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As a conceptual and analytic framework, intersectionality has informed, and can transform, how scholars approach psychology and its history. Intersectionality provides a framework for examining how multiple social categories combine in systems characterized by both oppression and privilege to affect the experiences of those occupying the intersections of these social categories. The concept has its origins in the writings of Black feminists and critical race theorists in the 1970s and 1980s. Since that time, many critical debates about the definition, uses, and even misuses of intersectionality have been put forward by scholars in many fields. In psychology, the uptake of intersectionality as a methodological and epistemological framework has been undertaken largely by feminist psychologists. In this context, intersectionality has been used as both a logic for designing research, and as a perspective from which to critique the perpetuation of intersectional oppression latent in mainstream psychological research. In addition, intersectionality has also been applied to writing histories of psychology that attend to the operation of multiple intersecting forms of oppression and privilege. For example, historians of psychology have taken up intersectionality as a way to approach the intersections of scientific racism, sexism, and heterocentrism in the history of psychology’s concepts and theories. Intersectionality also has the potential for generating a more sophisticated historical understanding of social activism by psychologists. Finally, given that extant histories of psychology focusing on the American context have rendered the contributions of women of color largely invisible, intersectional analysis can serve to re-instantiate and foreground their experiences and contributions.

Leaders exist in myriad types of groups. Yet in many of them—including in organizational, political, and educational domains—leadership roles are disproportionately occupied by individuals of certain social categories (e.g., men, white individuals). Speaking to this imbalance in representation, there is a wealth of theory and research indicating that gender and race are key to understanding: (a) who tends to get placed in leadership roles, and (b) what an individual’s experience will be like while in that role or on the path to it. In part, this is because there are commonly held stereotypes that make certain individuals—often those of socially dominant racial and gender groups—seem better suited for leadership. By comparison, individuals of other genders and races are often perceived and evaluated as less suitable and treated as such (e.g., deprived of opportunities to become leaders or develop leadership skills). These stereotypes can also elicit disparate internal states (e.g., stereotype threat, internalized negative self-perceptions) that affect individuals’ likelihood of pursuing or obtaining such roles (e.g., by affecting their motivation or performance). In this way, leadership dynamics are intimately connected to the study of gender and race. Overall, these dynamics involve several psychological processes. This includes myriad forms of gender and racial bias—discrimination in evaluations, pay, hiring, promotions, and in access to role models, mentorship, and support; backlash effects, queen bee effects (self-group distancing), glass cliff effects, motherhood penalties, and fatherhood bonuses. It also involves multiple lines of theorizing—role congruity theory, lack of fit, masculine defaults and ambient belonging, modern sexism, aversive racism, social identity threat, and others. Looking ahead, there are several critical directions for advancing research on gender, race, and leadership. This includes examining leadership processes from a more precise, intersectional lens rather than studying the implications of one’s gender or race in isolation (e.g., by integrating work on intersectionality theory, gendered races, and intersectional invisibility). Future study of these processes will also need to consider other relevant social identities (e.g., reflecting class, religion, age, sexuality, ability and neurodiversity, nationality, and immigration status), along with a more thorough consideration of gender—going beyond the study of (cisgender) men and women to consider how transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals are perceived and treated in leadership roles or on the path to such roles. Additionally, and ultimately, it will be critical to develop effective strategies for addressing the underrepresentation of women, racial and ethnic minorities, and other social groups in leadership. In part this will mean carefully evaluating strategies now being employed (e.g., organizational diversity messages, quotas and affirmative action, mentorship programs)—including those that may be largely ineffective, if not causing harm (e.g., implicit bias training, campaigning for women to “lean in”). Addressing the lack of diversity in leadership will be a crucial step toward tackling broader issues of social inequity.

Within racialized societies, the meaning of race is an important topic of psychological study. As Helms and colleagues have pointed out, however, race has no consensual theoretical or scientific meaning in psychology, although the term race is frequently used in psychological theory, research, and practice as if it has obvious meaning. A recent cultural historical analysis of race scholarship concluded that race as a label has developed over time, leading to the treatment of race as a “thing.” Such ideological use of race as a thing has been discredited. Nevertheless, socially destructive ideological concepts of race have been embedded in racialized societies to varying degrees through social, economic, and political institutions and their practices. In the history of the field of psychology, race has had various theoretical conceptualizations (i.e., definitions). Most of these theoretical conceptualizations can be linked to larger scientific and societal movements within racialized societies. Relatedly, psychologists have adopted various epistemological and methodological approaches to studying race, although positivist empiricism has dominated. The complexities of the theoretical conceptualization and methodological approaches in the field of psychology for studying race have led to multiple analyses of how to address “psychology’s problems with race.” Multiple features of a racialized society provide the broader context for the study race within the field of psychology.

In a relatively brief period of time, the discipline of psychology in the United States changed from being mostly concerned with its status as a legitimate science, qua physics or biology, to a rapidly growing field caught up in the tensions between academic science and the practice of psychology as a mental health profession. The numerical growth of the field’s members was heavily concentrated in the professional areas of mental health application. This was due primarily to the changed conditions of postwar life and the concerns of policymakers about the mental health of citizens in a dynamic, fast-changing, and fast-paced society. Government funding for psychology dramatically increased, especially funds for training clinical psychologists and for conducting research on mental health problems. It was not long before many of the clinical psychologists moved away from solely academic work and into the private practice of providing psychotherapy to clients. The discipline’s main organizational body of the time was the American Psychological Association, which came under pressure to allocate intellectual, organizational, and financial resources to the support of its practitioner members. One of the most intense battles of this period was that of creating different training models for clinical psychology. The early postwar model placed priority on training clinical psychology students to be scientists first, but by the 1960s, the demand for greater emphasis on training for practice had to be addressed for the field to remain coherent. Along with the internal tensions, psychology had to come to terms with external pressures as well. Among its challenges were those from competing professions, such as medicine, to its legal and cultural authority to provide professional services. Psychology eventually won those battles, but only after a state-by-state fight. Psychology was also presented with the challenges of a society wrestling with social problems, such as the demands for equal civil rights and opportunities. By the late 1960s, there were increasing demands for inclusion of students and faculty of color in graduate training and while there were some successes, there remained challenges that endured into the 21st century.

The first Italian social psychologies showed a pluralism of perspectives that disappeared in the subsequent development of the discipline. With the presence of a collective sociological psychology (SP), a philosophical SP, and a psychological SP rooted in the sociocentric dimension, the field appeared variously articulated with a negotiation and a dialogue between different disciplinary approaches for the construction of its identity. This dialogue was destined to be swept away, first, during the fascist period, and then in 1954, with the affirmation of a psychological and experimental SP, sanctioned by the first National Congress of SP. However, in Italy, unlike in the United States, SP maintained strong social roots. These roots had already been evident from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, when three central topics for SP were emerging in Europe: crowd psychology, psychology of public opinion, and race psychology. Each of these topics played a particular role under the totalitarian regimes. In Italy, Antonio Miotto and Paolo Orano were the scholars who dealt with these three themes, developing them to different degrees of involvement with the fascist regime. Antonio Miotto remained relatively autonomous from the political lines dictated by fascism. Thus, he articulated an original positive conception of the crowd, contrasting the vision of passive masses to maneuver in ways typical of fascism. He did not express himself in favor of or against the censorship of the media and the control of public opinion, and only after fascism took hold did he reflect on the role of political propaganda, analyzing examples from totalitarian regimes. He avoided taking strong and clear positions on the theme of race, although a few of his statements on the subject were completely in line with the regime’s racist ideology. Orano, by contrast, had a marginal interest in crowds, sharing the negative prejudice typical of the conservative crowd psychology. However, Orano had a great deal to say on the role of public opinion. His thoughts developed along the lines of fascist totalitarian policy. He was one of the protagonists of this field, and in 1938 he founded the first Italian center of study of public opinion (Demodoxalogy Center). He created the center with the aim of knowing public opinion, guiding it, and controlling it. With respect to the theme of race, Orano was also completely involved in the fascist racist ideology, devoting considerable energy and framing his original contribution according to the historiographic point of view defined as “national racism.” Yet the development of SP that occurred after World War II showed no traces of these different forms of social psychologies and their role during the fascist regime. Postwar Italian social psychology completely removed the contribution of these two psychologists. Only recently has the prewar social psychology begun to be analyzed by a critical history centered on both disciplinary and sociocultural contexts.