Facing up to the Past: Challenging Histories & Changing Future Conversations at the UK British Psychological Society

Psychology is WEIRD, and it's a huge problem (Jones, 2010; Kanazawa, 2020); the majority of psychological data was gathered from White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies. Furthermore, it has been argued that psychology has traditionally represented stereotypes of heterosexual white males as absolute norms (Ballard, 1995). By presenting these findings as empirical measures of a 'typical person', Psychology has practiced a great deal of epistemic violence in omitting conceptions of othered peoples and interpreting group differences as inherent inferiorities in others (Held, 2020), and in scientifically legitimating harmful stereotypes such as moral and intellectual shortcomings in Black people (Winston, 2020a).

Scholars are increasingly studying this history of epistemic violence particularly within U.S. Psychology (Winston, 2020b; Moffitt et al., 2023), but comparatively little has been written about the role of British psychology, despite the history of differential psychology and intelligence testing tracing their origins to Britain via Galton and eugenics (Fancher, 2004).

To address this gap, it is necessary to address the history of Britain's largest psychological organisation, founded in 1901, the British Psychological Society (BPS).

Existing histories of the BPS are outdated and narrow-focused, exclusively documenting the factors that led to its inception and celebrating its achievements (Bunn, 2001; Clark-Carter 2001), with no acknowledgement of the epistemic violence that is likely present in the Society's history. Access to the BPS archives presents an unprecedented opportunity to provide a historical account of the impact of British psychology on everyday Brits, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds and minority groups such as Black people, LGBTQIA+ people and those with psychological disabilities such as autism, populations historically overlooked and ignored by psychology (Held, 2020; Winston, 2020a).

This project will investigate and analyse this impact, to bring to light cases of disempowerment and epistemic violence in the history of the British Psychology. However, this project will go beyond the label of "the BPS" and will analyse individual positions and contributions from important members of the society. This will not be a simple story of consensus; senior members of the BPS have a history both in pathologizing sexual and gender identities and in advising the government on reforming homosexuality laws (O'Reilly, 2019).

The BPS has ultimately been made up of many people with differing opinions, and this research project presents a fantastic opportunity not just to document cases of disempowerment but to discover how the BPS moved towards egalitarian reform and to highlight those who championed this growth.

In collaborating with the BPS, my aims are to provide them with both a model of how their Society championed growth in the past, and with examples of disempowerment of vulnerable populations practiced by the Society to drive home the necessity of this critical reflection. If Psychology is to become more representative and less WEIRD, we must strive to hold ourselves accountable by understanding the mistakes of the past, and we must learn from and celebrate those who fought for egalitarian ideals, that we might now take the torch from them.