March 2008
Volume 21, Number 3
Psychology in Iran
By Warren Thorngate
It was not the career trajectory I planned. I never imagined I would fly to Iran for a conference in 1993, return 17 times and counting, live with Iranian families, teach at Tehran University, co-direct Iran’s first center for social psychology research at Shahid Beheshti University, and start a web site about psychology in Iran with funding from the Association for Psychological Science. But it all happened, and what an amazing turn it has been!
Reza Zamani (glasses), President, and
staff of the Iranian Psychological Association
Iran. Is that the place where evil dwells? The country that fun forgot? Fans of Fox News and CNN would likely answer yes to both questions — as, naively, did I before my first visit. Since then, observations of the everyday experiences of living in Iran have gently taught me the errors of my stereotypical ways. Behind the political headlines remains a rich and diverse culture, full of well-educated, well-read, thoughtful, and hospitable people who somehow manage to navigate the fascinating complexities and contradictions of their society — a society that can teach us so much about our own psychological and cultural assumptions.
Consider psychology. The discipline is alive and well in Iran, but takes a somewhat different form than the one constructed in the West. For example, Iranian psychology departments are branches of education faculties, not of arts or science faculties. Applied research is prominent, as is research on the psychology of religion. Iranian university students can pursue a BA in clinical psychology as well as general psychology. And something to envy: There are no Institutional Review Boards in Iran. Still, a Western psychologist can find some remarkable similarities. Most Iranian psychology professors, for example, think their students are lazy, most Iranian students think their psychology professors are boring, and all students hate their courses in statistics.
Research grants are scarce in Iran. Economic, political, and infrastructure constraints limit the kinds of research that can be undertaken. At least 80 percent of all psychological research in Iran is correlational, most of it related to individual differences measured with Farsi translations of Western questionnaires. Still, the range of topics of current research is surprising. Included are studies of addiction, depression, hyperactivity, marriage, and prayer. Much of the research is published in Iranian psychology journals, among them: Psychological Research, the Journal of Iranian Psychologists, Contemporary Psychology, and Advances in Cognitive Science. All the journals have English abstracts, and the first two are now included in PsycINFO.
Two years ago, the government began encouraging researchers through a points-for-promotion scheme to publish more in international journals, especially journals listed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Although the ISI initiative is a topic of heated debate in Iran, it has, for better or worse, prompted psychology researchers to rethink their research topics and strategies, brush up their English writing skills (a solid majority of psychologists and their students speak passable English), and follow the APA style guide. It has also prompted Iranian psychologists to seek more international research collaboration – yes, even with Americans!
How can collaboration be promoted? Perhaps a good way to begin is to teach psychologists and students outside Iran more about psychologists, students, and their research inside Iran. With kind support from the APS Fund for Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science, Said Pournaghash, Zinat Esbati, and I have developed a web site for this purpose. The site has profiles of Iranian psychologists and students, English abstracts of articles from Iran’s main psychology journals, links to Iranian psychology departments, news about interesting activities related to Iranian psychology, photos, and a few other surprises. We add new material every week or so to keep the site fresh. Please have a look: http://spring.carleton.ca/~thorngate/iran-psych. I also recommend the new web site of the Iranian Psychological Association: http://iranpa.org/Default-EN.aspx.
If you are interested in collaboration and wish to know more from me, feel free to write. My e-mail address is included in my author bio. You can also write directly to colleagues in Iran (see the web site). Not all topics can be studied in Iran, but those that can offer wonderful opportunities to increase our dialogue of civilizations. ♦
| This article is based on a report of Warren Thorngate’s project supported by APS Fund for Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science. For more information about other APS Teaching Fund projects, see APS Teaching Fund Projects. |
A Closer Look: Social Psychology in Iran
Fatemeh Bagherian and Warren Thorngate
2008 (1387 in the Persian calendar) marks the 50th anniversary of the introduction of social psychology to Iran. We are happy to use the occasion to offer a bit of history of Iranian social psychology and to outline some of its current activities.
In 1958, Ali Mohammad Kardan, a young professor at the University of Tehran who had a PhD in educational philosophy from Geneva and who counted Jean Piaget as one of his professors, taught Iran’s first social psychology course. It was a novel contrast to the usual courses in Iranian psychology departments of the day — courses emphasizing personality, abnormal, psychometric, and clinical topics — and it attracted enough students to be offered in subsequent years.
The first years of the course were limited by a dearth of social psychology literature in Farsi, so Professor Kardan translated two social psychology books, one by Jean Maisonneuve and one by Otto Kleinberg in 1960 and 1964, respectively. Since then, more than 20 books on social psychology have been written and translated, including texts by Aronson, Berkowitz, Oskamp, and Zajonc. In addition, courses that include social psychology content are taught in at least a dozen universities across the country, many of them in departments of management, social work, and education as well as in departments of psychology.
Social psychology has become increasingly popular among university students during the past decade, and many students now undertake thesis research on related topics. Some of the increased interest seems due to shifting demographics of university students and to changes in Iranian society. Soon after the Islamic Revolution and during the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranian birthrate soared. The rate has since declined, but the bulge of young people it produced are now of university age. Many of the students witness increasing social problems in their country and are eager to help solve them. They look to social psychology for insights and suggestions about solutions.
Some of these students have also been inspired by the work of the Institute for Social Studies and Research at Tehran University. Since its beginning in 1967, the Institute has conducted hundreds of studies across the country in nine major areas including television, higher education, intermediate education, youth, and family. Much of the research has a social psychological flavor, and it has captured the imagination of many Iranian university students.
A review of 150 recent theses related to social psychology shows a clear preference for applied topics. Studies of educational issues account for about 65 percent of this literature. Content analyses of educational books accounted for another 10 percent, followed by marital and family relations (8 percent), youth rebellion and escape from home (6 percent), the role of culture and social values in behavior and identity (6 percent), causal attribution and its relation to self esteem or personality (3 percent), and the influence of religion on personality and behavior (3 percent).
Despite increased student interest, Iranian universities have not yet established degree programs in social psychology, though at least two — Tehran University and Shahid Beheshti University — are considering it. One reason for the delay is a dearth of resources. Though several professors teach social psychology, only a handful claim it as their specialization, and those who do are scattered among several universities. At the moment, no Iranian university has a critical mass (three) of trained social psychologists needed to start a graduate program. In addition, resources such as social psychology books and journals are in short supply.
What to do? One answer is to organize those who specialize in social psychology. To this end, a small group of Iranian social psychologists established the Iranian Association of Social Psychology in 2002. Now with a membership of about 60, the association aims to introduce social psychology as a scientific field, coordinate research resources, share research results, and accelerate the establishment of social psychology graduate programs. More importantly, the goal of the association is to promote the study of Iranian social problems and to find domestic solutions for them. Among the problems are many familiar in the West, including problems of urbanization, consumption, pollution, violence, youth, vandalism, divorce, addiction, and crime. The current president is Majid Saffarinia of the Iranian Energy Conservation Laboratory. IASP has started a web site: http://www.iranianasp.org/. It is now in Farsi, but an English version will come soon.
In the meantime, there remains a need to teach interested Iranian students more about how to conduct social psychology research and where there is a need there is an opportunity. Seizing the opportunity, Hamid Pouretemad, Dean of Education and Psychology at Shahid Beheshti University (http://www.sbu.ac.ir/english/Site.aspx?ParTree=BZEZDZ), kindly invited the two of us to establish the Center for Social Psychology Research within his faculty. We happily accepted. The Center officially opened on November 12, 2007.
The primary purpose of the Center is to engage psychology graduate students in social psychological research related to social issues of Iran. To this end, we have begun studying generational differences in expectations of marriage, beliefs about the future, and doing favors.We are now designing studies of family adaptations to the needs of aging parents. We are also seeking Iranian research opportunities related to organizational behavior, consumer behavior, tourism, and environmental improvement.
We expect some of the Center’s work will be cross-cultural. One of our colleagues, Mahin Tavakoli, has just completed a series of fascinating studies of Iranian-Canadian differences in giving and receiving advice. Other cross-cultural topics we hope to pursue include attitudes towards higher education and health, social effects of the Internet, and the uses of poetry (which serves important social functions in Iran). We are also interested in furthering research that promotes more effective dialogues of civilizations.
These are small steps in developing social psychology to address interests and issues in Iran, but we believe they are promising ones. As the months go by, we shall post news of the Center’s social psychology research and teaching activities on the Psychology in Iran web site: http://spring.carleton.ca/~thorngate/iran-psych.
Warren Thorngate is a professor of social psychology, judgment, and decision making at Carleton University in Ottawa. He received his BA in psychology and mathematics from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1966, then emigrated to Canada to complete his graduate work at the University of British Columbia. He has taught in the US, Russia, Poland, Cuba, and Venezuela as well as Iran, and has recently completed a tour of duty as newsletter editor for the Society for Judgment and Decision Making. He can be reached at warren_thorngate@carleton.ca.
Fatemeh Bagherian is a faculty member of Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Iran. She teaches social psychology, human communication, organizational psychology and applied social psychology. She received her BA in psychology from Alzahra University in Tehran in 1979, worked as a teacher in high schools for about 10 year, then continued her study in social psychology under supervision of Warren Thorngate at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
