How Can Psychologists Walk the Walk to Promote Racial Justice? Situating Racial Justice Intervention Research Within the Translational Research Framework

Abstract

The field of psychology boasts a long and robust history of engaging in scientific examinations of racism, as evidenced by the works of Archer and Archer (1970), Van den Berghe (1962), Clark and Clark (1939), Langer (1967), Pettigrew et al. (1958), Pettigrew (1960), and Thomas (1970). Psychologists across the world have endeavored to better understand the origins (e.g., Benner and Graham 2013; Federico and Sidanius 2002; Louis et al. 2013; Sears and Henry 2003), underlying mechanisms (e.g., Cuddy et al. 2008; Dovidio et al. 2004; Duckitt et al. 2002; Wilson et al. 2000), and consequences (e.g., Brown et al. 2000; David et al. 2019; Neblett Jr 2019; Spencer et al. 2016) of racial stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. These inquiries extend across the entire lifespan of our field, as prominent research programs have focused on phenomena associated with racism from its infancy to its contemporary state.

Despite these extensive efforts, however, racism and racial injustice persist today (Bourabain and Verhaeghe 2021; Williams 2021). People who have been racially and ethnically minoritized (we will use the phrase “minoritized people” from here on) continue to experience racism firsthand in their daily lives (ABC News 2020; Institute for Social Research 2023; Konate 2023; Pew Research Center 2019). Substantiating these personal accounts, documented instances of racial injustice permeate every social domain, including education, criminal justice, community safety and autonomy, employment, and healthcare, across countries and regions such as Australia (Australian Human Rights Commission 2022), New Zealand (Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa 2024), South Africa (South African Human Rights Commission 2017), the United Kingdom (Institute of Race Relations 2024), Canada (Cotter 2022), the United States (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health 2022), and Europe (European Network Against Racism 2012; Statista Research Department, 2025). These examples of racism are inherently intertwined with parallel cases of racialized xenophobia—for example, a surge in anti-Asian attitudes during and following the COVID-19 pandemic (Gover et al. 2020; He et al. 2021). While these examples focus primarily on racism associated with White supremacy culture, we acknowledge that examples of racism and racist ideologies span the entire globe (Agier 1995; Bora 2019; Busey and Coleman-King 2023; Modood and Sealy 2022; Sambaraju 2021).

Racial injustice has not only survived in the face of psychological inquiry—it has thrived. Indeed, the recent years have been marked by a historical resurgence of public expressions of White supremacy across the world (Beirich 2013; Simi and Futrell 2020; Youngblood 2020). Critically, these escalations of White supremacy culture are closely linked with the promotion of political radicalization that legitimizes racially and ethnically discriminatory laws and policies (Adamczyk et al. 2014; Bilewicz and Soral 2020; Rees et al. 2019). Examples include voter suppression bills disproportionately targeting racially and ethnically minoritized Americans (Wilder 2021); hostile immigration measures unfairly affecting immigrants and asylum seekers from non-European countries in Italy (Gualtieri 2024), Denmark (Abend 2019), Hungary (Kiss 2016), Poland (Waterbury 2020), and the United Kingdom (Griffiths and Trebilcock 2023); and prohibitions of facial coverings targeting Muslim women in over 30 countries (Open Society Justice Initiative 2022). In response to the global upsurge in overt racism, many researchers have offered elegant psychological explanations for the rise of White supremacy culture, xenophobia, hate, and dehumanization, even drawing parallels between these contemporary expressions and their historical antecedents in regimes like Nazi Germany (Esses and Hamilton 2021; Markowitz and Slovic 2020; Pretus et al. 2023; Reyna et al. 2022). This implies that while the discipline of psychology is capable of offering adequate scientific insights into racism, this knowledge has not been effectively translated into real improvements in the lives of minoritized people.

This special issue was conceived in direct response to concerns that are both chronic and acute—the long-simmering frustrations with the slow pace of progress toward racial justice and the urgent need arising from the global resurgence of White supremacy culture in the present moment. As we will discuss more extensively later in this introductory paper, the key impediment hindering the translation of our psychological understanding of racism into the effective promotion of racial justice lies in psychologists’ failure to foreground the reciprocal relationship between individuals and systems. Too often, we as psychologists ignore this critical interplay between individuals’ racist attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and overarching factors associated with systemic racism when we engage in the process of theorizing, designing studies, and testing interventions.

The purpose of this special issue is to offer both theoretical guidance and methodological examples that illustrate how psychologists can contribute to the actual promotion of racial justice across social domains. Critically, we highlight the importance of grounding such work in the Translational Research Framework (TRF). To achieve this, we have compiled seven empirical papers and one review paper, all aimed at promoting racial justice across various domains (e.g., criminal justice, the workplace, healthcare) by anchoring their work in the TRF. We refer to research studying interventions promoting racial justice in real-world settings as “racial justice intervention research” hereafter. Our overarching goal is to inspire psychologists, regardless of whether they are engaged in intervention research or simply dedicated to promoting racial justice, to reevaluate their theoretical orientation and refine their study designs, ensuring they accurately capture the complexity of racism. By doing so, we hope to empower their racial justice intervention research to fully maximize its potential for positive impact on people and communities that have been racially and ethnically minoritized. In the upcoming sections, we will first explore why solely focusing on individual attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors is inadequate in successful racial justice intervention research. Next, we provide a brief overview of the TRF and a discussion of its utility in addressing the limitations associated with the exclusive focus on individuals. Finally, we close by describing the collection of articles in this special issue and illustrating how each one aligns with the TRF.

Racism is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon, which reflects an interplay between (a) individual-level racist attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and (b) system-level racist phenomena that mutually reinforce one another (Melson-Silimon et al. 2023; Payne et al. 2019; Roberts and Rizzo 2021; Salter et al. 2018; Trawalter et al. 2020). Put differently, individuals both exist within and are shaped by racist systems, while these systems are also deliberately designed and sustained by those individuals. For example, negative attitudes toward and stereotypes about minoritized people (i.e., individual-level phenomena) are fueled and maintained by factors like residential segregation, negative media portrayals of minoritized people, voter disenfranchisement, and financial disparities (i.e., system-level phenomena). Psychology, as the scientific study of the mind and behavior (Feist 2008; Skinner 1965), tends to concentrate on reducing individuals’ racist attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors in its efforts to promote racial justice (Devine et al. 2012; Gaertner and Dovidio 2014; Galinsky and Moskowitz 2000; Rydell and McConnell 2006). This individual-level focus is neither inherently good nor bad, as every discipline has its unique scholarly emphasis. That said, it poses significant obstacles to achieving racial justice when psychologists exclusively focus on individuals and disregard the racist systems in which these individuals are embedded—whether these systems pertain to society in general or specific contexts such as criminal justice or healthcare.

Consider the analogy of sea birds coated with oil due to a spill. After meticulously cleaning off the oil from their bodies, a rescuer inexplicably returns them to the same oil-contaminated ocean. The flaw is glaring: the sea birds will inevitably be recontaminated. Unfortunately, typical psychological approaches to promoting racial justice—with their exclusive focus on individuals—frequently parallel this scenario. To illustrate, envision humans as sea birds, racist ideologies as oil, and the system as the ocean. While the psychological interventions under study in this work may ultimately reduce individuals’ racist attitudes and beliefs, they neglect the broader systemic context. Just as the sea birds will once again be covered with oil, these individuals are likely to reacquire racist ideologies in the racist systems. Nevertheless, most psychological approaches to racial justice allow individuals to return to an environment filled with racist ideologies and policies after “cleansing” their racist attitudes and beliefs, with the optimistic assumption that their interventions will yield lasting effects.

This is not to suggest that a psychological approach to racial justice intervention research is of little value. Indeed, interventions that ignore individual racist attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors also fall short of fully achieving racial justice due to the bidirectional relationship between individual attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and systemic racism. Systems, after all, are composed of people, and considering their psychology—both individual and collective—is critical for bringing about systemic change. Analogously, releasing a large number of oil-contaminated sea birds back into the ocean after a spill, even post-cleansing, could result in the reintegration of oil into the water, disrupting the local ecosystem once again. Thus, psychologists should actively participate in research that aims to develop multi-level interventions that are designed to address both individual-level racist attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and system-level racist phenomena. Additionally, racist systems are proven to be extremely resistant to change because they are carefully developed and maintained by those in positions of power who benefit from them (Kraus and Callaghan 2014; Maxwell and Shields 2014; Wilson 2009). Consequently, combatting systemic racism—if it is even possible—is a formidable challenge that demands substantial investments of time and collective effort (Johnston 1996; Wood 2000). This underscores the significant potential for psychologists to take a central role in spearheading efforts to alleviate the current suffering of numerous individuals experiencing racial injustice globally, while scholars and stakeholders continue their work in changing racist laws, policies, and practices.

Whether psychologists are participating in or leading racial justice intervention research, they must carefully consider the context of systemic racism within which their individual-level interventions are designed, tested, and implemented. We propose that the TRF, which is directly informed by the well-established Clinical and Translational Science (CTS) framework, is a valuable tool for bringing the reciprocal relationship between individual-level factors and systemic racism to the forefront at every stage of intervention design, testing, implementation, and dissemination.

In recent years, a focus on the intricate relationship between individual- and system-level factors has intensified within the psychological study of racism (Melson-Silimon et al. 2023; Modood and Sealy 2022; Salter et al. 2018; Trawalter et al. 2020). At the same time, it must be acknowledged that racial justice intervention research did not start yesterday, and moreover, that psychology is not the only discipline with a longstanding commitment to studying racism. Despite these considerations, many well-intentioned psychologists often find themselves stalled at the T1 stage—or perhaps worse, content with remaining at T1. One factor contributing to this stagnancy is that psychologists typically receive insufficient training in conducting interdisciplinary research (Sewell 1989; Swisher 2022). In the context of racial justice intervention research within healthcare, an interdisciplinary research team might consist of a diverse array of professionals and backgrounds, including psychologists, epidemiologists, health economists, health services researchers, political scientists, clinicians, health educators/patient advocates, patients, and lobbyists. Each member brings distinct priorities and perspectives to the table. Successfully transforming the challenges arising from diverse perspectives within interdisciplinary collaborations into sources of innovation requires both training and hands-on practice.

Another contributing factor is the prevalent bias in the field of psychology that favors experimental designs as the “gold standard” (Abrahamse 2016; Greenhoot 2003; Hunziker and Blankenagel 2021; Kaptchuk 2001; McCall and Green 2004; McDermott 2011; Reis and Judd 2000; Smith 2012). With this bias, many psychologists tend to perceive laboratory experimental studies as more scientifically rigorous than field observational studies (Diener et al. 2022). This holds true for many studies in T1 and even T2, where the primary objective is to establish a causal relationship between a given intervention and a desired outcome in highly controlled settings. However, the criteria for rigorous scientific approaches and methods change as research advances through the stages in the TRF. The ability to accurately define scientific rigor and identify the most suitable methodological approaches within each stage is also cultivated through training and practice.

This special issue addresses both issues by presenting a diverse collection of empirical and review articles that strongly align with the TRF in their approach to racial justice intervention research. It aims to offer both theoretical guidance and methodological examples and to inspire further theorizing, research, interventions, and policy reform in the realm of racial justice intervention research.

This special issue will consist of four distinct sections, each dedicated to illuminating pervasive racial injustices in a particular social domain: Society in General, Criminal Justice, Workplace, and Healthcare. In each section, we curated papers that represent different stages of the TRF (Figure 1). A distinctive feature of this special issue lies in the authors’ explicit exploration of how their ongoing research contributes to subsequent stages of the TRF and ultimately to potential policy changes. Each paper also highlights the authors’ personal experiences in racial justice intervention research, offering valuable insights. Authors reflect on the imperative need for interdisciplinary collaboration, sharing the challenges encountered and innovative solutions devised in the pursuit of their work. This personal dimension adds depth to the scholarly discourse and underscores the multifaceted nature of addressing racial injustices. Finally, this special issue concludes with a commentary focusing on the promise and potential of racial justice intervention research, as well as the challenges facing the psychologists who engage in this work. By providing a comprehensive overview and synthesizing the unique contributions detailed in each section, this commentary aims to serve as a thought-provoking conclusion, fostering continued dialogue and action in the field of racial justice.

In sum, this special issue presents a diverse assortment of scholarly work illustrating how racial justice intervention research can be grounded in the TRF. As we argue in this introduction, this is precisely the kind of work that is best positioned to produce real change that improves the lives of minoritized people. In composing this special issue, we were careful to solicit and select examples of research that varied in terms of their domain of focus (e.g., education, criminal justice, healthcare, etc.), the methodology they employed (i.e., quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods), and the stage of the TRF that they represent. Moreover, in each article, we have asked authors to reflect on their personal experiences of conducting this work, the challenges they faced, and their approaches to overcoming these challenges. We hope these reflections will be of particular use to scholars who are just beginning to familiarize themselves with racial justice intervention research.

Of course, this collection is not without its limitations. While we actively sought out research that sheds light on various forms of racism, such as anti-Indigenous, anti-Asian, and anti-Muslim racism, from different nations and cultures, the majority of submissions we received focus primarily on anti-Black racism in the US context. As such, with some exceptions, the collected articles can be characterized by this same limited scope. Similarly, we received no submissions demonstrating work at the T4 stage, and relatively few at even the T3 stage. This gap in representation underscores both the challenges and opportunities for psychologists. On the one hand, the gap reflects the inherent challenge of seeing a program of research through to the point of translation to communities due to multiple limitations within the current landscape of psychology as a field, as discussed earlier. On the other hand, psychologists possess significant potential to contribute to the promotion of racial justice by specifically targeting this translational gap. In light of these limitations, we hope that the framework outlined in this special issue and the lessons offered by its contributing authors will motivate researchers to fill the gap. In particular, we are especially eager for psychologists currently working at the T0 and T1 stages or on other expressions of racism (e.g., Asian American and Pacific Islander hate, Islamophobia, etc.) to take the leap and pursue their work in the TRF.