This special issueopens in new window of American Psychologist seeks to answer important questions on cultural change and encourage psychologists to consider cultural change in their own research. Guest Editors Michael Varnum and Igor Grossman share their key takeaways.
What is the special issue about?
Our goal is to make psychological scientists and practitioners more sensitive to cultural change. In pursuit of this goal, our special issue addresses questions like, How have societies shifted over time? Why have these changes occurred? What are the broader dynamics, rules, and principles by which cultural change happens? What does the future hold? This special issue brings together innovative theories and methods from psychology and other disciplines to provide initial answers to these important questions.
What is the significance of the issue?
Psychologists have largely either ignored cultural change or treated it as a source of noise. This special issue makes the case that it is time to take seriously the notions that societies are not static; that cultural diversity is about not just the present moment but also variations over time; and that values, norms, attitudes, the meanings of concepts, and patterns of reproductive behavior can and indeed have shifted substantially over the past several decades. That is not an exhaustive list, but it should provide a sense of the breadth of the phenomena we are talking about. Taking cultural change seriously has a wide range of implications for psychologists engaged in different areas of research and practice, ranging from the role of cross-temporal considerations for replication studies, to cross-cultural comparisons, to the understanding how psychological constructs and their meaning evolve over time.
Tell us about a few key takeaways.
Human societies do not stand still. They change in important ways that can have a profound impact on psychological phenomena and vice versa. Documenting such shifts is important; so too is understanding their causes and mechanisms. Studying cultural change can also help psychologists develop better tools for forecasting psychological consequences of events like the current pandemic. Factoring in cultural change can enable psychologists to become better at both prediction and explanation. In many ways, the psychological study of cultural change is still an emerging field, and it is important that the development of field-specific standards for rigor and reproducibility be completed.
What are some practical implications of the articles featured in the issue?
The articles in this issue contain insights that may be applied well beyond the academy. Explanations regarding how the latest ideas and minority opinions spread in different types of societies and research documenting shifts in prejudice in various regions of the United States might be useful for activists, politicians, and others trying to change social norms and attitudes. Findings linking population density to levels of fertility over time might be useful to those in the public health sector as well as to policy makers. New work showing a relationship between housing markets and shifts in personality will likely be of interest to urban planners and city governments. Finally, a study regarding how the amount of novel scientific publication affects the length of time a given article is likely to persist in collective memory may have implications for publishers and science funding agencies.
Note: This article is in the Core Psychology topic area. View more articles in the Core Psychology topic area.