Transparency and Inclusion in Psychological Inquiry: Reflecting on the Past, Embracing the Present, and Building an Inclusive Future

Abstract

s of the target articles, first determining common topics and subsequently calculating relative weight of twelve most frequently mentioned topics over time. Figure 1 shows themes which have dominated the discourse so far. Constant features are the topics of motivation (incl. needs and goals) and self-control, cognitive processes and their metacognitive regulation, mental health and well-being, individual differences and social cognition, as well as theoretical issues concerning research methods in psychology. Dominance of some themes reflects the Zeitgeist. The topic of meta-science—present in the journal since the first issue—become especially prominent in the last decade of Open Science movement. On the other hand, the topic of mental health and well-being was pronounced around the time of the discussions about well-being and the subsequent emergence of the Positive Psychology field in late 1990searly 2000s. In the new millennium, cultural diversity and related societal issues became salient, with the trend continuing to this day. Further, judgment and decision-making made a big entry in the last 15 years, possibly due the Nobel Prize in economics to Kahneman in 2002, and greater focus on behavioral economics thereafter. Toward Greater Equity and Diversity of Submissions The original idea behind Psychological Inquiry—a dialogue through open peer exchange about contentious ideas and theories—remains as important today as it was over three decades ago. Interdisciplinary research is on the rise (Van Noorden, 2015). Therefore, concepts and theories have an opportunity to be enriched by perspectives coming from different fields of studies. At the same time, intellectual silos and cultural echo-chambers remain—while more scholars today work in interdisciplinary teams of specialists than before (“Why Interdisciplinary Research Matters,” 2015), focus on specialization can also produce intellectual silos within one’s discipline. Such silos are often not conducive to the cumulative advancement of science. Scientific silos may be especially damaging for psychology (Cacioppo, 2007), where theoretical approaches touch on many neighboring disciplines, from anthropology and economics, to biology, linguistics, and neuroscience, to philosophy and education, to sociology and political science, to health studies, and so on (Boyack, Klavans, & B€orner, 2005). Scholars connecting closer to one of the neighboring fields may diverge in their grand theories, favor methodological paradigms others may find peculiar or simply be unfamiliar with, and develop their own jargon, all contributing to confusion about the concepts, methods, and evaluation of the results. How can we combat such disciplinary isolationism? An idea pursued by Psychological Inquiry since its inception has been to provide scholars with an opportunity for a civil discussion and debate of diverse ideas, and promoting a dialogue to clarify misunderstandings about theories, methods, or interpretation of core results. Notably, diversity of ideas is unlikely to emerge without reckoning with the possible blind spots and biases in our field. Though scholars have pointed out lack of diversity in participants in psychological studies (and thus models for human behavior) throughout twentieth century (e.g., Sears, 1986), only in the last decade the issue of limited diversity in studied participants came to the forefront of discussions about how to improve generalizability of our theories and phenomena. As Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan (2010) pointed out, for most psychological studies in the twentieth century, the modal participant in psychological research has been a white college student at an elite American college. A decade since their influential paper on how nine out of ten participants in psychological research came from Western, English-Speaking, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries, the issue with lack of sampling diversity remains (e.g., Cheon, Melani, & Hong, 2020; Hruschka, Medin, Rogoff, & Henrich, 2018). Platforms of online crowdworkers (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk or Prolific Academic) taking part in surveys and experiments for modest remuneration have helped to expand psychological research beyond college students, but also introduced structural inequalities and new limitations: such crowdworking platforms are less available in the Global South, with a few exceptions rely on higher English language proficiency, and restrict the scope of studied phenomena to those that can be administered online. Two related blind points that researchers pay insufficient attention to concern the situated nature of psychological phenomena in cultural (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Shweder, 1991), and historical contexts (Gergen, 1978; Muthukrishna, Henrich, & Slingerland, 2021; Varnum & Grossmann, 2021; Vygotsky, 1978). For many psychological scientists like myself, it appears self-evident that most psychological phenomena are constrained through culturallyand ecologically-mediated beliefs, habits, patterns of socialization and practices. And whenever culture changes, changes in the inner workings of phenomena often follow suit. Yet beyond lip-service to the importance of considering theoretical implications of these insights, much of our field appears more fascinated by phenomena that claim universality rather than cultural or temporal specificity. We often take phenomena that may be unique to a specific context (often the United States) and present their inner workings as psychological universals. And if we do entertain the idea of cultural context, it is as often as a “moderator” of phenomena—i.e., a variable that is theorized to be separate from the phenomenon one aims to explore rather than as part of the system it is embedded in (see Barrett, 2022, for an example why this approach may be misleading). Finally, consider discussions about topics such as social class and inequality, polarization, education, or mental health: A “WEIRD” account of a given psychological phenomenon often emerges as a dominant one, the one to compare other accounts against. As a result, non-WEIRD scholars have a harder time presenting equally valuable insights concerning different inner working of a given phenomenon in their cultural context. These observations about limited diversity in our field have implications for the advancement of theory in psychology. If the model of human behavior is based on an TRANSPARENCY AND INCLUSION IN PSYCHOLOGICAL INQUIRY 235