports Open Access publications. Corresponding authors can publish Open Access articles at no or reduced cost if they are associated with or employed by one of these universities/institutions.
Check out the Author Guidelines.