Pushing Back Against the Microaggression Pushback in Academic Psychology: Reflections on a Concept-Creep Paradox
Pushing Back Against the Microaggression Pushback in Academic Psychology: Reflections on a Concept-Creep Paradox
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DOI：
10.1177/1745691621991863
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发表时间：
2021-09-01
影响因子：
12.6
通讯作者：
Hodson, Gordon
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Hodson, Gordon
与 2020 年代相呼应的是，2020 年代伊始，种族紧张局势愈演愈烈。 “黑人生命也是命”运动充满活力，呼吁倾听黑人关于日常歧视的声音，并对社会正义进展缓慢表示失望。然而，心理科学家只发表了几篇关于种族微侵犯的观点文章，主要是反对意见，而且实证数据少得惊人。在这里，我记录了与学术界对微侵犯的抵制相一致的三种心理学趋势：概念蠕变的担忧，特别是那些关于扩大伤害概念的担忧；道德判断中右倾价值观的扩展（道德基础理论）；强调偏见的对称性，政治左派被认为对右倾目标（例如富人、警察）有同样的偏见，就像右派对左倾目标（例如黑人、妇女、LGBT+人群）有偏见一样。心理科学家忽视了权力动态，偏离了理解和消除对弱势群体的偏见的使命，导致研究人员分心且没有能力解决微侵犯概念。一个明显的蠕变悖论，要求减少（例如，伤害）和扩大（例如，自由主义偏见，保守的道德基础）概念，对偏见研究提出了严峻的挑战。我讨论了心理学需要更好地捕捉黑人经历并“如实讲述”，否则就有可能成为一门无关的研究学科。
Echoing the 1960s, the 2020s opened with racial tensions boiling. The Black Lives Matter movement is energized, issuing pleas to listen to Black voices regarding day-to-day discrimination and expressing frustrations over the slow progress of social justice. However, psychological scientists have published only several opinion pieces on racial microaggressions, primarily objections, and strikingly little empirical data. Here I document three trends in psychology that coincide with the academic pushback against microaggressions: concept-creep concerns, especially those regarding expanded notions of harm; the expansion of right-leaning values in moral judgments (moral foundations theory); and an emphasis on prejudice symmetry, with the political left deemed equivalently biased against right-leaning targets (e.g., the rich, police) as the right is against left-leaning targets (e.g., Black people, women, LGBT+ people). Psychological scientists have ignored power dynamics and have strayed from their mission to understand and combat prejudice against disadvantaged populations, rendering researchers distracted and ill-equipped to tackle the microaggression concept. An apparent creep paradox, with calls to both reduce (e.g., harm) and expand (e.g., liberal prejudices, conservative moral foundations) concepts, poses a serious challenge to research on prejudice. I discuss the need for psychology to better capture Black experiences and to "tell it like it is" or risk becoming an irrelevant discipline of study.