2020 colloquiums & seminars 

Area: Social

Sexual harassment has had a long presence within psychology right through to the present day. In this talk, I describe three realms in which sexual harassment has been a part of psychology. These include the use of sexual harassment as a research technique, an object of study, and a behaviour on the part of psychologists. In reviewing sexual harassment in these spheres, I highlight the practices and norms that sanctioned, and continue to sanction, sexual harassment as normative within the discipline, as well as the consequences of harassment on psychology’s members, culture, and knowledge production. Finally, I review some of the consequences of taking sexual harassment seriously as an issue within the discipline and offer suggests for how individuals and collectives may transform disciplinary cultures that have sustained sexual harassment as normative.

Area: Social

In the midst of Canada’s overdose crisis, interventions intended to reduce stigma towards people who use drugs (PWUD) are increasing. However, given that stigma towards PWUD is shaped by the intersection of structural forces (e.g. racism, classism, etc.), how inclusive are anti-stigma campaigns of marginalized PWUD? Through collaboration with long term drug user activists with lived experience of substance use related stigma, this two-part research project explores the intergroup relations implicit in mainstream representations of people who use drugs in the context of Canadian anti-stigma campaigns.

In study one, 110 substance use-related anti-stigma campaigns from across Canada (the majority launched since 2017) were identified and analyzed to reveal wider trends in approaches to stigma reduction for people who use drugs. People with lived experience of substance use (i.e. active drug users, people in recovery, or people who have died of an overdose) comprise approximately half of all focal individuals represented and the majority of these individuals are represented as white and middle class. The intersection of substance use related stigma with other forms of oppression is almost never mentioned and most campaigns ignore the historical and structural dimensions of substance use related stigma, defining stigma in primarily psychological terms (e.g. individual bias, stereotypes). Furthermore, one of the most common anti-stigma strategies identified depends on “challenging the stereotypes” of a typical drug user, an approach that may function to only deepen the exclusion of marginalized PWUD by contending that privileged drug users are “not like those people”.  

In study two, eight focus groups with current and former illicit opioid users (N=41) from marginalized subgroups (e.g. low-income, Indigenous, racialized, transgender) critically analyzed two recent examples of Canadian anti-stigma campaigns. Participants did not see their marginalized identities or experiences of stigma represented in the imagery or messaging of the selected campaigns, which participants believed depicted primarily white-appearing, ‘mainstream’, middle-class PWUD. Participants feared the exclusion of their identities from anti-stigma campaigns perpetuated their wider societal exclusion and compounded the inequities of the overdose crisis (e.g. the over-representation of low-income and Indigenous people in overdose deaths).

These findings illustrate the complexity of substance use related stigma and suggest more inclusive, intersectional and structural approaches may be required to sufficiently denormalize stigma for all people who use drugs.

Area: Forensic

The reliability, accuracy, and completeness of information gathered from interviews is of paramount importance in forensic contexts, as this information is used to make decisions that can impact justice, liberty, and safety. Although gaps in research remain, there is now a solid body of research that points to the best practices in forensic interviewing and the problematic ones. As a result, many evidence-based forensic interviewing guidelines now share more similarities than differences. However, an area that the field continues to struggle with is how best to train forensic interviewers to ensure that the skills taught are transferred to, and maintained in, the field. This presentation will focus on experiential learning as a necessary ingredient for effective training, both during in-class and online instruction. This session will conclude with a demonstration of an experiential way to highlight the uniqueness and complexity of memory-based interviewing, a fundamental interviewing skill taught in the StepWise 360.