In this article, we approach the relationship between neoliberalism and psychological science from the theoretical perspective of cultural psychology. In the first section, we trace how engagement with neoliberal systems results in characteristic tendencies-including a radical abstraction of self from social and material context, an entrepreneurial understanding of self as an ongoing development project, an imperative for personal growth and fulfillment, and an emphasis on affect management for self-regulation-that increasingly constitute the knowledge base of mainstream psychological science. However, as we consider in the second section, psychological science is not just an observer of neoliberalism and its impact on psychological experience. Instead, by studying psychological processes independent of cultural-ecological or historical context and by championing individual growth and affective regulation as the key to optimal well-being, psychological scientists reproduce and reinforce the influence and authority of neoliberal systems. Rather than a disinterested bystander, hegemonic forms of psychological science are thoroughly implicated in the neoliberal project.

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s (2015) research on implications of market participation for Maasai women's empowerment provides an important basis for rethinking liberatory standards of psychological science and international gender development. Drawing upon their research, we apply a decolonial feminist psychology analysis to the topic of empowerment. This perspective suggests that neoliberal interventions to promote empowerment and well-being in Majority-World spaces (i) may cause harm by depriving people of environmentally afforded connection and (ii) reproduce historical and ongoing forms of (neo)colonial domination in ways that are inconsistent with the broader empowerment of humanity in general.

In his address to the APA, King (1968) suggested that critical consciousness about racism, based on realities of African American experience, could serve as a tool for creative maladjustment: resistance to collective delusions and refusal to assimilate to pathological norms of a racist society. In this article, we summarize a program of research that applies decolonial perspectives of cultural psychology and a focus on the intentionality of everyday worlds to the topic of creative maladjustment. In particular, we consider the potential of critical historical consciousness, rooted in the experience of racially subordinated communities, as a resource for perception of injustice and support for policies designed to restore social justice. Hegemonic knowledge institutions (including psychological science) have evolved via cultural selection to protect White comfort and to promote White ignorance. An anti-racist response requires investment in knowledge forms that challenge White delusions and afford creative maladjustment to systems of oppression-a task that King highlighted for psychologists more than 50 years ago.The slashing blows of backlash and frontlash have hurt the Negro, but they have also awakened him and revealed the nature of the oppressor. To lose illusions is to gain truth.

Most research links (racial) essentialism to negative intergroup outcomes. We propose that this conclusion reflects both a narrow conceptual focus on biological/genetic essence and a narrow research focus from the perspective of racially dominant groups. We distinguished between beliefs in biological and cultural essences, and we investigated the implications of this distinction for support of social justice policies (e.g., affirmative action) among people with dominant (White) and subordinated (e.g., Black, Latino) racial identities in the United States. Whereas, endorsement of biological essentialism may have similarly negative implications for social justice policies across racial categories, we investigated the hypothesis that endorsement of cultural essentialism would have different implications across racial categories. In Studies 1a and 1b, we assessed the properties of a cultural essentialism measure we developed using two samples with different racial/ethnic compositions. In Study 2, we collected data from 170 participants using an online questionnaire to test the implications of essentialist beliefs for policy support. Consistent with previous research, we found that belief in biological essentialism was negatively related to policy support for participants from both dominant and subordinated categories. In contrast, the relationship between cultural essentialism and policy support varied across identity categories in the hypothesized way: negative for participants from the dominant category but positive for participants from subordinated categories. Results suggest that cultural essentialism may provide a way of identification that subordinated communities use to mobilize support for social justice.