New research found that many students, particularly those from minority backgrounds, noticed immediately when research didn’t include people like them.
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In my university classroom, when my students learn about the psychology of romantic relationships, they read studies conducted on white, heterosexual college students at American universities. When they turn to how children grow and develop, the samples look much the same: Western, educated, middle-class families. When they study why people follow orders even when they know they shouldn’t, the research again draws on the same narrow slice of humanity.
This is psychology’s dirty secret: For decades, the field has built its understanding of the human experience on research that excludes most humans. What this means for scientific validity has been debated for years, but the impact on students sitting in our classrooms has been ignored.
To answer this question, my colleagues and I went directly to the source. We held focus groups with undergraduate psychology students and asked what they noticed about who was being studied in the research their professors taught them. What they told us should worry anyone who cares about the future of science.
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In our newly published research, we found that many students, particularly those from minority backgrounds, noticed immediately when research didn’t include people who looked like them, loved like them, or came from families like theirs. And it affected them deeply. They described feeling frustrated, discouraged, even “disturbed.” Some said it made them doubt whether they belonged in the field; a few had already abandoned plans for a research career.
This is, ultimately, a problem for all of us. In recent years, psychology has made real efforts to diversify its ranks and broaden who gets studied, because a more diverse field produces better, more generalizable science. But those efforts face a quiet headwind: If students never see themselves reflected in psychological research, they may decide the field is not for them, before they ever enter the pipeline. The progress psychology has worked hard to make becomes even harder to sustain.
Fortunately, our study also pointed toward a solution, but it is one that lawmakers are now actively dismantling. Students who had professors who openly acknowledged the limitations of research — who said in effect, “this study was conducted on a narrow sample, and here’s why that matters” — felt more engaged, more seen, and more motivated. Students were not asking for much, just honesty about what psychology knows, and about whom.
This is why I am alarmed by the wave of legislation sweeping across the United States that restricts how diversity, equity, and inclusion can be discussed in university classrooms. In Texas, new laws limit DEI offices and constrain what professors can teach about race and inequality, and across the country, a growing number of states have now passed similar measures.
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We have already seen what happens when professors run afoul of this new climate: Last fall, a Texas A&M professor was fired after a video of her discussing gender identity in a children’s literature course went viral.
Whatever the intent behind these laws, their effect in classrooms is a chilling one: Professors are becoming more cautious about raising exactly the kinds of conversations that our data show matter most to students.
As a Texas professor, I know that telling students about the populations that make up foundational psychological research is the right thing to do, but I am no longer sure I am allowed to. This should be a question of scientific standards, not politics.
A medical researcher who fails to mention that a drug trial was conducted exclusively on men is not being neutral. They are obscuring information that could affect whether the treatment works for half the population. The same principle applies in psychology. Acknowledging that most foundational studies in psychology were conducted on White, middle-class Americans is not an ideological act. It is an honest description of the evidence.
Our findings suggest that when professors are free to have these conversations — when they can say, “Here’s what we know, here’s who we studied, and here’s why that gap matters” — students from all backgrounds benefit. They learn to think critically about evidence. They feel respected. And some of them, seeing that the field is honest about its limitations, decide that psychology might be worth fighting to improve.
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When we silence those conversations, we do not make classrooms more neutral. We make them more exclusionary and alienating.
The students we spoke with are the future of psychology. Whether they stay in the field, and whether they feel empowered to change it, depends in part on whether their professors are free to tell them the truth.
Hannah C. Williamson, Ph.D, is an associate professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.