In the midst of America’s racial reckoning, psychologists are playing a key role in rethinking bias, policing, and other issues. But psychologists say the field itself has its own systemic injustices to dismantle.
Steven O. Roberts, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Stanford University, and colleagues, for instance, reviewed nearly five decades of psychological research and found substantial racial inequality in publishing, research he hopes gains more traction as the field takes a closer look. Others in the field are shedding light on unfair practices in the hiring, training, and retention of faculty and practitioners of color. In some cases, racial inequities are even being addressed more broadly at the systemic level.
“Many disciplines are looking inward right now, and we are no exception,” says Roberts. “The idea is to review psychology, but not for the sake of tearing it down—for the sake of making it more equitable and inclusive.”
Racial- and ethnic-minority psychologists say these efforts are promising but that there’s a long way to go—and the discipline will need to face its shortcomings head-on, including governance and policies of organizations such as APA.
“Psychologists are human beings. We have implicit biases that operate outside of our awareness,” says Art Blume, PhD, a professor of psychology at Washington State University and president of APA’s Div. 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race). “An honest approach to anti-racism involves embracing the limits of our objectivity—in our science, practice, and pedagogy.”
Increasing diversity in research
Racial disparities in psychological research, including who receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and others, are starting to make headlines. But those findings aren’t new. In 1983, James Jones, PhD, now a professor emeritus of psychological and brain sciences and Africana studies at the University of Delaware, was already documenting psychology’s lack of focus on people of color (Jones, J. M., “The concept of race in the history of social psychologyopens in new window,” 1983).
“Scholars of color have been talking about this for decades, but people were not listening,” Roberts says.
Now, Roberts and his team have used a new approach—one that explores how the identities of editors, authors, and participants are all systematically connected. Across social, developmental, and cognitive psychology, they found that most editors and authors are White, and that these editors published fewer publications on race and racism, as well as publications with fewer participants of color (Perspectives on Psychological Scienceopens in new window, 2020).
“In psychology, almost everything we know is about White people, but Whites don’t represent the entirety of human capacity,” says Jones.
Roberts and his colleagues recommend that journals employ racially diverse editors and reviewers and establish task forces to regularly review diversity among authors and samples. In response, the Society for Research in Child Development is revamping its peer-review process to consider racial diversity among participants as a review criterion. Roberts hopes other associations and journals will follow suit.
Even the titles of psychological research studies show bias that favors White American samples. In a study of more than 5,000 articles, Bobby Cheon, PhD, an assistant professor in the Division of Psychology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and colleagues found that article titles were much more likely to mention race, ethnicity, and nationality when study samples were not White American (Social Psychological and Personality Scienceopens in new window, Vol. 11, No. 7, 2020). The implication is that studies of White Americans are often seen as representing normative or standard human behavior, while research on other groups produces findings that may be perceived as less generalizable or culturally constrained.
Cheon says journals should mandate that authors specify limitations to generalizing their findings in the body of a paper, whether they’re studying White American college students or people from Singapore. Journals should also highlight or incentivize studies that include racially and ethnically diverse samples to help encourage psychologists to recruit such populations.
“Our current incentive structure prioritizes research that people perceive to have a wider impact or be more generalizable, which may undermine efforts to increase equity and diversity among participants,” he says.
Anti-racism and healing for academics
While some psychologists are working to reform research and publishing, others are applying their research and skills toward education and healing.
“The movement for Black lives became so intense this year that we couldn’t escape from it,” says Della Mosley, PhD, an assistant professor of counseling psychology at the University of Florida (UF). “We asked ourselves: Is doing research really the best use of our abilities as psychologists right now? Is moving through academia like it’s business as usual even ethical while this war on Black bodies and spirits is taking place?”
Together with a doctoral student, Pearis Bellamy, Mosley launched Academics for Black Survival and Wellnessopens in new window, an anti-racism and racial-healing movement grounded in Black feminist principles and Mosley’s theory, Critical Consciousness of Anti-Black Racism (Journal of Counseling Psychologyopens in new window, 2020). More than 15,000 academics, hailing from psychology, medicine, the fine arts, and other disciplines, attended the group’s workshops last summer.
The initiative offers healing for Black academics and education for their non-Black colleagues. Mosley and her team host a series of wellness activities for Black students and faculty, including self-care, financial planning, and mentorship. They also deliver extensive anti-racism training to non-Black academics, starting with an introduction to anti-Black racism, power analytics, and racial trauma. Other lessons cover the history of racism in the United States and the activist ally role that non-Black academics can play. About 2,000 participants have joined “accountability groups,” typically 10 members or fewer, to extend their anti-racism work after formal training ends, Bellamy says. For example, a non-Black accountability group at UF is helping amplify messages from the school’s Black Affairs programopens in new window across the student body.
Change from the top down
Universities are also increasingly prioritizing racial diversity in recruitment and admissions—and slowly, the makeup of psychology programs is changing. In 2019, 38% of psychology graduate students identified as people of color, up from 29% in 2009—and the share of tenured faculty and academic leaders of color is increasing (“The state of the psychology training pipeline and workforceopens in new window,” APA, 2018; “Racial/ethnic minority representation among the academic psychology workforce continues to increaseopens in new window,” APA, 2020)
But more work is needed to address the troubling leaky pipeline that results in dwindling numbers of psychologists of color retained at the doctoral and tenure-track levels, says Monnica Williams, PhD, ABPP, a clinical psychologist and the Canada research chair for mental health disparities at the University of Ottawa. Though 31% of psychology doctoral degrees are awarded to racial and ethnic minorities, only 18% of associate professors and 12% of full professors in psychology departments identify as people of color (“Psychology faculty salaries,” APA Center for Workforce Studies, 2018–2019).
Departments should create a formal retention plan and assign mentors to meet regularly with academics of color to discuss and address race-related issues, Williams says. Having more than one person of color among the faculty in a department is also key for creating a culture of support and diversity.
She also points to a need to better prepare clinicians of color for race-related challenges they may face—such as an encounter with a patient who holds racist views—which has been tougher to address because clinical practice tends to be more diffuse and individualized than academia.
“There’s very little specific training, literature, or even thought on how to prepare therapists of color in all professional aspects,” Williams says.
Clinicians of color should have access to mentors from their own racial or ethnic group, she says, which can aid in navigating professional hurdles.
At the systemic level, change remains a challenge—and many say change within APA needs to move faster. Williams calls for stricter accreditation rules that require psychology programs to employ tenure-track faculty of color and recruit and retain racial- and ethnic-minority students. Currently, APA-accredited programs must show systematic efforts to attract and retain students and faculty of color, but programs are not penalized for falling short because of factors that may not be under their control.
Other proposed solutions involve elevating the role of ethnic-minority psychological associations (EMPAs) within APA. Theopia Jackson, PhD, president of the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi), says each EMPA should have a decision-making role at APA, for instance by adding seats to the Council of Representatives—a change that would mean bylaws need to be amended. That requires a two-thirds consenting vote of membership, but members have rejected the measure in three separate votes in the past. It was voted on a fourth time in December 2020 with strong support from APA governance; the vote was not decided before Monitor press time.
“APA should leverage its power and influence to privilege the voices of [EMPAs] that are dedicated to promoting cultural ways of being,” Jackson says. For example, when addressing the needs of any ethnic group, APA should strategically include, consult, or defer to the science and scholarship of the respective ethnic psychological association.
Meanwhile, some institutional reforms have gained momentum in 2020. Blume launched Div. 45’s Warrior’s Path Task Force, charged with identifying barriers in APA’s governance, bylaws, and association rules that favor the status quo and harm psychologists of color.
Other institutions in the psychology field are facing their own racial reckoning. The National Latinx Psychological Associationopens in new window (NLPA) is working to hire a consultant on the Afro-Latinx experience who can help the organization center Blackness in its work. Changes will involve improving representation on the NLPA’s leadership council, updating the organization’s mission statement, and producing a special issue of the Journal of Latinx Psychologyopens in new window that will feature Afro-Latinx research.
“Social justice is so key to NLPA’s mission that we have to change the way our systems work,” says Andrea Romero, PhD, president of NLPA and vice provost for faculty affairs at the University of Arizona. “And we have to set it up in a way that will sustain anti-racist work in the future.”
“Issues of systemic racism have become more salient than ever before,” says Jones. “I believe that because those messages have become so potent in our minds and our society, psychologists will continue pressing to find ways to address it.”
