The new normal of social psychology in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic: Insights and advice from leaders in the field

• Main Authors: TAM, Kim Pong, LEUNG, Angela K. Y., KHAN, Sammyh
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: Covid-19; pandemics; social psychology; research; human systems; social impact; Public Health; Social Psychology; Social Psychology and Interaction
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3295; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4553/viewcontent/New_normal_2021_pvoa.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Revisiting the history of social psychology, one noticeable trend is that the agenda of social psychologists is interwoven with events that happen in society and the world (Ross et al., 2010). For example, the Holocaust during World War II stimulated social psychologists’ interest in ethnocentrism, aggression, and obedience, just as increasing globalization became one of the impetuses for investigations into the role of culture in human behaviour, and hence the emergence of cultural and cross‐cultural psychology. Considering its immensity, we believe that the COVID‐19 pandemic will likely be a trigger for profound and consequential changes in social psychology (Khazaie & Khan, 2020). We thus organized this special forum in order to initiate a discussion regarding the potential impacts of the pandemic on our field. In this forum, six leading social psychologists (Dolores Albarracin, Michael Bond, Jolanda Jetten, Yoshihisa Kashima, James Liu, and Sander van der Linden) guide us in taking a step back and reflecting on how social psychology scholarship is being and will be influenced by the pandemic, and what social psychologists can and should do to serve humanity during this crisis.