Flourishing together: Leveraging social‐personality psychology in community building for scholars of color

Abstract

Many faculty of color (FOC) lack the necessary social and professional support structures to facilitate their successful advancement on the tenure track. We present Flourish, a network for pre‐tenure social and personality psychologists of color, as a case study to illustrate how an affinity group model can aid in supporting FOC. We demonstrate that using social support to diffuse social identity threats can increase belonging and academic fit and, as a result, promote the success of early career FOC. As a field, psychological science has the potential to transcend the boundaries of academic institutions by leveraging our theories, methods, and applied expertise to build infrastructure to better support FOC. Attracting and retaining a diverse faculty workforce addresses racial inequities in higher education, diversifies research output, and makes our science more representative and reproducible. Thus, investing in affinity groups is essential for developing accessible social support systems and increasing role models for future scholars of color.