When a federally funded task force of community health providers and cross-disciplinary researchers in Lowell, Massachusetts, was tasked with eradicating bedbugs from a low-income housing community, one provider had a simple solution: sealed mattress covers. But Linda Silka, PhD, a social and community psychologist working with the group, organized a focus group with residents—and soon found a problem with the task force’s plan. Most residents in the building did not even own mattresses.
“We can use our research to come up with wonderful solutions, but if they don’t work for these people in this context, we’ve solved the wrong problem,” said Silka, now a senior fellow at the University of Maine’s Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions.
An increasing number of psychologists are asking that very question: Has the field been solving some of the wrong problems? Amidst efforts to “give psychology away,” will the public need what psychologists have to give? In a push to remain relevant, reestablish trust and legitimacy, and enact tangible change, a growing contingent of public psychologists across the field is advocating for a paradigm shift.
[Related: Infusing public psychology into your work]
Public psychology, defined as psychological science and practice for and with the public, requires dissolving barriers between psychologists and the societies in which they operate. It challenges all psychologists—not just those in community or applied settings—to center social problems in their work, to engage directly with the groups they aim to serve, and even to reconceptualize what constitutes “good” or “legitimate” science.
“If we can overcome our internal biases about what research is valid and what isn’t, that’s the first hurdle,” said Asia Eaton, PhD, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Power, Women, and Relationships Lab at Florida International University. “We’ve got to move beyond [journal] impact factor to thinking about impact on the people we serve.”
Psychologists say this is a critical moment for action. Structural inequities in health care and education, large-scale civil rights movements, concerns about global climate change, and attacks on democracy around the world can all benefit from the social, behavioral, and methodological expertise the field has to offer.
“We have an opportunity to fulfill our ethical obligation as psychologists to promote health and well-being in a much broader way than we’ve traditionally conceptualized our role,” said Michèle Schlehofer, PhD, a professor of psychology at Salisbury University in Maryland. “It would be great if we don’t miss this opportunity to have such a deep, substantial impact.”
Centering social problems
The idea of socially engaged psychology is not new. Informed by activists and scientists alike, public psychology also draws on the tenets of applied, community, and liberation psychology, which aims to understand and address oppression.
“Over the years, different parts of the field have reckoned with the question of how we can do more for society with our science,” said psychologist Neil Lewis Jr., PhD, an assistant professor of communication and social behavior at Cornell University.
The effort also builds on more recent movements, including the Citizen Psychologist initiative, launched in 2018 by former APA president Jessica Henderson Daniel, PhD, ABPP, as well as renewed efforts to “give psychology away.” But where citizen psychology encourages individual scientists to enact change in their communities through leadership and engagement, public psychology shifts the focus to team science and collective action.
“[Public psychology] includes the public as motivating research questions and shaping research—through critiquing, codesigning, coauthoring—and as the major beneficiaries of research,” Eaton said.
She and her colleagues conceptualized public psychology through their work with APA’s Division 9 (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues), then coordinated a special issue of American Psychologist, which is available for free online, to launch the initiative last fall.
Public psychology encompasses four key principles. By design, psychologists center social problems in their research, teaching, and service activities. They actively involve the public in their work, from development through dissemination; they also find ways to communicate psychological knowledge outside of the scientific sphere. Finally, public psychology requires a profound reconsideration of what constitutes psychology. What counts as good work—and who gets to decide?
Embracing public psychology involves looking critically at traditional approaches to psychology, “which can marginalize, devalue, or even stigmatize publicly focused work, especially community-based partnerships that don’t fit neatly into our rules of ‘good’ psychological science—experimental designs, randomized controlled trials, and so forth,” said Patrick Grzanka, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who sits on the board of several social justice organizations and engages regularly with the public through his work.
The product of public psychology research might be qualitative data that help a local nonprofit canvass more effectively, for example, rather than only a peer-reviewed journal article. Through a partnership with Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthoodopens in new window, Grzanka collected data on deep values canvassing, a strategy focused on empathic dialogue instead of persuasion, to help the organization learn how the technique changed attitudes not only among voters but even among the canvassers themselves.
Working hand in hand with advocacy organizations can even lead directly to policy change. Because of her past research on intimate partner violence, Eaton was approached by the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI)opens in new window, a Miami-based nonprofit that works to combat cyber sexual abuse. CCRI needed data on the nonconsensual sharing of intimate photos to strengthen its appeals to state legislators and wanted the support of an experienced researcher.
Working collaboratively with the organization, Eaton designed and delivered a survey. At CCRI’s request, she adjusted language throughout the survey (for example, clarifying that “sexually explicit” images need not include nudity if they depict a sex act) so that the questions would make sense to victims. CCRI also asked her to add a question about how photos were shared (via email, social media, text message, apps, websites, DVDs, or on paper). At the time, only internet-based dissemination was illegal under Florida state law.
The survey revealed that nonconsensual photo sharing was most often done by text message. It led to a journal article (Psychology of Violence, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2020opens in new window), a white paper (PDF, 2.9MB)opens in new window that was distributed to policymakers and activists, and a change to Florida state law: It is no longer legal to share intimate images by text message without consent.
That same approach—centering a specific social problem and engaging directly with the people who are affected—can be applied by psychologists in virtually any setting or subspecialty. Already, public psychologists are spurring change in health, educational, environmental, social, developmental, and other contexts (Raque, T. L., et al., American Psychologist, Vol. 76, No. 8, 2021opens in new window; Ozer, E. J., et al., American Psychologist, Vol. 76, No. 8, 2021opens in new window).
“Anybody can be a public psychologist,” Eaton said. “It’s really just about rethinking what we prioritize, what we reward, and what is worthy of pursuit.”
Communication and engagement
Embedding the perspectives of diverse people and communities at the core of the discipline requires psychologists to enter partnerships with humility, Schlehofer said. Even psychologists with decades of experience designing controlled studies and collecting data can recognize what they do not know—and get comfortable asking others for help.
In Silka’s case, that approach has led to some fascinating partnerships and breakthroughs. She is currently facilitating meetings with those working in commercial lobstering in Maine to explore how new environmental regulations are affecting their livelihood and to understand their ideas about how rules should be made and followed.
“The lobstermen care so much about what they’re doing, but they’re angry because they feel that policymakers don’t understand their work,” Silka said.
That sort of community engagement not only draws on the wisdom of people traditionally marginalized by science, it sends the message that their opinions matter. When Lewis explored how non-White, low-resource communities feel about environmental issues, his participants welcomed the opportunity because, in their words, “no one usually cares what [we] think” (MethodsX, Vol. 7, 2020opens in new window).
Scientists may have the desire to engage more with the public, Lewis said, but many do not feel prepared, trained, or incentivized to do so. In particular, psychologists receive little training on how to talk about their findings with diverse audiences, said Schlehofer.
“Many of us don’t communicate with the public, and when we do, it tends to be in a top-down, expert-level manner,” she said.
A researcher may contribute to a press release or promote their findings on Twitter, for example, but that communication often is not bidirectional. While social media can be a useful tool for starting conversations with harder-to-reach groups, there are plenty of other ways to “exist where other people exist,” said Rachel Dyer, who is pursuing a doctorate in counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
To complement her doctoral work on reproductive health legislation in Wisconsin, Dyer began volunteering for Exhale Pro-Voiceopens in new window, a confidential texting service that offers peer counseling to people who have had abortions (she is now the chair of the organization’s board of directors). In addition to partnering with organizations that align with personal interests, Dyer says psychologists can embed themselves (and their research) in the places they frequent. One idea: Organize a talk at a local feminist bookstore.
Lewis writes for several national media outlets, including FiveThirtyEightopens in new window, with a special focus on using social and behavioral science to help people understand current events, such as the debate about whether to teach kids about racismopens in new window. He also conveys scientific findings to policymakers to help them make informed decisions, including on how to safely reopen schools during the Covid-19 pandemic (“How schools can protect our children and their future when reopeningopens in new window,” The Brookings Institution, 2021).
To train researchers on how to forge relationships with legislative staff and provide legislators with actionable scientific evidence, Max Crowley, PhD, of Penn State University, and his colleagues developed and tested the Research-to-Policy Collaboration (RPC) model (American Psychologist, Vol. 76, No. 8, 2021opens in new window). RPC has already facilitated partnerships to advance treatment for substance use disorders, recruit and retain a diverse workforce of teachers, improve access to childcare, and more. (Learn more on the RPC websiteopens in new window.)
Rethinking psychological science
Though many psychologists want to pursue publicly engaged work, they may be afraid that doing so will harm their prospects for tenure or promotion. In social psychology, for example, the typical route to a successful career involves conducting online surveys or highly controlled lab experiments that produce “clean, isolated tests of psychological mechanisms,” Lewis said—the type of research that could end up in high-prestige journals, such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. But that sort of methodology often does not capture how social and structural factors affect real-world communities.
“There’s certainly a place for tightly controlled experimental studies, but they can’t be the only thing that we do,” Lewis said. “We have to make space for the rest, too, otherwise we get stuck in decades-long cycles before research findings become useful, if they ever do.”
Even basic research questions with a theoretical component can still involve and benefit the public, Eaton said. A researcher studying how learning multiple languages in childhood affects executive functioning later in life, for example, can do so through a public psychology lens. They might consult multilingual people in the design of the study and share research findings with policymakers with the power to fund or approve multilanguage learning programs.
Journals and funders can and should lead efforts to prioritize public psychology work, Lewis said. That may involve adjusting decision rules to require and incentivize recruiting more diverse samples—and to avoid devaluing research that relies on qualitative data, smaller sample sizes, and conditions that are less tightly controlled, because they often more effectively account for complex real-world social and structural forces. For example, journals could require authors to recruit samples that reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of the U.S. population (American Psychologist, Vol. 76, No. 8, 2021opens in new window).
Colleges and universities can also support faculty, students, and others who aim to conduct socially engaged science. That will likely require a more individualized approach to tenure, promotion, and evaluation, Eaton said. She and other public psychologists are working to encourage more institutions to recognize and reward efforts that lead to changes in local policy or public education rather than only prioritize such achievements as the number of articles published and citations those articles garner.
“There should be mechanisms in place to systematically assess community-based work that doesn’t necessarily result in traditional scholarly products—and make sure that work counts,” said Grzanka.
Increasingly, psychology graduate students and junior faculty are asking critical questions about the discipline, he said. They are insisting on training that centers issues of power and inequity—and many exclusively want to do work that advances the public good. Restructuring curricula accordingly, such as requiring training in multicultural psychology for all psychology doctoral students, can also ensure that students from diverse backgrounds continue to pursue training in psychology, Grzanka said.
Psychologists can adopt a public focus at any stage of their career; Silka started after she had tenure. Lewis recommends getting involved with organizations in your community or reaching out to your local health department, board of education, or community-based organizations. Simply start with the question: How can I help?
“So many of these organizations are swimming in data but don’t necessarily have the bandwidth or internal research capacity to use it,” he said. “Others would like to collect new data to guide their decisions but don’t know where to start. Working together, both parties can learn a lot.”
Public psychologists recognize that challenging entrenched ideals around research methods, publishing, and promotion will not be easy. But they believe that asking these tough questions—and shifting toward a more socially engaged science—is a professional obligation.
“Part of our responsibility as psychologists is to professionally evolve,” said Schlehofer. “We should be continually updating our knowledge base, not only in new research and theories, but also the practice of how we engage in psychology. We have to take it upon ourselves to learn new ways of doing.”
