Call for Contributions: Best Practices and Principles from Psychology to Advance EDI Professionals Impact

Submission Deadline: February 21, 2025

Background
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) remain essential to fostering fairness, belonging, and innovation across organizations and society. For over a year, the EDI Excellence Initiative has been in development to equip EDI professionals with psychology-driven strategies that enhance their impact, sustain progress, and navigate evolving challenges.

The current landscape presents new complexities, as shifts in policy, legal scrutiny, and political rhetoric increasingly influence EDI commitments across sectors. Organizations and institutions now face mounting pressures to justify or restructure their EDI efforts, and professionals in the field must adapt to sustain their work effectively. However, despite these obstacles, the science behind EDI remains strong, demonstrating its benefits for organizational success, workplace well-being, and societal advancement.

The American Psychological Association (APA) approaches its EDI strategy with a commitment to its core values of scientific integrity, ethical leadership, and social responsibility. APA recognizes that psychology offers a unique foundation for strengthening EDI efforts through evidence-based solutions, advocacy, and innovation. In accordance with APA’s EDI framework, we must accept the challenge to harness the power of psychological science and practice to articulate bold, actionable principles that can drive transformative change.

By leveraging psychological research and practice, we can:

• Understand Resistance: Psychological science helps identify factors—such as moral and symbolic threats, defensiveness, and system justification—that contribute to EDI backlash and opposition.
• Frame EDI Effectively: Strategies for reducing polarization include emphasizing inclusion-for-all, clarifying misinformation, and linking EDI to shared values.
• Drive Behavioral and Systemic Change: While shifting individual attitudes is complex, modifying organizational norms, leadership support, and incentive structures can create lasting change.
• Self-Care & Resilience Building: Given the psychological strain that EDI professionals are experiencing in a shifting landscape, evidence-based self-care strategies are essential for maintaining practitioner well-being and effectiveness.

In short, psychology can help EDI professionals tailor their approaches to different audiences, dismantle barriers to engagement, and build support for long-term, measurable change.

Goals of the Special Collection
This collection of best practices/principles seeks to: 

1. Strengthen EDI Practice: Provide principles grounded in psychological science to empower EDI professionals facing budget cuts, legal constraints, and organizational pushback.
2. Promote Organizational Change: Establish actionable frameworks for embedding EDI into organizational strategy and culture.
3. Address Resistance: Develop methods—grounded in research on moral and symbolic threats—to reduce defensiveness and misinformation, and create strategies to navigate political, social, and organizational opposition to EDI.
4. Articulate the Nuances and Value of EDI Work: Use psychology to effectively communicate the complexities, benefits, and societal importance of EDI in ways that resonate across diverse audiences and overcome skepticism.
5. Improve EDI Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Leverage psychological research and methods to diagnose and address behavioral and contextual barriers, enabling EDI professionals to better define and drive tangible progress that benefit organizations and society.

Contributors are encouraged to consider interdisciplinary perspectives and innovative methodologies that underscore psychology’s capacity to reimagine EDI amidst a rapidly shifting landscape. Contributions are not limited to cutting-edge research or approaches… we encourage submissions on the practical application and integration of (even longstanding) psychological knowledge and strategies to mitigate challenges, ensuring EDI remains a cornerstone of healthy organizational and societal practices.

Specific Areas of Interest
We invite contributions on topics including, but not limited to:

• Bias Recognition and Mitigation: Exploring implicit and explicit biases, their organizational impacts, and strategies for assessment, reduction, and effective framing.
• Psychological Safety: Creating environments that balance validation and challenge, enabling authentic dialogue and growth in diverse spaces.
• Resilience in EDI Work: Addressing professional burnout and high turnover, with strategies for protecting and sustaining EDI professionals in challenging climates.
• Self-Care & Mental Well-being: Identifying evidence-based strategies that EDI professionals can use to manage stress, prevent burnout, connect to community for collective impact, and build personal resilience while navigating challenges.
• Organizational Support & Protection for EDI Professionals: Exploring policies, leadership engagement, and workplace structures that can help protect, empower, and sustain EDI professionals in increasingly hostile environments.
• Data-Driven EDI: Leveraging analytics to track progress, identify barriers, clarify misinformation, and inform decision-making in advancing EDI goals.
• Frameworks for Resistance: Developing responses to anti-EDI policies, legislative restrictions, and social backlash by adapting psychological principles to manage defensiveness and system justification.
• Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Integrating psychology with fields such as organizational development, economics, business strategy, legal frameworks, and technology to refine and reposition EDI efforts.
• Assessment and Impact Measurement: Direct and indirect methods for evaluating the effectiveness of EDI initiatives, including behavioral, cultural, and systemic outcomes.

Sample Areas of Inquiry
Submissions could explore questions such as:

• How can psychological research and methods help EDI professionals better define, communicate, and meet key performance indicators (KPIs)?
• What diagnostic tools can psychology offer to uncover behavioral and contextual barriers that hinder the success of EDI initiatives?
• How can psychology inform the design of innovative solutions to amplify the effectiveness of EDI programs and products?
• In what ways can psychological science and methods improve the evaluation of EDI programming in ways that demonstrate clear ROI, reduce backlash, and align with broader business, institutional, and societal outcomes?
• In what ways can we use psychological research to shift organizational norms and structures without necessarily converting skeptics at the individual level?
• How can psychological research and methods help identify and mitigate biases that impede the progress of EDI professionals and initiatives?
• What strategies can be derived from psychology to help EDI professionals build resilience and navigate systemic resistance (legal threats, reduced budgets, shrinking support)?
• How can psychological science inform self-care strategies for EDI professionals to manage stress, emotional labor, and trauma associated with their work?
• What organizational policies and protections can be implemented to safeguard EDI professionals from retaliation, burnout, and role instability?
• How do supportive leadership structures influence the long-term sustainability of EDI work, and what are best practices for ensuring leadership accountability?
• How can psychology-based coaching, peer support networks, and collective resilience strategies enhance the well-being of EDI practitioners in hostile climates?
• Which communication tactics best address misinformation, and how do we tailor them to different stakeholders?
• How can psychological science advance public understanding of the value of EDI work in promoting fairness, justice, and productivity resulting in improved outcomes that matter (i.e., education, culture, health, innovation, profitability)?
• How can psychology enable EDI professionals to communicate the nuances of their work effectively, particularly in resistant or skeptical environments?
• What are best practices in leveraging leadership support to sustain or pivot EDI programs, and how can psychology inform these leadership strategies?

Vision for the Future
By showcasing principles grounded in psychological science, this special collection aims to provide EDI professionals with concrete tools and strategies to navigate the complex challenges of the current climate. Through collaboration, research, and innovation, we endeavor to redefine the role and application of psychology in advancing EDI—ensuring that our field upholds its commitment to improving the human condition.

Join us in sharing your insights and advancing the impact of EDI professionals by harnessing the unique power of psychology. We look forward to your contributions and to collectively shaping an equitable, diverse, and inclusive future for all.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions should be submitted to commentinggov.apa.org  or sent to EDI@apa.org by February 21, 2025. Submissions should be structured and concise, following the template provided below and will undergo peer review, consolidation, and prioritization.  

Submission Requirements

• Length: Submissions should be approximately 1-2 pages (single-spaced).
• Format: Use clear headings, bullet points where applicable, and ensure logical flow.
• Citations: Include relevant psychological research or case studies that support your principles.
• Practical Application: Provide an example or case study demonstrating the principle in action.