Diversifying the Psychology Curriculum at Warwick University

Diversifying the Psychology Curriculum at Warwick University 

The Problem & Why It’s Important

Psychology is the study of behaviour of all human beings. However, the vast majority of studies into human behaviour are conducted amongst the same group of people that fit into the WEIRD acronym (White, Educated, Industrialised and from Rich and Democratic cultures; Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan, 2010). Arnett (2016) found that in a review of six top-tier psychology journals between 2003-2007, 96% of subjects were of the WEIRD demographic. In both research and practical fields within psychology there can often be a lack of diversity and representation in both the sample and the researchers conducting the experiments. Therefore, the results we get from studies such as the Ultimatum Game (Henrich et al., 2010), fundamental attribution error or the Muller-Lyer illusion (Jones, 2010) may not give us a global perspective, or even be relevant to all members within the wider population.



This underrepresentation within studies is mirrored and exasperated by the composition of academics and psychologists, which are not representative of the diverse society in which we live. Diversity is crucial in psychology and should represent populations of different genders, ethnicities, social classes and sexual orientations. This is not the case, however, with the British Psychological Society (2016) recognising that only 20% and 1.8% of its members Identified as male and Black respectively. Lack of representation and diversity within psychology ultimately affects the holistic depiction of what psychology is and what it should look like.



Paving the way for diversity within psychology has been a topic that rises and then dies down in cycles of passive awareness attempts. However, actual behaviour change concerning this topic will require more than just words and thoughts. Change requires action, through the means of research and inclusive doctoral training programs (Green, 2016). We believe that this diversity must start within the curriculum. Multicultural studies, diverse models and research into a variety of groups will expand the richness of psychology as a whole and will build a culture of diversity from its foundations. Psychology should represent and mirror the variety that we have within society. Our project aims to address and tackle the lack of diversity within our curriculum, using a range of behavioural techniques. 

Our Target Audience

Students were our main target audience as we are similar to them as students ourselves, and young people have been shown to be more persuaded by messengers who are more similar to themselves (Stock et al., 2007). As well as this, despite more recent emergence of controversy surrounding the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), it is generally accepted that the original findings found in college students are robust. We also targeted module conveners, although to a lesser extent. We believe that module conveners would be motivated to teach content their students enjoy, and reasoned that if we could encourage students to provide feedback demonstrating an interest for a diversified curriculum, then we could more easily persuade module conveners to diversify it in response.  

The Intervention

We focused on changing the behaviour of students (in the form of filling in a survey) and module conveners (In signing a ‘commitment form’ to include more diversity in their modules, using student responses to the questionnaire as an argument to do so). We aimed to get students to fill in the questionnaire using peripheral and central routes, using both an infographic and a podcast. We decided to exploit both avenues, as debate concerning the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) suggests that it uses multi-channel processing as opposed to working on a peripheral-central continuum (Kitchen, Kerr, Schultz, McColl & Pals, 2014). Central cues consisted of facts and data as one would expect, although the peripheral cues we used utilised aspects of MINDSPACE (Dolan et al., 2012).

Persuasion Techniques Used and Why we used them

The Infographic

The infographic utilised peripheral cues inspired by the MINDSPACE model. We decided it was important for peripheral cues to be evident before central cues, as the Dual Mediation Hypothesis (MacKenzie, Lutz & Belch, 1986) proposes that the former can influence the latter via message acceptance, which was later shown to be predictive in behaviour in camera purchasing (Coulter & Punj, 2004). 

Messenger

Mindspace predicts that messages are more salient if the messenger is either in a position of authority or is like the person receiving the message (Dolan et al., 2012). As a response to this, we communicated that members of authority were in agreement with us by including a quote from a psychologist, ‘A varied community of psychologists encourages different theories and clinical perspectives (Awais and Yali, 2013)’. We also communicated similarity by repeatedly using personal and possessive pronouns such as ‘we’ and ‘our’, making it clear that we are psychology students like our target population. This also creates cognitive dissonance in their self-concept if they do not complete the survey (Draycott & Dabbs, 1998), as the infographic highlights that they are like us, and we would do the survey.

Incentives

People are much more sensitive to losses than equivalent gains (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), likely due to the affective component of risk (Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee & Welch, 2001). Framing incentives as a charge that will be imposed if people fail to do something has proven to be effective in encouraging weight loss (Volpp et al., 2008), so in a similar vein we framed not taking the survey as a loss of the target’s educational opportunity and influential power by stating ‘Is there Psychology we’re neglecting due to lack of diversity?’ and ‘Don’t miss out on having your say, fill out our questionnaire today!’ respectively.

Salience

The proliferation of information restricts our attentional resources (Lanham, 2006), which means we can only focus on the most salient behavioural cues, which has been shown to be the case with health-promoting messages (Mann & Ward, 2007). To make sure the message was salient we put ‘Diversify Psychology’ at the top of the page and ‘Fill Out Our Survey Today!’ at the bottom of the page in a big font. More easily relatable ‘natural’ frequencies have also been shown to be more salient to people than frequencies phrased in abstract mathematics (Gigerenzer & Hoffrage, 1995), so we presented our frequencies demonstrating ‘diversity problem’ in Psychology as natural frequencies (e.g. ‘Only 1 in 5 chartered psychologists are male’) to maximise encoding of this message. In order to increase the salience of the infographic as a whole, we spread it around the psychology department as far as possible (60 infographics in total), so our target audience of Psychology students were likely to have seen the infographic repeatedly.

The Survey

We worked with Psychology advocates from the Decolonise Project to construct a questionnaire (approved by the Psychology department’s Education Management Team) in order to see what people thought of the diversity in the psychology curriculum currently. More specifically, we looked at perceived representation amongst the following groups; Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups, women, different social classes, LGBTQ+ and those with a disability. Questions included:

·       How far would you agree there is an appropriate range of academics in your reading lists from the listed backgrounds? (on a 5 point Likert scale from completely disagree to completely agree)

·       Where appropriate, how far would you agree your lecturers/seminars tutors are equipped to handle sensitive issues around the listed topics? (on a 5 point Likert scale from completely disagree to completely agree)

·       Are there any specific topics or books/articles that you like to study more of which look at BAME, Female, Disability, Working Class, and/or LGBTQ+ issues? (Free text)

·       If relevant, would you feel comfortable raising discussions around issues concerning the following? (on a 6 point Likert scale from completely uncomfortable to completely comfortable)

·       If you would be uncomfortable, why so? (free text)

·       How would YOU diversify your curriculum? (free text)

·       On a scale of 1-10 (1 being not important at all to 10 being extremely important), how important is it for you that your curriculum is inclusive of representation of the listed groups?

·       Demographic information was also collected such as the individual’s year of study, self-identified ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation and disability status

The survey was put out on the email newsletter that goes out to all undergraduates who are part of the Psychology department. We have had 42 responses so far, but the Decolonise Project is still ongoing and we plan to use the results to write a document for the Student Union. If you are a student in Warwick University’s psychology department, then feel free to fill out the survey using this link: https://warwickpsych.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3BPCx6cEM8uKdSJ

The critical question for the purpose of this intervention was ‘How would YOU diversify your curriculum?’, as answers to this question were used in the creation of the commitment form, to illustrate what students would like to see in a more diverse curriculum. The commitment form used several techniques for behaviour change in itself, and is given its own section.

The Podcast

As part of our intervention, we invited Thomas Hills, a well-known lecturer in the Psychology department, on the ‘Intellectually Ignorant’ podcast targeted at students. Our aim was to start a discussion about the importance of students and module conveners alike taking an interest in diversifying our curriculum via the central route proposed by the ELM. This involved the use of facts, statistics and well-reasoned arguments (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). The main ELM route that was used for our intervention in the podcast was the central route, which involves using facts and statistics for persuasion. The central route of the ELM was used because the possibility of elaboration was strong meaning the subject and standard of the message would most likely drive persuasion (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). However, it should also be noted that the peripheral Messenger aspect of MINDSPACE was also present to a lesser extent, as a well-known authority figure (a lecturer who is aware of the diversity problem) was involved in the conversation of why we should diversify the curriculum.

The central route of persuasion was used to convince those who were not persuaded by the infographic to take an interest in diversifying the curriculum and fill in the questionnaire (e.g. people that were more thoughtful as to what the consequences of a diverse curriculum might be) as well as to encourage a more persistent level of attitude change that is not as evident with the peripheral route. From what was gathered from the conversation with Hills prior to the podcast, he seemed motivated to help us with our project, but stressed that information on how exactly to diversify the curriculum would be important to know in order to do so.

During the podcast, facts and statistics about the ethnicity of individuals in the British Psychological Society (BPS) were used to show the lack of representation of minorities in the Psychology workforce. This was used to explain that perhaps there was a cycle whereby a lack of exposure to researchers of, and studies conducted on, other ethnic backgrounds in the curriculum meant that Psychology students from ethnic backgrounds are either discouraged or do not see the importance of pursuing a career in Psychology.

Likewise, examples of studies that were conducted on other cultures and by underrepresented researchers were discussed during the podcast. This was to show the importance of including studies conducted on different ethnic backgrounds and how it expanded understanding of the topic as a whole and the negative implications that could occur if other backgrounds are not reported on and represented. For example, Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s (1988) cross-cultural meta-analysis study on attachment was presented to show how results differ across cultures and the negative implications of imposed etic that can occur if research on other backgrounds are not represented. As highlighted by John Berry (1969; 1999), imposed etic is  when psychologists impose and apply what they know about their own culture when conducting research on other, different cultures. It was stressed that the idea of imposed etic can similarly occur within a lecture hall if students who are only exposed to research on the predominant White and Western population then go on to apply these findings universally.

The benefits of using researchers from other backgrounds in the lecture hall was explained, using examples of when this was done in Hill’s own module. For example, it was explained that his inclusion of research on other ethnic backgrounds inspired one of the students doing this project to go and research the results and how they apply to their own background. Likewise, it was explained that research that reflects other backgrounds inspires students from similar backgrounds to more strongly envision how the field of psychology is relevant to them. In the end, we concluded that diversifying the curriculum includes both having researchers from a diverse set of backgrounds conduct research, and having research conducted on those diverse sets of backgrounds. The podcast is currently being edited and will be on air shortly.

The Commitment Form

A ‘commitment form’ was given to 8 module conveners, who were encouraged to initial it as a gesture that they would commit to diversifying their own module. Asking module conveners to initial the document in theory primed them to do it, as asking about intentions alters later ease of recall and mental representations of new behaviours (Levav and Fitzsimons, 2006). 

We recognised that initial reluctance is likely to arise when the perceived short-term costs (i.e. having to find new module content) outweighs the perceived long-term benefits (i.e. increasing the diversity of the content within their module; Sheeran, White & Phillips, 1991). This perception is even more likely to arise due to the aforementioned prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), which sees people as more sensitive to losses (i.e. short-term costs) more than their equivalent gains (i.e. long-term benefits). To get over this problem, we firstly minimised the ‘cost’ by providing examples of materials that reflected diverse groups that could be implemented in their module, making the change easier to implement (see image for exact examples). Secondly, we implied there would be short-term benefits (for us) by signing the form, as we were getting signatures ‘as a part of our Behaviour Change module (PS359)’. This could be classed as placebic or sufficient information to sign the form depending on how you look at it, although both types of information have proven effective in changing behaviour (Langer, Blank & Chanowitz, 1978). Notably, we presented an argument using central cues on the form, as we presume module conveners are motivated to make the decision to make their module more diverse, and will dedicate adequate cognitive effort towards making such a decision. To do this, we presented the lecturers with recurring themes from our survey that highlighted the changes people wanted to see, and assumed it was in their interest to act on this feedback to make their module more enjoyable for these students, given that it is not difficult to do so.

Implementation intentions are explicit statements about what, when and how you will achieve a goal in a specific situation, and it has been found that people are much more likely to adhere to a new behaviour if they have written an implementation intention (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). We wanted module convenors to form implementation intentions, but also wanted to minimise the short-term ‘cost’ for them to do so, therefore we asked them to initial a simple pre-written implementation plan with specific suggestions of how to diversify their module. These included suggestions such as ‘I will endeavor to add at least two more readings to my module that reflect minority groups’.

Whether the module conveners agree to initial the commitment form (we have had two conveners initial the form so far), or take time to consider initialling it, a barrier to changing behaviour can be remembering to start the new behaviour. This is because demands on attention and memory can reduce focal goal intention compared to other intentions (Einstein & McDaniel, 1996). To tackle this, we put the infographics outside the module conveners' doors (with their permission), as well as the psychology common room they frequently visit, so they are repeatedly reminded of the focal goal at hand. As well as this, putting the infographics outside of their office may also act as a ‘foot-in-the-door’ to both initial the form and make changes to diversify their module (Freedman & Fraser, 1966).

Future Expansion

Findings from the survey will be used by advocates for the Decolonise Project to write a report for the SU on student’s perception of diversity within the Psychology department. For the module conveners who initial the commitment form (and for the two who have already done it), we can get back to them and ask what they did specifically to make their module more diverse. We can also ask how they found making the changes and how they feel students have responded to it. We can measure the student’s thoughts on the changes more objectively, by running the survey again and seeing if there is any difference in how they score on questions post-implementation.

Of course, there is no reason that expanding this project need be restricted to psychology students. A lack of diversity in research and researchers is a problem that unfortunately resides throughout academia (Bhopal, 2016), and implementations similar to what we have done or expanded upon should not only be welcomed, but encouraged. Diversity within any curriculum should be in all of our best interests, as it is essential for making any field reflective of the current world we live in. Although it will most certainly take a lot of work, we believe that given enough nudges in the right direction, a more diverse curriculum is definitely on the horizon.

Authors: Calvin Deans-Browne, Chidinma Echanah, Zein Jeward, Cherish Ajereh-Arubi 

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