Abstract
As a discipline and practice, psychology has a long history in Europe and in the United States. Indeed, much of the basic and clinical research in psychology has been conducted in developed countries and findings have been exported to other parts of the globe without concern for culture and context. Countries that are small or that have few psychologists are often not represented in the extant literature, leading Arnett (2008) to challenge American psychology to broaden its focus to include the other 95% of the world. But beyond responding to Arnett’s challenge, it is well established that empirical findings from one context or based on a particular population do not always generalize to other contexts and populations. Thus, this special issue of the Journal of Black Psychology is a welcome addition to the extant literature on psychology from the Black diaspora with a particular focus on the Caribbean broadly defined.
There are three pieces in this special issue and each of them focuses on a different aspect of psychological functioning. The first of these (DeSouza et al., 2019) used mixed methods across three studies to examine ostracism and racial microaggressions toward Brazilians of African descent in Brazil. The authors found that focus group participants who experienced microaggressions also reported negative emotional outcomes, showing “convergence between the experiences of persons of color both in the United States and Brazil” (DeSouza et al., 2019, p. 41). The second piece in this issue is from the nation of Haiti. In this piece, Roysircar, Geisinger, and Thompson (2019) look at the validity of a culturally adapted version of the House-Tree-Person test in assessing adjustment in Haitian children. The authors found preliminary evidence in support of several aspects of validity. In the third and final piece, Dijkstra, Van Brummen-Girigori, and Barelds (2019) examined the association between body mass index and weight-related body images in independent samples of secondary school students and university undergraduates in Curacao; they also looked at participants’ views of current, ideal, and feared selves in terms of body size. Findings differed in the two different samples, leading to questions about study limitations or lack of generalizability of findings from studies in other contexts.
These three pieces are from three different nations (Brazil, Haiti, Curacao) and language traditions (Portuguese, Creole, Dutch), and the topics ranged from assessment of well-being and maladjustment to body mass weight and microaggressions and ostracism. Brought together by the commonalty of psychological functioning in individuals of African descent, in keeping with the focus of this journal, the articles in this issue are in keeping with the call for “intra-Caribbean scholarship” and the decision to “widen the scope of the content of the journal to be more representative of the psychological functioning of Blacks across the diaspora” (“Special Issue Call for Papers,” 2018, p. 189). Geographically, the country of Brazil is not considered part of the Caribbean. However, Brazil’s history of African descendants and contemporary life mirror the history and life of Africans throughout the Caribbean countries, as well as those who have immigrated between these countries (Sanabria, 2006).
It is hoped that this issue focusing on psychology in the Caribbean will encourage more researchers to engage in scholarship in this location of the world as well as to encourage Caribbean psychology scholars to consider the Journal of Black Psychology to publish their scholarship. In closing, it is important to acknowledge the Caribbean Alliance of National Psychological Associations (CANPA), who suggested the special issue. On their website, CANPA describes itself as “a regional network of national organizations and groupings of psychologists throughout the broader Caribbean, embracing all the linguistic and cultural diversity found in the region.” One of its primary goals is to advance the psychological well-being of people throughout the Caribbean via scholarship, research, and practice. Their input into the special call was appreciated, and it is hoped that there will be opportunities for further collaborations between the Journal of Black Psychology and CANPA to highlight and support the psychology of the Caribbean people.