How is psychology biased?
By biased we mean the researchers, participants and thinking behind a study tend to be taken from a specific group of people. Overwhelmingly this group is White and Western, though psychology also tends to be by and on male, straight, non-disabled and middle class people.

This website’s focus is on the White, Western bias specifically. This is a well established finding in psychology.

For example Arnett (2008) analysed articles in 6 popular psychology journals published between 2003 to 2007. He found, consistently across the journals, that 73% of first authors, 74% of other authors, and 68% of samples were European American, and the results were consistent across journals (see Table 2 from 2007 journal samples)

Henrich and colleagues (2010) also analysed articles in popular psychology journals. The authors found that not only were samples predominantly American (68%) but they were also Western (93%) with the authors concluding that as these participants are “members of Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies, including young children, [they] are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans” (pg. 2).

Why is this bias a problem? 

There are three obvious problems with psychology’s Whiteness:

1. First, psychology’s White bias has allowed psychology to focus on issues more relevant to White Westerners. So for example, one group of psychologists, body image researchers, will criticize the fashion industry for its too-thin models but not that the models are nearly always White  or that the clothes the models are selling are often made by BME people in sweatshops (Jankowski, 2016).

2. Second, psychology has subdued BAME people’s rational responses to racism as irrational. Drapetomania is the classic example, a mental disorder that Black slaves were proposed to have should they try to run away. Similarly Dysaesthesia aethiopica was a mental disorder proposed to cause laziness in slaves. Predictably and depressingly the ‘cures’ for both were not mental health support for those affected but harsh treatment including whipping. Another example is the diagnosis of schizophrenia and forced incarceration in asylums of Black civil rights activists. As Jonathan Metzl ‘s analysis shows of 800 patient records incarcerated at Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane during the 1960s. Metzl found that psychiatrists would describe Black men and women as “paranoid against [their] doctors and the police” and would sometimes forcibly incarcerate them.

Martin Luther King Jr. commented upon this problem specifically when he addressed the American Psychological Association in 1967. In his speech he famously said:

There is a word in modern psychology which is now probably more familiar than any other word in psychology. It is the word: maladjusted…[But] there are some things in our social system that I’m proud to be maladjusted to…I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of lynch mobs; I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and discrimination; I never intend to become adjusted to the tragic inequalities of the economic system which will take necessity from the masses to give luxury to the classes….The salvation of our world lies in the hands of the maladjusted.

3. The third problem with this bias is psychology’s explicit racism. Psychology has a long history of designing and conducting research on intelligence in order to show that Black people were less intelligent than White people, for example. Indeed, as recently as 1990, the Psychologist (the official magazine of the British Psychological Society) published work by Phillippe Rushton who claimed that Black people or ‘Negroids’ were less intelligent, less mentally stable and more aggressive than White people or ‘Caucasoids’.

Following the #WhyIsMyCurriculumWhite movement, we acknowledge that psychology needs to diversify itself. This website aims to be a small step towards doing that. For an overview of BME psychology see here.

Why do you call psychological work by BME people: BME psychology? BME refers to Black Asian Minoritzed Ethnic and seeks to serve as a proxy to identify those disadvantaged by structural racism against those privileged by it (white people).

For many BME psychologists, there is no such thing as ‘BME psychology’. The psychology done by psychologists who happen to be BME does not necessarily differ to that done by a psychologist who is not. Both BME and white psychologists have done good and bad psychological work. We do not mean to imply that a psychologists’ ‘race’ should be the defining factor about their work. Nor that their work will be inherently anti-racist or unique in any other way. There is a danger in ‘othering’ psychologists who happen to be BME. We  must avoid this.

Standpoint theory by Sandra Harding, however, identifies that an individual’s social location often gives them a perspective about the world (e.g., a oppression) that others of different social locations do not have. As Grey Passion writes:

Harding argues that marginalized people are in a privileged position to access “objective truth” (she writes about science), because marginalized groups learn the dominant viewpoint while experiencing its limitations, and hence are in the best position to see its limitations.

Therefore psychologists who are BME are more likely than white psychologists to know 1) the limitations of psychology including in explaining all people’s behaviour (and not just White, westerner’s), psychology’s historical and explicit racism and psychology’s current poor conceptualization of it and 2) the workings, breadth and depth of racism. Some BME psychologists agree with this (e.g., Association of Black Psychologists which was founded in 1968 (pg. 319): “Members of the Association have pledged themselves to the realization that they are Black people first and psychologists second”).

We believe this knowledge is not exclusive to BME people, nor is it necessarily the preserve of all BME people. Nonetheless we feel it is crucial to the progress of our discipline and fair that we attend more to BME psychological work. 

On top of this, psychologists who are BME are under represented in the discipline of psychology. On a surface level this bias can be seen in the sheer predominance of white (and male) authors in our curriculum reading lists. More deeply, this bias manifests in a psychology that centers issues more relevant to Westerners over non-Westerners and eschews anti-racism.

Therefore we believe that psychology by BME people needs more attention in psychology. We believe this website is a small step in bringing this to attention and that the shorthand ‘bme psychology’ is a necessary step to do this.

Why do you say Western/non-Western? Whilst we acknowledge that the Western/non-Western divide is problematic (for example in not acknowledging Australasia’s wealth) we reason it is a useful proxy to acknowledge the greater wealth and dominance (e.g., in colonization) of certain continents (in particular North America, parts of, but not all, of Europe etc) over others (especially Africa, South America, parts of Asia). Alternative terms for this divide are between the Global North and Global South, or developed and developing but we feel the former terms are currently more accessible.

Isn’t racism a bigger, broader system than curriculum bias? Yes. This project is only a ‘drop in the ocean’ with regards to tackling racism in HE. More action is needed. We point to resources that do acknowledge the scale of the problem on the resources page (Leeds Uni Have a Tackling Racism in HE kit we link to) and urge lecturers to get involved in their Race Equality Forums and initiatives to contribute to wider anti-racism in HE. 

Access to higher education is a class issue as much as it is a race issue isn’t it? We agree that class is also a barrier to HE and overlaps heavily with racism. This can drive curriculum whiteness. Specifically, curriculums may not be white because lecturers wish to deliberately exclude BME authors but rather driven by BME people’s greater chance of poverty, greater barriers to welfare systems etc. which make access to higher education and to the discipline more difficult. The reasons here are complex and intersect with class heavily. Nonetheless, despite these significant barriers, good work by BAME and/or anti-racist psychologists exists and is currently overlooked. Our project focuses on highlighting this.

Isn’t the BME author repository akin to racial profiling? 

We have thought about this for a long time. We feel the archive is defensible for three reasons. Firstly because if someone is not comfortable having their name listed on the archive they are welcome to have it removed by contacting us. Secondly, we believe lecturers, students and people in general are already racially coding people anyway. For example, depressingly, one study found that CVs with ‘muslim sounding names’ are less likely to be invited to interview than ‘anglo sounding names’ despite both CVs being identical (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-38751307). Critical Race Theorists (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001) argue that it is essential we forgo colourblindness in order to undo racism i.e., to let go of the idea that everyone is equal and that the world operates as if we don’t see race. They argue we must be race conscious, identifying who is disadvantaged by racism and who advantaged, in order to undo it. Our website is using this existing racial coding to try to subvert a White, Western dominated curriculum. Currently this seems to be the case (96% of our curriculum was by White authors in 2015-16 on the BSc programme, despite as the website shows, there being lots of good work by BME authors that could fill our knowledge gap).

Isn’t it wrong to exclude good work just because it is written by white authors? We agree. As it is also wrong to exclude good work just because it is by a BME author. Currently evidence suggests the latter is happening. Nonetheless we aren’t looking for white authors to be bumped off reading lists. We’re looking to facilitate staff to consider the knowledge gap their curriculum may have with particular respect to the global population/the workings of racism and to amend the curriculum in response to this if necessary. It may be that staff do this using additional white authors (e..g., we even recommend some white authors on the anti-racist works tabs of the website including David Gillborn). 

Why is this project led by white people? What consulting with BME people have you done?  This project began in 2015. For the first year we were grateful that Leeds Beckett University’s Staff Race Equality Forum extensively consulted on the project. In particular we are particularly grateful to Professor Kevin Hylton, a critical race theorist, who has been heavily involved in the project throughout. In our first year, we held open meetings, published minutes and shared resources for anyone to access and put various call outs for anyone to join the project should they wish. We conducted focus groups with BME students about the project and recognized their contribution with £20 vouchers each. Although we do have project members who are BME, we acknowledge that the core group working on the project now  are White and thus do not have lived experience of racism. Nonetheless, we feel this work of undoing racism in our curriculum should not only fall to those who are directly affected by it. We continue to consult the expertise of BAME anti-racists, including by reviewing appropriate anti-racist research (see resources) and involving BAME students in our outputs. Finally, we welcome input and help with this project particularly those with expertise in this. 

How can I help? We would be grateful for your help.

1. If you know of a BME psychology or anti-racism work, please list in here in the archive.
2. If you have teaching materials that can be used to diversify the curriculum (see examples here) which you are happy to share please email g.jankowski@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
3. If you know of any reports on anti racism in higher education or other resources you wish to share (that are not listed here) please email g.jankowski@leedsbeckett.ac.uk