How should we live in an increasingly diverse society? To what values, understandings and standards ought we hold ourselves accountable? Most answers to these questions focus on mitigating personal prejudice. Churn joins that call. But it identifies a more fundamental
challenge: the unstable trust that our history imposes on us and the churn it causes when we are in each other’s midst. It is a formidable challenge, but Churn sees a new path to making diversity work: trust-building. This approach is a more manageable way for our society to become the integrated, enabling society we need it to be. This hope, as I have stressed, is based on a simple fact: trust-building is a game played largely on the ground, in the immediate circumstances of our lives. It doesn’t depend on first changing individual hearts and minds. Rather, in the important settings of our lives–our schools, businesses, colleges, churches, etc.—it focuses on building the skills and conditions that enable trust. Churn offers a blueprint for how to do this: across the divides of difference, see full humanity and full potential; listen in a learning mindset; be prepared to give trust first; and then show up with concrete support that enables full participation. It’s a scalable blueprint. It can be hard work. But it’s not magic. And all of us can do it.

The mere presence of anti-racism efforts has the powerful potential to mitigate social inequalities linked to historic and contemporary racism. However, the presence and promise of anti-racism efforts are threatened by (1) policies and practices that are performative and culturally detached from the lived realities of marginalized social groups (e.g., racial/ethnic minorities) and (2) zero-sum claims that portray initiatives aimed at reducing systemic racism as benefitting marginalized social groups at the expense of more dominant social groups. Harnessing cultural psychological insights, this talk explicitly addresses such threats. It provides empirical evidence that anti-racism efforts when driven by actionable change and imbued with meaningful cultural inclusion can yield dividends that are non-zero-sum— related to positive outcomes that are experienced among marginalized groups without costs to dominant groups. Across studies that leverage diverse methods, anti-racism is examined as behaviors, attitudes, and policies (e.g., Black Lives Matter marches, diversity curriculum practices). The talk highlights associations between anti-racism efforts and consequential life outcomes including social connectedness and polarization in social networks, physical and mental well-being, as well as intergenerational (infant) health and mortality. Holistically, the talk presents findings that demonstrate the potential for societal thriving as positive outcomes are observed across social groups (e.g., among marginalized and dominant groups). It centers marginalized groups and underscores the importance of intergroup approaches for intervention strategies that are optimally positioned to realize more equitable outcomes. Theory and applied implications for minimizing and combating backlash to anti-racism efforts (e.g., book bans, anti-diversity state policies) are discussed.

Tiffany N. Brannon received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Social Psychology from Stanford University and her B.A. in Psychology from Florida International University. Her research examines socio-cultural identities in negatively stereotyped groups such as Latino/a/x and African Americans; and she investigates the potential for these identities to serve as psychological resources— strengths that can facilitate a variety of individual and intergroup benefits. Her research has been published in top academic journals including Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Psychological Science, American Psychologist, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Social Issues and Policy Review, and the Journal of Social Issues. She is a recipient of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues’ (SPSSI) Otto Klineberg Intercultural and International Relations Award and Michele Alexander Early Career Award for Scholarship and Service. She is also a recipient of the Early Career Psychologists Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association (APA) Committee on Early Career Psychologists (CECP).

She is the editor for the Diversity, Inequality & Culture section of Social and Personality Psychology Compass (SPPC) and an inaugural member of the Aspen Institute’s Research Advisory Group for Belonging, Meaning, Well-being and Purpose (BMWP).

In this talk, Üskül presents recent findings pointing to a distinct emphasis on several forms of independence (relative intensity of disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, happiness based on disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, dispositional [vs. situational] attribution style, self-construal as different from others, self-directed, self-reliant, self-expressive, and consistent) and interdependence (closeness to in-group [vs. out-group] members, self-construal as connected and committed to close others) in the Mediterranean region compared to more commonly studied East Asian and Anglo-Western cultural groups. She discusses this unique pattern in light of the importance of “honor” values in Mediterranean societies, which require individuals to develop and protect a sense of their personal self-worth and their social reputation, through assertiveness, competitiveness, and retaliation in the face of threats. These findings extend previous insights into patterns of cultural orientation beyond commonly examined East–West comparisons to an understudied world region. In addition, she will share a within-region analysis of self-construal social orientation, and cognitive style to examine the role of ethnic, linguistic, national, religious and socio-ecological factors in similarities and differences between subregional groups. 

Üskül is a social and cultural psychologist interested in the role of cultural and socio-ecological context in self-related, interpersonal and social cognitive processes. She completed her degrees at Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey (BA), Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (MA), and York University, Toronto, Canada (PhD) and held a SSHRC-funded Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor between 2004-06. She held academic positions at the University of Essex, Queen’s University Belfast, and University of Kent before joining the University of Sussex in 2022. Her past research on socio-economic basis of interdependence, cultural conceptions of honor, and culture and health behavior change received funding from the British Academy, the US National Science Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, and Japanese Society of the Promotion of Science, among others. Her current comparative research on the role of honor in social interactional processes is funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant (www.honorlogic.org). She is Co-Chief Editor of the European Review of Social Psychology and the President of the Psychology Section of the British Science Association.