Cultural Psychology, Diversity, and Representation in Open Science

Abstract

The current moment in psychology is one of great challenges and great opportunities. The open science movement—the move toward more transparent, credible, and reproducible science—has led to a redefinition of what constitutes “normal science.” However, the field of cultural psychology, broadly construed, has by and large not engaged with the open science movement and, likewise, the open science movement has by and large not engaged with cultural psychology. The purpose of the present chapter is to bring open science and cultural psychology closer together, highlighting how they can benefit one another. In doing so, the discussion is focused on three types of representations regarding diversity in psychological research and how they intersect with open science: representation of researchers, or the diversity of the scientists actually doing the research; representation of samples, or who is included as participants in our research studies; and representation of perspectives, or the substantive conceptual and theoretical views we bring to our work. For each of these three types of representation the problem is outlined, followed by a discussion of how embracing the principles and behaviors of open science can help.