Meaning-Change Through the Mistaken Mirror: On the Indeterminacy of “Wundt” and “Piaget” in Translation

What does a name mean in translation? Quine argued, famously, that the meaning of gavagai is indeterminate until you learn the language that uses that word to refer to its object. The case is similar with scientific texts, especially if they are older; historical. Because the meanings of terms can drift over time, so too can the meanings that inform experiments and theory. As can a life’s body of work and its contributions. Surely, these are also the meanings of a name; shortcuts to descriptions of the author who produced them, or of their thought (or maybe their collaborations). We are then led to wonder whether the names of scientists may also mean different things in different languages. Or even in the same language. This problem is examined here by leveraging the insights of historians of psychology who found that the meaning of “Wundt” changed in translation: his experimentalism was retained, and his Völkerpsychologie lost, so that what Wundt meant was altered even as his work—and his name—informed the disciplining of Modern Psychology as an experimental science. Those insights are then turned here into a general argument, regarding meaning-change in translation, but using a quantitative examination of the translations of Piaget’s books from French into English and German. It is therefore Piaget who has the focus here, evidentially, but the goal is broader: understanding and theorizing “the mistaken mirror” that reflects only what you can think to see (with implications for replication and institutional memory).

Reducing Prejudice Through Promoting Cross-Group Friendships

Around the globe, individuals are affected by exclusion, discrimination, and prejudice targeting individuals from racial, ethnic, and immigrant backgrounds as well as crimes based on gender, nationality, and culture (United Nations General Assembly, 2016). Unfortunately, children are often the targeted victims (Costello & Dillard, 2019). What is not widely understood is that the intergroup biases underlying systemic racism start long before adulthood with children displaying notable signs of intergroup bias, sometimes before entering grade school. Intergroup bias refers to the tendency to evaluate members of one’s own group more favorably than someone not identified with one’s group and is typically associated with prejudicial attitudes. Children are both the victims and the perpetrators of bias. In this review, we provide evidence of how biases emerge in childhood, along with an analysis of the significant role of intergroup friendships on enhancing children’s well-being and reducing prejudice in childhood. The review focuses predominantly on the context of race, with the inclusion of several other categories, such as nationality and religion. Fostering positive cross-group friendships in childhood helps to address the negative long-term consequences of racism, discrimination, and prejudice that emerges in childhood and continues through to adulthood.

The AMIGAS Model: Reconciling Prejudice Reduction and Collective Action Approaches Through a Multicultural Commitment in Intergroup Relations

Social psychology’s search for ways to address intergroup inequality has grappled with two approaches that have been considered incompatible: (a) the prejudice reduction approach, that argues that changing individual negative attitudes will undermine the basis for discrimination and lead to intergroup harmony; and (b) the collective action approach, that argues that social protest and activism can improve the position of disadvantaged groups. The problem is that efforts toward prejudice reduction may serve to suppress genuine efforts to change. We propose the Achieving Multicultural Integration of Groups Across Society (AMIGAS) model, in which a multicultural commitment is proposed as a driver of both improved intergroup evaluations and promotion of collective action for reduced inequality, especially in contexts where there are conditions for a respectful intercultural dialogue. The AMIGAS model is a theoretical advance in the field of intergroup relations and a basis for implementing effective egalitarian policies and practices.

Developmental Prevention of Prejudice: Conceptual Issues, Evidence-Based Designing, and Outcome Results

This article reviews conceptual and empirical issues on the developmental prevention of prejudice in childhood and adolescence. Developmental prejudice prevention is defined as interventions that intentionally change and promote intergroup attitudes and behavior by systematically recognizing theories and empirical results on the development of prejudice in young people. After presenting a general conception of designing evidence-based interventions, we will discuss the application of this model in the field of developmental prejudice prevention. This includes the legitimation, a developmental concept of change, and the derivation of intervention content and implementation. Finally, we summarized recent evaluations results by reviewing meta-analytical evidence of programs and discuss important issues of future research and practice.

Ethnic-Racial Identity as a Source of Resilience and Resistance in the Context of Racism and Xenophobia

How youth come to understand their social identities and their relation to others’ identities can have important implications for the future of our society. In this article, we focus on how ethnic-racial identities (ERI) can serve to promote (or hinder) collective well-being. We first describe the nature of change in ethnic-racial identities over the course of childhood and adolescence. We then delineate three pathways by which youths’ ERI can be a mechanism for productive intergroup relations and thereby collective well-being as a: (a) basis for understanding differences and finding commonalities across groups; (b) promotive and protective resource for marginalized youth; and (c) springboard for recognizing and disrupting marginalization. This article concludes with how youths’ ERI can be nurtured into a source of resilience and resistance in the face of racism and xenophobia. Moreover, we urge researchers to consider the role ERI plays in guiding youth to challenge and resist marginalization.

The Role of the Family for Racism and Xenophobia in Childhood and Adolescence

Racism and xenophobia are not just the problems of the adult world; As systems of beliefs, practices, and policies, racism and xenophobia influence children’s perceptions and experiences at early ages. Because families can be significant sources of information regarding race and ethnicity, we focus on the family to understand the broader context of racism and xenophobia in childhood and adolescence. In this paper, we first provide an overview of research conducted among BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and ethnic/religious minority families that has focused on family ethnic–racial socialization to support children and adolescents’ capabilities for resisting racism and xenophobia. We then review research conducted among white and ethnic/religious majority families that has mainly taken an intergroup relations perspective and has examined associations between parents’ and children’s ethnic–racial attitudes, biases, and prejudice. Finally, we discuss the role of family for racism and xenophobia through the lens of family ethnic–racial socialization and intergroup relations perspectives, highlight areas that are currently understudied, and offer recommendations concerning future research directions.

Back to the Source: Moving Upstream in the Curricular Rivers of Coloniality

This article shares choices made as part of an introductory decoloniality curriculum in a non-clinical community psychology M.A./PhD program where the authors are faculty members. We focus on the basics of decoloniality and decolonial pedagogies in two first-year foundational psychology courses: one course on implications of decoloniality for studying differing psychological paradigms, ontologies, and epistemologies, particularly relational ontologies that might reframe community environments, and another course on implications of decoloniality for post-humanist and indigenous qualitative research methodologies. We present currently emerging forms of theory, content, pedagogy, dialogue, artivism, and methodology in process in our work, as well as responses from students and our own reflections.

General Psychology Otherwise: A Decolonial Articulation

Critics have faulted the project of general psychology for conceptions of general truth that (1) emphasize basic processes abstracted from context and (2) rest on a narrow foundation of research among people in enclaves of Eurocentric modernity. Informed by these critiques, we propose decolonial perspectives as a new scholarly imaginary for general psychology Otherwise. Whereas hegemonic articulations of general psychology tend to ignore life in majority-world communities as something peripheral to its knowledge project, decolonial perspectives regard these communities as a privileged site for general understanding. Indeed, the epistemic standpoint of such communities is especially useful for understanding the coloniality inherent in modern individualist lifeways and the fundamental relationality of human existence. Similarly, whereas hegemonic articulations of general psychology tend to impose particular Eurocentric forms masquerading as general laws, the decolonial vision for general psychology Otherwise exchanges the universalized particular for a more pluralistic (or pluriversal) general.

Understanding Intergroup Relations in Childhood and Adolescence

There are various theoretical approaches for understanding intergroup biases among children and adolescents. This article focuses on the social identity approach and argues that existing research will benefit by more fully considering the implications of this approach for examining intergroup relations among youngsters. These implications include (a) the importance of self-categorization, (b) the role of self-stereotyping and group identification, (c) the relevance of shared understandings and developing ingroup consensus, and (d) the importance of coordinated action for positive and negative intergroup relations. These implications of the social identity approach suggest several avenues for investigating children’s and adolescents’ intergroup relations that have not been fully appreciated in the existing literature. However, there are also limitations to the social identity approach for the developmental understanding and some of these are discussed.

How to True Psychology’s Objects

Psychology’s current crisis attends most visibly to perceived problems with statistical models, methods, publication practices, and career incentives. Rarely is close attention given to the objects of inquiry—to ontological matters—yet the crisis-related literature does features statements about the nature of psychology’s objects. Close analysis of the ontological claims reveals discrepant understandings: some researchers assume objects to be stable and singular while others posit them to be dynamic and complex. Nevertheless, both views presume the objects under scrutiny to be real. The analysis also finds each of these ontological claims to be associated not only with particular method prescriptions but also with distinct notions of the scientific self. Though both take the scientific self to be objective, one figures the scientist as not always a rational actor and, therefore, requiring some behavior regulation, while the other sees the scientist as largely capable of self-governing sustained through painstakingly acquired expertise and self-control. The fate of these prevalent assemblages of object, method, and scientific self remains to be determined, yet as conditions of possibility they portend quite different futures. Following description of the assemblages, the article ventures a futuristic portrayal of the scientific practices they each might engender.