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pager methodology, O‘Connor and Rosenblood found support for their SAM predictions.

Differences in the personality and social approaches can be seen (e.g., personality theorists are concerned with enduring tendencies toward close relationships whereas social psychologists focus on states of contact). Yet, O’Connor and Rosenblood’s model is a nice way of bringing this review full circle. In focusing on both the process aspects of affiliation and on differences in op- timal levels of affiliation, they conclude that their model offers an inclusive formulation that can “link so- cial psychological views of affiliation with views from personality psychology” (p. 521).

Bibliography

Boyatzis, R. (1973). Affiliation motivation. In D. C. Mc- Clelland & R. S. Steele (Eds.), Human motivation: A book of readings (pp. 252-276). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.

Heyns. R. W., Veroff, J., & Atkinson, J. W. (1992). A scoring manual for the affiliation motive. In C. l? Smith, J. W. Atkinson, D. C. McClelland, & J. Veroff (Eds.), Motivation and personality: Handbook of thematic content analysis (pp. 211-223). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hill, C. A. (1987). Affiliation motivation: People who need people. . . but in different ways. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 1008-1018.

Koestner, R., & McClelland, I). C. (1992). The affiliative mo- tive. In C. I? Smith, J. w. Atkinson, D. C. McClelland, & J. Veroff (Eds.), Motivation and personality: Handbook of thematic content analysis (pp. 205-210). New York: Cam- bridge University Press.

Kulik, J. A., Mahler, H. I. M., & Moore, F! J, (1996). Social comparison and affiliation under threat: Effects on re- covery from major surgery. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 967-979.

Larson. R., Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Graef, R. (1982). Time alone in daily experience: Loneliness or renewal? In L. A. Peplau & D. Perlman (Eds.), Loneliness: A source- book of current theory, resrarch, and therapy (pp. 40-53). New York: Wiley-Interscience.

McAdams, D. F! (1980). A thematic coding system for the intimacy motive. Journal of Research in Personality, 14. 4 1 3-4 3 2.

Mehrabian, A. (1994). Evidence bearing on the Affiliative Tendency (MAPF) and Sensitivity to Rejection (MSR) scales. Current Psychology: Developmental, Learning, Per- sonality, Social, 13, 97-117.

Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality. London: Oxford University Press.

O’Connor, S. C., & Rosenblood, L. K. (1996). Affiliation mo- tivation in everyday experience: A theoretical compar- ison. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 513-522.

Schachter, S. (1959). The psychology of afjliation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Stewart, A. J., & Chester, N. L. (1982). Sex differences in

human social motives: Achievement,’affiliation, and power. In A. J. Stewart (Ed.), Motivation and society (pp. 172-218). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Taylor, S. E., Peplau, L. A., & Sears, D. 0. (1997). Socialpsy- chology (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Winter, D. G. (1992). Content analysis of archival materi- als, personal documents, and everyday verbal produc- tions. In C. F! Smith, J. W. Atkinson, D. C. McClelland, & J. Veroff (Eds.), Motivation and personality: Handbook of thematic content analysis (pp. 110-125). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Daniel Perlman

AFRICA. See North Africa: South Africa: and Sub- Saharan Africa.

AFRICAN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY, also known as Black psychology, is both an old and a new discipline. It is old in the sense that many African American psy- chologists are reclaiming an ancient African heritage in the origins of psychology: it is new in that these developments are occurring at the end of the twentieth century. Just as traditional psychology traces its philo- sophical underpinnings to the ancient Greek philoso- phers, African American psychology finds its roots in the philosophies and religions of ancient Africa. These common origins in ancient philosophical traditions pro- duce similarities between African American psychology and the traditional psychology of Western Europe and America. What is much more striking, however, are their dissimilarities.

African American psychology can, in part, be thought of as a reaction to traditional psychology (which could also be appropriately labeled White psy- chology). This reactive stance is due to the fact that psychology, like all other social science disciplines, de- veloped in the Western world in the context of the strong racial dynamics of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and other forms of racial exploitation. These dynamics, then, were translated into scientific justifi- cations for the social policies of the day: Africans, Na- tive Americans, Asians and East Asians, and Pacific Is- landers were viewed as innately inferior to White Europeans and Americans, so that their exploitation was actually viewed as beneficent.

In recent years, however, African American psy- chology has also developed more proactive approaches to the philosophical and scientific study of human be- havior. These proactive approaches may be viewed, in part, as the reclamation of ancient traditional theorems of human “Beingness,” but may also be appropriately

A F R I C A N AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY 93

characterized as affirmative actions to more truthfully examine African American personality, health and mental health, and interpersonal relationships.

A Definition

African American psychology is the body of knowledge that is concerned with the understanding of African American life and culture. African American psychol- ogy recognizes the commonality of experiences of Af- rican people throughout the world, and therefore may be applied with greater or less precision to African peo- ple in Africa, Europe, South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and North America. African American psychology focuses on the mental, physical, psycholog- ical, and spiritual nature of humanity. It is the collec- tion of works that has been produced by African psy- chologists in the United States (African Americans) and throughout the world.

African American psychology is distinguished from White psychology by a number of idealistic dialectics, or ideals in opposition. These ideals may be viewed as European American centered versus those that are Af- rican centered. and are values and worldviews that are fundamental to European American versus African ways of life. Table I provides a summary of these ide- alistic dialectics.

Overview

African American psychology is presented from two perspectives: the reaction of African American psy- chology to racist attacks on Black people by White so- cial science (“deconstruction”), and the more proactive work of African and African American psychologists to better understand Black life, culture, and behavior.

African American Psychology: Deconstruction

Many historians of psychology trace the modern ori- gins of psychology to Wilhelm Wundt’s psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, established in 1879 (William James established a psychology laboratory at Harvard IJniversity in the same year). It is even more important to place psychology’s origins in its geohis- torical context.

It was in the late fifteenth century and afterward when European explorers “discovered” and made con- tact with indigenous peoples in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Americas. These early contacts were marked by racial theories that dehumanized the newly “discovered” people. Unfortunately, the ensuing 300 years witnessed unprecedented genocide against indig- enous peoples. particularly in the Americas and in Western and Southern Africa, and the enslavement of tens of millions of African men, women, and children. The cultural ethos of Europe and White America dur-

ing these centuries was one of “Manifest Destiny”: the White races had a God-ordained mandate to “civilize” the primitive peoples of the world. That this “civilizing” included murder, rape, and enslavement is one of the longest and saddest chapters in modern human history.

In the scientific community, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, had a mammoth influence on the emerging social sciences. Just 10 years later, in 1869, Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton, pub- lished what was to be a forerunner of scientific racism, Hereditary Genius, which is still in print. Thus, it is no surprise that the founders of Western psychology em- braced the ideological underpinnings of scientific ra- cism. As a result, the list of avowedly racist social sci- entists in the early years of European American psychology read like a “Who’s Who” of “great men” in psychology: Herbert Spencer, Edward Thorndike, Lewis Terman, William McDougall, G. Stanley Hall, J. Cattell, Carl Jung, Charles Spearman, and many others. More contemporary proponents of these ideas are Arthur Jensen, J. Philippe Rushton, William Shockley, and Richard Herrnstein.

From the earliest years of African American psy- chology (in the early twentieth-century United States), Black psychologists challenged or “deconstructed” the theories, methods, and conclusions of the scientific ra- cism that was based on intelligence tests (for a review of this early work, see Robert Guthrie’s Even the Rut Wus White [2nd ed.], New York, 1998). These chal- lenges, by people such as Francis Cecil Sumner, who, in 1920, was the first Black American to receive a Ph.D. degree in psychology, illustrated the flawed conceptions of intelligence, the fact that tests of intelligence were inherently grounded in a particular cultural frame of reference (and therefore were culturally biased against Black people), and the more fundamental problems of a lack of controlled observation in making racial com- parisons (that is, middle-class Whites, who had lived lives of advantage, were typically compared against lower-class Blacks, who were disadvantaged by segre- gation and the lack of equal educational opportunities).

Contemporary Black psychologists have challenged racism in psychology as fraudulent, with one leading exponent, Asa Hilliard 111, calling the work “nonsci- ence” and “nonsense” (see his summary article in Cultural Diversity 6 Mental Health, 1996, 2, 1-20;

also see Halford Fairchild, JournuI of SociuI Issues, 1991, 47, 101-115). More specifically, race and IQ arguments are flawed on both conceptual and methodological grounds. The first and most important of the concep- tual problems has to do with the definition of the key hypothetical constructs: race and IQ. Race is best viewed as a socially constructed concept with little bi- ological meaning-the overlap in genetic code between

94 A F R I C A N AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY

AFRICAN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY. Table I. European Americanxentered vs. African-centered ideals

European American-Centered Ideals African-Centered Ideals

Individualism: The focus is on the individual-her or his interpretation of events and reaction to changing situations. The individual is the unit of analysis in research

Materialism: An emphasis is placed on material reality, and the acquisition of material goods. Material reality i s that which is observed, manipulated, and quantified

Control of nature: An emphasis is placed on con- trolling nature-through science and develop- ment

Objective: An emphasis is placed on purporting to be “value free” and “unbiased” in fact finding

Collectivism: The focus is on the collective or the “tribe.” One cannot understand an individual’s functioning in a way that is divorced from the group. The unit of analysis in research is the group

Spiritualism: An emphasis is placed on spiritual reality, and the development of spiritual congruence with the Creator. The most important aspects of human existence are unseen, unobservable, and nonquantifiable

Harmony with nature: An emphasis is placed on harmonizing with nature, through a spiritual connection with the things of the world

Subjective: An emphasis is placed on ac- knowledging values and biases and us- ing these to bring about the liberation of African people

races is very close to 100% (indeed, there is often more genetic variation within so-called races than there is between races). The concept of IQ, too, is conceptually suspicious. Although viewed as a “fixed capacity” to learn or acquire information, the measure of intelli- gence (the IQ test) necessarily adapts to the changing ages of children, youth, and adults because their ac- quisition of information is a constantly changing (and growing) dynamic. Finally, by way of conceptual con- fusion, is the effort to partial out hereditary from en- vironmental influences, as if these influences operate in isolation. In fact, genes and environment always op- erate together so that disentangling their unique con- tributions to intellectual functioning is a methodologi- cal impossibility (at least among humans).

One of the founders of modern African American psychology was Robert L. Williams of Washington Uni- versity in St. Louis, Missouri. His work covered a great deal of ground in deconstructing racist theories of in- tellectual functioning, personality functioning, and lan- guage. In the area of intelligence, Williams developed the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity, which was grounded in African American culture. He was able to demonstrate, not surprisingly, that Blacks outperformed Whites on this test, demonstrating that racial comparisons on culturally based instruments were invalid. His work on personality assessment sim- ilarly demonstrated the biases inherent in standardized personality measures and led to his creation of more culturally appropriate alternatives. Finally, Williams

coined the term Ebunics (ebony plus phonics) to refer to the linguistic patterns of African Americans, and he showed that perjorative views of “Black English” were unwarranted.

Another very proactive approach within African American psychology was the assistance rendered in the legal challenges to the use of intelligence tests for educational placement. In California, this challenge was concretized in the well-known Larry H v. Wilson Riles class action civil trial that alleged that African American schoolchildren were being disproportionately and inappropriately placed in special education classes on the basis of IQ tests. From 1977 to 1980, members of the Association of Black Psychologists, led by Harold Dent and William Pierce. provided expert testimony and guidance in the trial that culminated in a judgment in favor of the plaintiffs. From then through the end of the twentieth century, the use of IQ tests for the pur- poses of educational placement was banned in Cali- fornia.

Challenges to the Integrity of Black Pupils. Al- though the idea of innate racial differences in intellec- tual capacity may be considered adequately debunked, it is the case that racial differences in scholastic achievement are a fairly enduring finding in the social sciences. African American students, by and large, have lower average academic achievement levels than White students. Much of this racial difference in achievement has been improperly tied to differences in intelligence, as noted above. But more “liberal” approaches to the

AFRICAN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY 95

understanding of racial differences-those that may es- chew the odious notion of inherent (and therefore im- mutable) biological differences-have still reached questionable conclusions that challenged the personal integrity of Black students, their peers, or their families. Thus, William Ryan’s idea of “blaming the victim” (New York, 1976) has surfaced in the majority of stud- ies that examined racial differences in academic achievement. This line of research is perhaps best sym- bolized by the largest study of its kind, Equality of Ed- ucational Opportunity, by James Coleman and his col- leagues (Washington, D.C., 1966).

Theory and research by African American psychol- ogists have critiqued the above line of research on both conceptual and methodological grounds. Many of the criticisms directed toward the race and IQ controversy apply to the study of racial differentials in achievement (as they should: IQ tests are, in the main, tests of scho- lastic achievement). A growing body of research within African American psychology has demonstrated that academic underachievement of Black youth is tied to many factors: teacher attitudes and the “self-fulfilling prophecy”; an alien curriculum (one that extols the cultures of others at the expense of Black cultures); an inappropriate pedagogical praxis (emphasizing sitting, listening, and competitive testing rather than active learning in a more cooperative framework): and struc- tured inequalities in educational opportunities (Black students, on average, attend schools that are under- funded, overcrowded, and have less experienced teach- ing and administrative staffs). It could be argued that any individual-level explanation for academic under- achievement among Blacks should be held in abeyance until the structural inequities are rectified. In the con- text of systematic racial inequities in educational op- portunity, studies that compare racial groups on scho- lastic achievement violate the criterion of controlled observation in social science research.

Challenges to the Integrity of Black Families. Perhaps due to the virtual absence of African American scholars in the social sciences until the 1950s (with the exception of a handful of pioneers, mentioned previ- ously), research on African American life and culture was almost entirely performed by “outsiders” to the Af- rican American community. As with research on race and IQ and scholastic achievement, research on the family lifc of African Americans has been fraught with conceptual, methodological, and ideological problems. Thus, a long line of research has pathologized the Af- rican American family by pointing to its presumed ma- triarchal structure, father absence, under- or over- stimulation of children, and its either permissive or rigidly authoritarian child-rearing styles. This line of research culminated in the highly influential policy pa- per on the Black family authored by Daniel Patrick

Moynihan (The Negro Familg: The Case For Nutional Ac- tion, Washington, D.C., 1965). Popularly known as the “Moynihan Report,” this policy document concluded that the African American family was best viewed as a disorganized “tangle of pathology,” with little hope of remediation.

The reaction within African American psychology, again, has been to challenge the conceptual, method- ological, and ideological biases that have characterized much of the work that focused on family pathology. In addition, Black researchers began to focus more on the strengths of Black families rather than their weak- nesses. Throughout the history of systematic family dis- ruption during the centuries of slavery and de jure dis- crimination, the majority of Black families could be described as “nuclear” (two-parent) and egalitarian. Moreover, it is critically important to understand that any examination of family life must take the broader social, political, and economic contexts into account. Thus, the problems found among Black families are more related to these contextual variables than racial ones. Excellent sources for these views may be found in Robert Hill’s Strengths of the Black Fumily (New York, 1972) and the edited volume, Black Families, by Har- riette Pipes McAdoo (Beverly Hills, CA, 1981).

Far from being disorganized, African American fam- ilies have been shown to exist in a complex kin network that spans space and time. These extended kin net- works, operating in conjunction with the Black church, facilitated upward mobility and provided a buffer against the myriad stresses that confronted African American people in the eras of slavery, segregation, and discrimination. Harriette McAdoo, a leading researcher in this area, has called these effects a “kin-insurance” policy.

Challenges to the Integrity of the Black Per- sonality. The primary sets of literature against which African American psychologists have been forced to react-to debunk or deconstruct-had to do with in- telligence, achievement, and family functioning. As if these were not enough, a whole host of additional re- search foci have imperiled the integrity of Black peo- ple on a variety of other. more personal, grounds. Thus, lines of research question the personality func- tioning of Black people (low self-esteem, external lo- cus of control, low impulse control, inability to delay gratification), their psychological functioning (Blacks are overdiagnosed with schizophrenia), or their cul- ture (Blacks have been alleged to have a culture of poverty, a counterculture, no culture, etc.). In each instance, Black psychologists have reacted with criti- cisms and reanalyses that demonstrated the general lack of validity of the pathology perspectives for con- ceptual and methodological reasons similar to those already covered.

96 A F R I C A N AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY

Constructive Approaches in African American Psychology

A fair case may be made for the perception that African American psychology is dominated by reactions to White psychology, particularly those applications of White psychology that have falsely portrayed African Americans as inferior or pathological. It may also be the case that were it not for the anti-Black biases of White psychology, African American psychology may never have had its genesis.

Robert Guthrie’s Even the Rat Was White traces both the history of White psychology’s fascination with race differences (with its anti-Black biases) as well as the early history of African American psychology. As noted earlier, African American psychology may be traced to the awarding of the Ph.D. degree to Francis Cecil Sum- ner in 1920. But African American psychology wit- nessed its rebirth in r968 with the founding of the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi).

At the 1968 Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (APA) in San Francisco, a group of about 80 Black psychologists, led by Joseph White (Professor Emeritus, University of California, Ir- vine), coalesced to discuss their frustrations within the nearly all-White APA. This was just 3 years after the publication of the “Moynihan Report” and 2 years after the publication of the Coleman Report (both of which were interpreted as disparaging to African Americans). It was I year prior to the publication of Arthur Jensen’s hotly debated treatise on race and IQ.

The year 1968 was also the peak of the “Black is Beautiful” and Black Power movements that ema- nated from the Civil Rights struggle of the late 1950s and early 1960s. This year also marked the assassi- nation of Dr. Martin Luther King and was just 3 years after the assassination of Malcolm X. It is not coincidental, then, that ABPsi would coalesce into an autonomous organizational entity at this crucial junc- ture in American history. Guided by the principle of self-determination, the founders of ABPsi sought to address the professional needs of its members and to begin the development of new models of human be- havior that would benefit the broader Black commu- nity. At the time of its founding. eight goals were ar- ticulated; these goals continue to guide the mission of the Association today:

I. To enhance the psychological well-being of Black people in America and throughout the world.

2. To promote constructive understanding of Black people through positive approaches to research.

3 . To develop an approach to psychology that is con- sistent with the experience of Black people.

4. To define mental health in consonance with newly established psychological concepts and standards re- garding Black people.

5 . To develop internal support systems for Black psy- chologists and students of psychology.

6. To develop policies for local, state, and national de- cision making which affect the mental health of the Black community.

7 . To promote values and a IifestyIe that supports the survival and well-being as a race.

8. To support established Black organizations and aid in the development of new independent Black insti- tutions to enhance our psychological, educational, cultural. and economic situation.

Now celebrating over 30 years of existence, ABPsi thrives in the United States and has membership in a dozen countries worldwide. ABPsi is governed by a board of directors consisting of a national president, an immediate past president. a president elect, a sec- retary. a treasurer, four regional representatives, the chair of the general assembly, and the chair of the stu- dent division. Appointed members of the board include the chairpersons of the national convention and publications committees, and historian. The board of directors is advised by the Council of Past Presidents and the Council of Elders. At the close of the twentieth century, ABPsi had approximately 30 chapters in cities around the United States, with chapters in the early formation stages in Canada, Britain, and South Africa. ABPsi publishes The Journal of Black Psychology and Psych Discourse: The Monthly News Journal of the Asso- ciation of Black Psychologists. Through these pub- lications and texts authored by its members, the proac- tive scholarship of African American psychology has focused on racial identity, African-centered models of health and mental health (and related research and in- tervention strategies), and the reclamation of a spirit- centered epistemology.

Racial Identity Research. The cultural move- ments that contributed to the founding of the ABPsi were associated with a dramatic transformation in the psychological status of African American people. Once considered “colored” and “Negroes,” the African Amer- ican population discarded internalized negative images and embraced signs and symbols that reflected a posi- tive affirmation of self and group. These signs and sym- bols included changing the group name from Negro to Black, the adoption of positive slogans that reflected group pride (Hack is Beautiful! and I’m Black and I‘m Proud!), the naming of children in African-centered traditions, and the readoption of pride in the African heritage.

Black psychologists gave considerable attention to these psychological and cultural transformations. Per- haps the most influential theorist in this area, William Cross of Cornell University, developed the idea of “ ‘Ni- grescence’: The Psychological Transformation of be- coming Black.” First published in 1971, Cross’s model of the “Negro-to-Black Conversion Experience” posited

A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N PSYCHOLOGY 97

a series of stages that characterized this transforma- tion. [See Ethnic and Racial Identity.] This idea of iden- tity transformation, in recent years, has been seen as a model of personality development, that is, the changes that may occur in a person’s identity over the life span. It has also been invoked as a model of social-cultural development, or the collective racial identity of the broader African and African American community. Fi- nally, the idea of racial identity has been shown to be important in psychotherapeutic interventions. In this latter regard, the individual’s stage or level of racial identity development is implicated as both a process and outcome of psychotherapy. That is, different ap- proaches must be used for individuals in different stages or states of racial identity: and movement toward self- acceptance is a necessary goal of the therapeutic pro- cess.

Models of Health and Mental Health

One of the distinguishing features of African American psychology is the emphasis on the historical origins of contemporary reality. Thus, African people, throughout the world, have been characterized as the product of the Maufu: the 400-year history of domination, exploi- tation. genocide, slavery, and psychological inferioriza- tion that is unprecedented in human history. Some Black psychologists view the effects of these historical and contemporary forces as producing various forms of psychopathology among the majority of Africans (and African Americans), thus normalizing pathology within the African American community. Some have gone so far as to develop a ‘hosology” that classifies psychic diseases within the African American population. Oth- ers, however. are pointing to the unique resilience and strengths produced within African populations as a re- sult of these experiences.

These cultural theories of African American func- tioning point to the enduring African value structures that have sustained African Americans through hun- dreds of years of slavery and discrimination. These val- ues include an emphasis on the community, coopera- tive interdependence and sharing, respect for others, and a strong religious orientation.

Contemporary theorists and practitioners in African American psychology have focused a great deal of at- tention on redefining the African personality and con- ceptions of health and mental health. These efforts of redefinition have generally focused on African-centered epistemological frameworks or worldviews. What this means, practically, is that functioning is defined holis- tically and through the individual’s connection within a larger collective. Most important is the emphasis on Spiritness (as opposed to mere spirituality) as a crucial aspect of human functioning. Here, human existence is explicitly acknowledged to consist of seen and unseen elements that operate together to produce health or ill-

ness. Optimal theory, as articulated by Linda James My- ers (Understanding an Afrocentric World View: Introduction to an Optimal Psychology, [znd ed.], Dubuque, IA, 1993). introduces the conjunction of spirit and matter in an African-centered cosmology, and is particularly con- cerned with this reintegration of spiritual elements into human functioning.

An African-centered orientation, then, is literally translated into a “back to Africa” movement in terms of studying and applying the many generations of knowledge that have accumulated through traditional African medicine practices. These practices focus on understanding and applying traditional pharmacology (emphasizing natural herbs, grasses. barks, and the like), utilizing communal human resources in the heal- ing process, and reintegrating the person into spiritual- material wholeness.

The health and mental health challenges that con- front African American psychology today include the continuing need to understand and cope with the racial stresses that result from the daily slights and indignities that produce feelings of marginality and threaten self- esteem: and grappling with the “excess deaths” that confront the African American community through human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodefi- ciency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), violence, hypertension, heart disease, cancers, and other behaviorally mediated life-threatening diseases.

Assessment

As noted earlier, much of African American psychology has been concerned with reacting to and correcting racist theory and research. Much of this negative re- search relied on tests and measures (such as standard- ized I(! tests) that were alien to African American cul- ture and experience. In the past 30 years, however. a plethora of tests and measures have been developed that have been more culturally congruent with African American cultural experiences. These assessment de- vices focus on racial identity, informal help giving and receiving (as alternatives to formal psychotherapy), gift- edness, spirituality, perceived racial stress and coping styles, cultural mistrust, acculturation, African world- view, parenting attitudes and behaviors. values, African self-consciousness, and family structure and relations (among others). Indeed, the work in this area of as- sessment has been so extensive that it proved worthy of two edited volumes by Reginald Jones (Handbook of Tests and Measurements for Black Populations, Hampton,

In the latter third of the twentieth century, a pleth- ora of tests and measures have been developed that are grounded within an African-centered point of view. These include Joseph Baldwin’s African Self Conscious- ness Scale, Tonya Armstrong’s Measure of Spirituality, and a variety of measures that focus on self-esteem,

VA, 1996).

98 AFRICAN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY

alienation, life satisfaction, attitudes toward marriage and the family, and personality functioning.

Applications

In addition to the health-related foci and assessment described above, African American psychologists apply their approach to the solution of a variety of problems that are unique to the African American community. These include the problems of psychoeducational as- sessment: gender, sexuality and male-female relation- ships: and broader issues attendant on the continuing oppression and exploitation of African people around the world.

A very promising line of research is that stimulated by Harold Dent and his colleagues, known as “dynamic assessment.” Here, instead of the static measuring of what children know (as in standardized IQ tests or ac- ademic achievement tests), dynamic assessment focuses on the actual learning styles of students. Thus, stu- dents are tested, taught, and retested, in order to dis- cern the strengths and weaknesses in their styles of learning.

Similarly, contemporary African American psychol- ogists have eschewed the pathology-laden treatment of Black women and men and have developed more trans- formative models of female and male functioning and male-female relationships. Leading these revisionist ap- proaches are Na‘im Akbar (Visions for Black Men, Tal- lahassee, FL, 1991) and Gail Wyatt (Stolen Women: Re- claiming Our Sexuality, Taking Back Our Lives, New York,

Notable advances in this vein are clinical treatment models for African American clientele. Anna Mitchell Jackson’s model emphasizes a community of helping professionals working together in a more holistic ap- proach that provides a “service chain” through multi- ple systems. This model, then, views treatment as in- extricably tied to family functioning, functioning within the Black community, embracing Black cultural values and practices, and embedded within a particular politi- cal and economic context.

Fred Phillips’s idea of Ntu psychotherapy (Ntu is Bantu for “spirit energy”) is also noteworthy. Here, Ntu is reflective of African philosophical traditions that em- phasize the linkages between mind and body, object and spirit, and client and healer. The task of therapy is to reconnect a person’s mental life to his or her physical, emotional, and spiritual beings. The therapist-healer is viewed as necessarily connected to the client in helping in this transformative process. In addition, the Ntu model focuses on the seven principles of the Nguzo Saba, as developed by Maulana Karenga in connection with the observation of Kwanzaa (the seven-day non- sectarian holiday celebrated by Africans and African Americans-and others-around the world between

1997).

Christmas and New Year). These principles are Nia (purpose), Imani (faith), Ujima (collective work and re- sponsibility), Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self- determination), Kuumba (creativity), and Ujamaa (co- operative economics).

Finally, through the work of ABPsi, African Ameri- can psychology is becoming more globally self- conscious in reaching out to African psychologists in Europe, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and throughout the African continent. In this regard, it is explicitly recognized that many parallels exist in the histories and contemporary life circumstances of Afri- can people throughout the world. Through it all, the mission of African American psychology remains the illumination and liberation of the African spirit around the world. And in this, it is recognized that one cannot illuminate and liberate the African spirit without also illuminating and liberating the spirit of all of humanity.

[See also Minority Psychology.]

Bibliography

Ani, M. (1994). Yurugu: An African-centered critique of Eu- ropean cultural thought and behavior. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. This theoretical text exposes the historical and contemporary establishment of the ideology of White supremacy.

Bronstein, l?, & Kat, N. (Eds.). (1988). Teaching the psy- chology of people. Washington, DC: American Psycho- logical Association. This volume provides guidelines and resources for teachers who wish to integrate cul- tural, sexual, and gender diversity into the psychology curriculum. Included are several chapters pertinent to African American psychology.

Burlew, A. K. H.. Banks, W. C.. McAdoo, H. P., & Azibo, D. A. (Eds.). (1992). African American psychology: Theory, research and practice. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. This vol- ume examines African American psychology in terms of its theoretical, methodological, and practice distinc- tions: family life: children; cognitive and measurement issues: and praxis (with an emphasis on the areas of personality, clinical, social, and health psychology). It includes a chapter on the celebrated Larry P case.

Cross, W. E. (1971). The Negro-to-Black conversion expe- rience: Toward a psychology of Black liberation. Black World, 20, 13-37.

Grills, C., & Rowe, D. (1998). African traditional medicine: Implications for African-centered approaches to healing in R. L. Jones (Ed.), African American mental health: The- ory. research and intervention (pp. 71-100). Hampton, VA: Cobb & Henry. Provides a comprehensive overview to traditional healing methods in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Reviews current knowledge and fu- ture directions.

Helms, J. E. (Ed.). (1990). Black and White racial identity: Theory, research and practice. New York: Greenwood Press. This text, edited by one of the leading researchers

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in racial identity, examines the theory and measure- ment of Black and White racial identity, their corre- lates, and practical applications. The appendices pro- vide the Black Racial Identity Attitude Scale and the White Racial Identity Attitude Scale.

Hilliard. A. G., 111 (Ed.). (1991). Testing African-American students. Morristown, NJ: Aaron Press. This edited vol- ume is a special reissue of the Negro Educational Review (Volume 38. Numbers 2-3, April-July 1987). It includes articles that focus on psychological assessment from an African frame of reference, the abuses of standardized testing on African Americans, a critique of IQ tests, and directions for “revolutions” in professional practice.

Jones, R. I,. (Ed.). (1988). Psychoeducational assessment of minorify group children: A casebook. Berkeley, CA: Cobb & Henry. This volume presents a variety of assessment strategies for minority children. The foci include dy- namic assessment, adaptive behavior assessment, be- havioral assessment, bilingual assessment, group meth- ods, and other methods.

Jones, R. 1,. (Ed.). (1991). Black psychology (3rd ed.). Berke- ley, CA: Cobb & Henry. After an overview, this text ex- amines the perspectives of Black psychology, the reac- tive approaches (known as “deconstruction”), the proactive approaches (known as “reconstruction”), and a variety of applications (fields of inquiry, counseling and psychotherapy, racism, and research).

Jones, R. I,. (Ed.). (1998). African-American identity devel- opment. Hampton, VA: Cobb & Henry. This edited vol- ume is divided into three parts: (I) stage models and perspectives: (2) Symposium on Cross’s Stage Model: and (3) other perspectives and models. Taken together, the text provides a comprehensive review of the re- search and theory in African American identity devel- opment. Contributions from the major theorists and empiricists in this area are included.

Jones, R. 1,. (Ed.). (1998). African-American mental health: Theory, rvsrarch and intervention. Hampton, VA: Cobb & Henry. This edited volume provides a state-of-the-art collection of articles on African American psychology. It is organized in six parts: perspectives and paradigms, spirituality and mental health, self-concept. stress and hypertension, therapeutic interventions, and symposia on psychotherapeutic approaches (which focus on psy- choanalytic psychotherapy and “Rootwork and Voo- doo”).

Kambon, K .K. K. (1998). AfricanlBZack psychology in the American context: An African-centered approach. Tallahas- see, FIi Nubian Nation. This text, from one of the most prolific and original thinkers in African American psy- chology, provides a comprehensive overview of the field. It covers historical and paradigmatic foundations and contemporary expressions in the field that include per- sonality functioning, mental ability, African-centered vs. non-African-centered models, and training issues.

Wilcox, R. C. (Ed.). (1971). The psychological consequences of being a Black Amrrican: A collection of research by Black psychologists. New York: Wiley. This edited text presents 49 of the earliest articles in the modern history of Af- rican American psychology. The material is presented

in seven parts: (I) Cultural disadvantage, minority groups, and exceptional children: (2) Racial integra- tion: Academic and social implications: ( 3 ) Intelligence and achievement; (4) Higher education: (5) Educational psychology: (6) Attitude, personality, and emotional characteristics; and (7) Psychology as a study and as a profession.

Halford H. Fairchild

AGEISM. The term ageism was introduced in 1968 by the psychiatrist Robert Butler (a former director of the National Council On Aging) to describe a pervasive combination of disparagement and discrimination di- rected against the elderly in our society. While techni- cally the term could be used to refer to a bias against any group primarily on the basis of their chronological age, it has become more commonly used to describe negative stereotypes concerning the character and ca- pabilities of the elderly, as well as discrimination against older persons in the workplace and in other social in- stitutions.

Like race and gender, the age of an individual can exert a significant influence on the attributions made concerning that person’s abilities and dispositions. In fact, researchers have found that attributions made about another person are affected as much by age- related stereotypes as by gender-related ones. Psychol- ogists and gerontologists have drawn explicit analogies between ageism and other “isms” extensively re- searched by social scientists (i.e., racism and sexism), especially in terms of the formation of negative stereo- types and the potentially malignant consequences of age discrimination.

Negative Attributions and Stereotypes

Age-related stereotypes may be as flagrant as the belief that most of the elderly are senile and incompetent to make decisions concerning their own affairs, or as sub- tle as the idea that ill health and infirmity are natural consequences of aging. When individuals have little contact with older persons, or are relatively uninformed about the actual processes of aging, it is easier for ex- aggerations and misconceptions such as these to be- come established.

Stereotypes of “typical” elderly persons have been found to include a variety of negative attributions, at various times ascribing the following traits to the aged: slow, forgetful, withdrawn, rigid, unhappy. tired, poorly coordinated, accident-prone, unproductive, asexual, and incompetent. A national survey commissioned by the National Council On Aging in the mid-1970s found that the majority of Americans identified only two pos- itive traits consistently associated with persons over 65