Transnational psychology

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Transnational psychology is a branch of psychology that applies postcolonial, context-sensitive cultural psychology, and transnational feminist lenses to the field of psychology to study, understand, and address the impact of colonization, imperialism, and globalization, and to counter the Western bias in the field of psychology. [1] [2] [3] Transnational psychologists partner with members of local communities to examine the unique psychological characteristics of groups without regard to nation-state boundaries.

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Transnational Psychology People-World-Map-Prismatic-2.png
Transnational Psychology

As articulated by Kurtis, Adams, Grabe, Else-Quest, Collins, Machizawa and Rice, transnational psychology aims to counter the Western bias in the field of psychology. [4] Kurtis and Adams proposed applying the principles of transnational feminism and using a context-sensitive cultural psychology lens to reconsider, de-naturalize, and de-universalize psychological science. [1] They identified people in the non-Western, "Majority World" (areas where the majority of the world's population lives) as valuable resources for revising traditional psychological science. [1] Transnational psychology is essentially synonymous with transnational feminist psychology. [4] Both transnational feminism and transnational psychology are concerned with how globalization and capitalism affect people across nations, races, genders, classes, and sexualities. The transnational academic paradigm draws from postcolonial feminist theories, which emphasize how colonialist legacies have shaped and continue to shape the social, economic, and political oppression of people across the globe. It rejects the idea that people from different regions have the same subjectivities and recognizes that global capitalism has created similar relations of exploitation and inequality. A 2015 Summit organized by Machizawa, Collins, and Rice further developed transnational psychology [5] by inspiring presentations and publications that applied transnational feminist principles to psychological topics. [3] [6] [7]

International psychology, global psychology, and cross-cultural psychology share the common goal of making psychology more universal and less ethnocentric in character, whereas transnational psychology is concerned with uncovering the particularities of the psychology of groups without regard to nation-state boundaries and is opposed to universalization.

Transnational intersectionality

Grabe and Else-Quest proposed the concept of "transnational intersectionality" that expands current conceptions of intersectionality, adding global forces to the analysis of how oppressive institutions are interconnected. [2] In addition, Bhatia believes that a transnational cultural psychology is needed examine the psychology of diasporas, who are impacted by globalization and consequently have many "homes," languages, and selves. [8] This movement asks to critique the ideologies of traditional white, classist, western models of psychology practices from an intersectional approach and how these connect with labor, theoretical applications, and analytical practice on a geopolitical scale.

WEIRD bias

Scholars have noted that most of the articles in American Psychological Association journals are about largely white, US populations, despite U.S. citizens only constituting about 5% of the world's population. Arnett (2008) pointed out that psychologists have no grounds for assuming psychological processes are universal and generalizing research findings to the rest of the global population. [9] Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan (2010) noted that although only 1/8 of people worldwide live in regions that fall into the WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) societal classification, 60–90% of psychology studies are performed on participants from these areas. [10] [3] They gave examples of results that differ significantly between people from WEIRD and tribal cultures, including the Müller-Lyer illusion. Arnett (2008), Altmaier and Hall (2008), and Morgan-Consoli et al. (2018) all view the Western bias in research and theory as a serious problem considering psychologists are increasingly applying psychological principles developed in WEIRD regions in their research, clinical work, and consultation with populations around the world. [9] [11] [12] In 2018, Rad, Martingano & Ginges stated that nearly a decade after Henrich et al.'s paper, over 80% of the samples used in studies published in the journal, Psychological Science, were from the WEIRD population. Their analysis also showed that several studies did not fully disclose the origin of their samples, and the authors offer a set of recommendations to editors and reviewers to reduce the WEIRD bias. [13]

See also

Related Research Articles

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Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the relationship between mental states and social situations, studying the social conditions under which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur, and how these variables influence social interactions.

Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppression; and the relationships between power and gender as they intersect with other identities and social locations such as race, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, and disability.

Postcolonial feminism is a form of feminism that developed as a response to feminism focusing solely on the experiences of women in Western cultures and former colonies. Postcolonial feminism seeks to account for the way that racism and the long-lasting political, economic, and cultural effects of colonialism affect non-white, non-Western women in the postcolonial world. Postcolonial feminism originated in the 1980s as a critique of feminist theorists in developed countries pointing out the universalizing tendencies of mainstream feminist ideas and argues that women living in non-Western countries are misrepresented.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intersectionality</span> Theory of discrimination

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Transnationalism is a research field and social phenomenon grown out of the heightened interconnectivity between people and the receding economic and social significance of boundaries among nation states.

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International or global psychology is an emerging branch of psychology that focuses on the worldwide enterprise of psychology in terms of communication and networking, cross-cultural comparison, scholarship, practice, and pedagogy. Often, the terms international psychology, global psychology, transnational psychology, and cross-cultural psychology are used interchangeably, but their purposes are subtly and importantly different: Global means worldwide, international means across and between nations, transnational means to transcend the nation-state, cross-cultural means across cultures. In contrast, the term "multicultural" is more often used to refer to ethnic and other cultural differences existing within a given nation rather than to global or international comparisons.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oliva Espín</span> Cuban American clinical psychologist

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Kurtiş, Tuğçe; Adams, Glenn (21 August 2015). "Decolonizing Liberation: Toward a Transnational Feminist Psychology". Journal of Social and Political Psychology. 3 (1): 388–413. doi: 10.5964/jspp.v3i1.326 . hdl: 1808/21823 . ISSN   2195-3325.
  2. 1 2 Grabe, Shelly; Else-Quest, Nicole M. (June 2012). "The Role of Transnational Feminism in Psychology: Complementary Visions". Psychology of Women Quarterly. 36 (2): 158–161. doi:10.1177/0361684312442164. ISSN   0361-6843. S2CID   53585351.
  3. 1 2 3 Transnational psychology of women : expanding international and intersectional approaches. Collins, Lynn H.,, Machizawa, Sayaka,, Rice, Joy K. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. ISBN   1-4338-3124-4. OCLC   1090706835.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  4. 1 2 "Introduction to transnational psychology". Transnational psychology of women : expanding international and intersectional approaches (PDF). Collins, Lynn H.,, Machizawa, Sayaka,, Rice, Joy K. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. ISBN   1-4338-3124-4. OCLC   1090706835.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  5. ↑ "Psychology of Women International Psychology of Women Summit". Sexuality, Women, & Gender Project. 23 September 2015. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
  6. ↑ Psychological Practice with Women : Guidelines, Diversity, Empowerment. Enns, Carolyn Zerbe., Rice, Joy K., Nutt, Roberta Lynn, 1944– (1st ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. 2015. ISBN   978-1-4338-1813-4. OCLC   889759649.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  7. ↑ Integrating multiculturalism and intersectionality into the psychology curriculum : strategies for instructors. Mena, Jasmine A.,, Quina, Kathryn. Washington, DC. ISBN   978-1-4338-3008-2. OCLC   1060181008.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  8. ↑ Bhatia, Sunil (February 2010). "Review: Theorizing Indigenous Psychology: UICHOL KIM, KUO-SHU YANG, & KWANG-KUO HWANG (EDS.), Indigenous and Cultural Psychology: People in Context. New York: Springer, 2006. 518 pp. ISBN 978-0-387-28661-7 (hbk)". Theory & Psychology. 20 (1): 137–140. doi:10.1177/0959354309345640. ISSN   0959-3543. S2CID   144900847.
  9. 1 2 Arnett, Jeffrey J. (2008). "The neglected 95%: Why American psychology needs to become less American". American Psychologist. 63 (7): 602–614. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.63.7.602. ISSN   1935-990X. PMID   18855491.
  10. ↑ Henrich, Joseph; Heine, Steven J.; Norenzayan, Ara (June 2010). "The weirdest people in the world?". Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 33 (2–3): 61–83. doi:10.1017/S0140525X0999152X. hdl: 11858/00-001M-0000-0013-26A1-6 . ISSN   0140-525X. PMID   20550733. S2CID   219338876.
  11. ↑ Global promise: quality assurance and accountability in professional psychology. Hall, Judy E., Altmaier, Elizabeth M. New York: Oxford University Press. 2008. ISBN   978-0-19-530608-8. OCLC   174134048.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  12. ↑ Morgan-Consoli, Melissa L.; Inman, Arpana G.; Bullock, Merry; Nolan, Susan A. (July 2018). "Framework for competencies for U.S. psychologists engaging internationally". International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation. 7 (3): 174–188. doi:10.1037/ipp0000090. ISSN   2157-3891. S2CID   159028411.
  13. ↑ Rad, Mostafa Salari; Martingano, Alison Jane; Ginges, Jeremy (6 November 2018). "Toward a psychology of Homo sapiens : Making psychological science more representative of the human population". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (45): 11401–11405. Bibcode:2018PNAS..11511401R. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1721165115 . ISSN   0027-8424. PMC   6233089 . PMID   30397114.
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