Socially Engaged Social Psychology in Asia: Sustaining Research Progress in Diverse Directions

Allan B I Bernardo,James H Liu

doi:10.1017/prp.2018.1

Allan B I Bernardo, James H Liu

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1017/prp.2018.1

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Abstract

The final thematic special issue in the series ‘The Social Psychology of Social Change: Science and Practice in Asia’ features 10 empirical studies that apply diverse social psychological theories and approaches to understand and to address a wide range of social concerns in Asian societies. The articles in the special issue align more to mainstream social psychological approaches to studying social phenomena, and as such are mainly derivative of Western social psychological paradigms, with the exception of a couple of studies that adopt emic indigenous approaches. Nevertheless, the various studies display a clear motivation to use social psychology to engage particular societal concerns, representing incremental progress towards using social psychology in the service of social change.

Highlights

This thematic Special Issue on applied social psychology research in Asia is the last in the series entitled ‘The Social Psychology of Social Change: Science and Practice in Asia’
The first special issue in this series featured some action research projects that were drawn from indigenous social concepts (Liu et al, 2014; Su, Pan, & Chen, 2014), and as such, the series seemed to show promise in nurturing this social change orientation in social psychology research in Asia
The articles in the special issues tended to focus more on describing and theorising about specific social phenomena and social concerns in particular Asian societies (Liu & Bernardo, 2016). These articles in the special issue series all represent some progress towards engaging social psychology research with societal concerns, concerns that seem to arise from different forces of social change

Summary

Introduction

This thematic Special Issue on applied social psychology research in Asia is the last in the series entitled ‘The Social Psychology of Social Change: Science and Practice in Asia’. The articles in the special issues tended to focus more on describing and theorising about specific social phenomena and social concerns in particular Asian societies (Liu & Bernardo, 2016).

Results

Conclusion