Abstract
This chapter subjects to a careful examination the unspoken assumptions that underly psychology as a science and a profession, and the systemic socio-economic forces that keep them in place. We then focus on the shift in value orientation needed to make psychology socially responsible to a global era.
While statesmen are considering a new order of things, the new order may well be at hand. I believe it is even now being built, silently but inevitably, in the hearts of masses whose voices are not heard but whose common faith will write the final history of our time. They know that unless there is belief in some guiding principle and some trust in a divine plan, nations are without light, and people perish…
President F.D. Roosevelt (1939), Letter to Pope Pius XII.
Elena Mustakova-Possardt and Michael Basseches have contributed equally to this chapter even as circumstances required E. Mustakova-Possardt to assume final responsibility for the chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
See realistic conflict theory at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realistic_conflict_theory
- 2.
- 3.
See here the just world hypothesis research in social psychology, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
- 4.
As a personal example of these widespread practices and unrecognized bias, E. Mustakova-Possardt's research on critical moral consciousness, discussed in Chap. 6, won the 1998 Association for Moral Education Outstanding Dissertation Award in recognition of its serious scholarship, in addition to the 1995 Henry A. Murray Dissertation Award of Radcliffe College, Harvard University. Nonetheless, to this date no subsequent publication on moral psychology includes any reference to this work, which drew on little-known psycho-spiritual and historical perspectives to offer a systemic critique of current understanding of moral psychology and its rootedness in a particular sociopolitical worldview, and a radically different conceptualization of moral development.
- 5.
Since the founding of the Bahá’í Faith in the middle of the nineteenth century, the overcoming of racism has been recognized as a central spiritual challenge. In 1933, long before the Civil Rights movement, Shoghi Effendi, one of the central figures of the Bahá’í Faith, called racism “the most vital and challenging issue” (see Advent of Divine Justice, p. 33). The first Bahá’í inter-racial marriage in the US dates back to 1912, and integrated Bahá’í gatherings throughout the South began in 1956. For further understanding of how the Bahá’í Faith treats the issue of racism, see Nathan Rutstein’s Racism: Unraveling the fear, and Perry’s The last war: Racism, spirituality, and the future of civilization. For an overview of the current status of racial integration throughout the global Bahá’í community, see the annual editions of The Bahá’í World.
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Mustakova-Possardt, E., Basseches, M., Oxenberg, J., Hansen, I. (2014). Transforming a Limited Social Function into a Viable Global Action Agenda. In: Mustakova-Possardt, E., Lyubansky, M., Basseches, M., Oxenberg, J. (eds) Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era. International and Cultural Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7391-6_2
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