American Psychologist最新文献

In October 2021, the American Psychological Association apologized to people of color in the United States for its role in systemic racism. Spurred by a national racial reckoning, Indigenous Peoples have been regularly incorporated into initiatives redressing America's legacy of racism. Although Indigenous Peoples have been racialized during the formation of the United States, this process is intertwined with colonization-the systematic dispossession and exploitation of Indigenous communities by Europeans. We first examine how the American Psychological Association (APA) has been complicit in colonialism by failing to oppose government policies that disenfranchise Indigenous communities, which it recently recognized in a separate apology to First Peoples in the United States in February 2023 (American Psychological Association, APA Indigenous Apology Work Group [APA IAWG], 2023). Second, we explore methods for APA to reconcile historical and contemporary wrongs inflicted on Indigenous Peoples through transitional justice, an approach to addressing human rights violations that seeks justice and opportunities for healing (United Nations, 2008). In particular, we consider the implications that Truth and Reconciliation Commissions have for Indigenous Peoples. Third, we provide recommendations for APA to repair relations with Indigenous Peoples in education, research, and practice. We specifically interrogate what possibilities for truth, reconciliation, and healing exist vis-à-vis transitional justice in psychology. We conclude with the potential that APA has to advance meaningful structural reforms while cautioning against superficial efforts towards reconciliation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Despite a checkered racial history, people in the United States generally believe the nation has made steady, incremental progress toward achieving racial equality. In this article, we investigate whether this U.S. racial progress narrative will extend to how the workforce views the effectiveness of organizational efforts surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion. Across three studies (N = 1,776), we test whether Black and White U.S. workers overestimate organizational racial progress in executive representation. We also examine whether these misperceptions, surrounding organizational progress, drive misunderstandings regarding the relative ineffectiveness of common organizational diversity policies. Overall, we find evidence that U.S. workers largely overestimate organizational racial progress, believe that organizational progress will naturally improve over time, and that these misperceptions of organizational racial progress may drive beliefs in the effectiveness of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Health equity tourism (HET) represents yet another example of how structural racism may manifest in our discipline. While not a new phenomenon, HET was coined recently in the context of medicine and is defined as investigators without the requisite experience or commitment to health equity work "parachuting into the field in response to timely and often temporary increases in public interest and resources" (Lett et al., 2022, p. 2). To determine how HET manifests in psychological science, we interviewed 18 health equity experts. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results revealed that HET manifests as a passing interest in health equity research, minimal engagement with communities under study or with health equity experts, and a failure to appreciate health equity scholarship as a specialty area of psychological science. Consequences of HET include poor quality research, harm to communities under study, funneling of resources away from health equity experts, frustration with and disengagement from the field and academia (leading to slow career advancements and attrition), and a maintenance of structural racism in psychological science. We provide recommendations for preventing the further manifestation of HET in psychology and for reducing the associated harms. These recommendations include education and training regarding the construct of HET, engagement in reflective practice, and a reconsideration of how research with minoritized populations is approached and evaluated. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Despite institutional efforts, growth in the number of faculty of color has largely plateaued, limiting research innovation and other benefits of diversity. In this article, we seek to understand structural barriers to faculty equity by (a) detailing a theory of epistemic exclusion within academia and (b) applying the theory of epistemic exclusion to the specific context of faculty departmental reviews of scholarly research (e.g., annual review, promotion and tenure review). Epistemic exclusion is a form of scholarly devaluation that is rooted in disciplinary biases about the qualities of rigorous research and identity-based biases about the competence of marginalized group members. These biases work in tandem to systemically and disproportionately exclude marginalized scholars (e.g., people of color, women) from the academy. In the context of faculty departmental reviews, epistemic exclusion can happen in formal systems of evaluation through criteria, metric, and application exclusion. It can also occur informally during interpersonal interactions and communications through legitimacy, contribution, and comprehension exclusion. In this article, we detail each of these types of exclusion, how they may interact with each other, and their consequences. We assert that epistemic exclusion threatens the diversification of academia and offer suggestions for equitable evaluation practices and reducing epistemic exclusion within higher education broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The call for psychological science to make amends for "causing harm to communities of color and contributing to systemic inequities" (American Psychological Association, 2022a) requires a critical acknowledgment that science itself is not neutral but a sociopolitical and ideological endeavor. From its inception, psychology used science to produce what was framed as incontrovertible "hard" evidence of racial hierarchy, infallible "proof" that white people (i.e., cismale, heteronormative, and economically resourced white people) were superior to Indigenous and Black people. We first trace the historical links between postpositivist epistemology and the ideology of white supremacy in psychological science, showing that although explicitly racist science (e.g., eugenics) has faded, the widely shared and strictly enforced epistemological norms about what is (and is not) "good" science remain entrenched. We then outline three epistemic imperatives to resist this harmful master narrative: (a) embrace humanizing epistemologies, (b) listen and learn from those who have been systematically left out of science, and (c) recognize resistance as normative and necessary. We discuss how these imperatives, rooted in critical, feminist, and antiracist scholarship, disrupt oppression and guide us toward doing science that does good. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The American Psychological Association's resolutions on dismantling systemic racism represent a watershed moment in our discipline, yet confusion remains as to what it means to "dismantle" racism given psychology's emphasis on changing individual beliefs. This submission will review the tension between "idealist" interpretations of critical race theory emphasizing individual beliefs and "realist" perspectives contextualizing racism within political economic arrangements. Psychology's adoption of an "idealist" framework will be shown to privilege a neoliberal project emphasizing individual change and symbolic performances of racial justice instead of structural changes benefitting people of color's material existence. Drawing on a decolonial critique of racial capitalism, we propose an alternative framework to challenge our discipline to broaden its political imagination by supporting evidence-based policies to dismantle racism as a structural and political force. This includes universal policies to reduce racial and economic inequality and population-specific policies such as reparations for African Americans predicted to stimulate economic growth. Urgently, the decolonial lens challenges psychology to theorize racism not as a primarily individual phenomenon but a political force that divides and conquers while enriching white economic elites. To fulfill the promises of the American Psychological Association's resolutions, we must directly challenge the political economic interests that benefit from racism and contribute to the common good as a form of "loving care." (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The enormous and ever-increasing problem of forced displacement warrants the attention of psychological science to play a role in leading efforts to address the needs of refugee communities. As a nation of immigrants, the United States has a long and complicated history of refugee admissions, including both generous and racist policies and sentiments. Examining the past can increase our capacity to transform the future. Taking conscious action to dismantle racism is of central importance to begin to make reparations and find pathways toward healing. Recognizing the instrumental role of systemic forces, three guideposts to support an antiracist foundation for research and practice in psychology are drawn from existing frameworks and applied to the case of refugees. These include (a) remembrance as an act of historical and sociopolitical analysis, (b) truth-telling to engage in critical self-reflection within the field of psychology, and (c) accompaniment alongside refugee communities to develop partnerships that reinforce their strengths and agency and directly benefit them. These guideposts underscore the importance of upholding community priorities and empowering refugee communities to reclaim their own cultural knowledge and strengths and to create effective and sustainable programs, with the potential for significant public health impact. As such, psychologists can play a critical role in transforming social systems over time and actively working to dismantle racism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Research titles with White samples, compared to research titles with samples of color, have been less likely to include the racial identity of the sample. This unequal writing practice has serious ramifications for both the history and future of psychological science, as it solidifies in the permanent scientific record the false notion that research with White samples is more generalizable and valuable than research with samples of color. In the present research, we experimentally tested the extent to which PhD students (63% White students, 27% students of color) engaged in this unequal writing practice, as well as the extent to which this practice might be disrupted by journal policies. In Study 1, PhD students who read about research conducted with a White sample, compared to those who read about the exact same research conducted with a Black sample, were significantly less likely to mention the sample's racial identity when generating research titles, keywords, and summaries. In Study 2, PhD students instructed to mention the racial identity of their samples, and PhD students instructed to not mention the identity of their samples (though to a lesser extent), were less likely to write about the White versus Black samples unequally. Across both studies, we found that PhD students were overall supportive of a policy to make the racial demographics of samples more transparent, believing that it would help to reduce racial biases in the field. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Although the American Psychological Association has taken a strong antiracism stance, scientific racism continues to be published in psychology journals and scholarly books. Recent articles claim that the folk categories of race are genetically meaningful divisions and that evolved genetic differences among races and nations are important for explaining immutable differences in cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime, sexual behavior, and wealth; all claims that are opposed by a strong scientific consensus to the contrary. These claims remain a serious source of harm through the naturalization of inequality and through support for the work of racial extremists. Contemporary "racial hereditarian research" claims to rest on modern genetics and evolutionary biology and to draw on their methods, such as genome-wide association studies. These new arguments fail to meet the evidentiary and ethical standards of these disciplines for the study of human variation. If psychology adopted standards from genetics and evolutionary biology, the current racial hereditarian work would be ineligible for publication. Actions that the American Psychological Association can take to deal with scientific racism are described. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

In today's sociopolitical climate (e.g., erasure of history, increase in anti-Asian violence, repeal of affirmative action), the fragility of minoritized alliances has become more prominently exposed. Cross-racial/ethnic solidarity work, which is broadly defined as joining a resistance through physical presence or activism against common oppression (Araiza, 2009), is an important response to this sociopolitical shift. Solidarity work between minoritized communities has ebbed and flowed throughout U.S. history with common goals and movements. However, solidarity work can be challenging because of the fractured alliances that have occurred within the historical context of racism and White supremacy. One initiative that is committed to action regarding this understudied area of cross-racial/ethnic solidarity is Dr. Kevin Cokley's Division 45 Presidential Task Force on Cross-Racial/Ethnic Solidarity: Toward Being an Accomplice. We developed a cross-racial/ethnic solidarity framework to explore historical and contemporary contexts (e.g., slavery/capitalism, genocide/colonialism, orientalism/war) that perpetuate "colonial splitting" among marginalized communities as well as mediating and moderating factors that can lead to either conflictual or coalitional cross-racial/ethnic tendencies. We hope that our working framework will provide a foundation for research, training, clinical, and community work toward an interdisciplinary approach to cross-racial/ethnic solidarity accompliceship. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).