The role of psychology in social justice: a qualitative analysis of student accounts

As a discipline, psychology is well-placed to explore and address matters relevant to social justice, as reflected in the British Psychological Society’s new strategy, underpinned by the simple vision of “Building a world where psychology transforms lives” (BPS, 2024). Only a small percentage of undergraduate psychology students pursue a career in the professional areas of psychology post-graduation. However, cultivating students’ understanding and appreciation of their ability not only to analyse social justice issues, but to also actively drive meaningful change with their skills expands the discipline’s potential for lasting impact both within and beyond its traditional boundaries. Understanding how students conceptualise the role of psychology in social justice issues is a perquisite to purposefully and effectively scaffolding transformative visualisation and application of knowledge. Thus, this study explored how second-year undergraduate psychology students construct the role of psychology in social justice.
Embedded within their qualitative research methods training, undergraduate students (N=140) were invited to co-create and participate in an anonymous online qualitative survey to explore the prompt: ‘How can we find out about what students think about the role of psychology in social justice?’, resulting in 60 responses to nine open-ended questions. Using a critical reflexive thematic analysis, two overarching themes were sculpted: 1) Psychologically informed experts help others to help themselves, and 2) Psychological activism as ‘giving voice’. Findings are discussed in relation to opportunities to deepen understanding of how community engagement and participatory action research can enable psychology to address real-world issues through active collaboration with communities.