The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic’s wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon—an event that hinges on human-to-human contact—we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology. We highlight specific psychological phenomena that have likely shifted as a result of the pandemic and discuss theoretical, methodological, and practical considerations of conducting research on these phenomena. After this discussion, we evaluate metascientific issues that have been amplified by the pandemic. We aim to demonstrate how theoretically grounded views on the COVID-19 pandemic can help make psychological science stronger—not weaker—in its wake.
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Toward a Psychology of Consent
Consent is central to many of today’s most pressing social issues: What counts as sexual assault? Whom are the police allowed to search? Can they use people’s data like that? Yet despite the fact that consent is in many ways an inherently psychological phenomenon, it has not been a core topic of study in psychology. Although domain-specific research on consent—most commonly, informed consent and sexual consent—is regularly published in specialty journals (e.g., methods and sex-research journals), consent has been largely ignored as a generalizable psychological phenomenon. This has meant that consent has been mostly excluded from “mainstream” psychology as a core topic of study. This omission is particularly striking given that psychologists have paid broad attention to related constructs, such as compliance, obedience, persuasion, free will, and autonomy, and that scholars in other fields, such as law and philosophy, have paid considerably more attention to the topic of consent, despite its uniquely psychological qualities. In this article, I argue that psychologists should embrace consent—in particular, the subjective experience of consent—as a core topic of study.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10368628
- Publisher / Repository:
- SAGE Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Perspectives on Psychological Science
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1745-6916
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 1093-1100
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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