Dr Antonie Dvořáková speaks at May 2026 Applied Health and Social Justice seminar

This presentation, based on Antonie's Psychological Studies paper, 'All Psychologies are Indigenous: Addressing Historical Grounding of WEIRD Social Psychological Knowledge in Colonialism and Racism', considers how identifying the cultural mechanisms behind group differences, including the cultural basis of psychological characteristics, reshapes what counts as psychological knowledge.

Cultural psychology examines how the human mind and culture mutually constitute each other, including how human behaviour and historically based socio-cultural contexts simultaneously shape each other. Rather than treating culture as an external variable, cultural psychology seeks to identify the cultural mechanisms behind group differences, including the cultural basis of psychological characteristics.

Much of what is still regarded as universal “psychological knowledge” is rather only one of many indigenous psychological theories - specifically, the theory rooted in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic) socio-cultural contexts. Claims to universality arising from these contexts are historically entangled with colonialism and racism, and they obscure the fact that many populations even within WEIRD-dominant countries are excluded from current theorising.

A genuinely inclusive psychology of human experience requires broadening research participation across world populations. It also demands theoretical approaches that explain how (a) historically grounded sociocultural contexts enable the meaning systems people construct, and (b) these systems, in turn, guide how individuals create and transform their environments. Such work can strengthen psychological theory and support a deeper understanding of the ever-increasing ethno-racial and sociocultural diversity.