Last year, I read through this excellent piece “Imagining the Next Decade of Behavioral Science” in the Behavioral Scientist magazine. It’s a wonderful curation, as always – I am a big fan of Behavioral Scientist. But then I discovered something uncomfortable: almost all of the contributors were from North America, UK/Europe, Australia/NZ. 85% of the world’s population lives outside these regions, and their voices weren’t represented in a thought-piece about human behavior.
I called the Editor who was extremely open about doing a piece with more focus on behavioral scientists living & working in Asia, Africa, the Middle East & Latin America.
Then COVID-19 struck. And lots of research pivoted to understanding the pandemic.
Again, the research showed the same pattern – lots of work about human behavior and the pandemic in the US, UK, Italy.
So we thought, why not ask behavioral scientists in Asia, Africa, Latin America & the Middle East what they thought were the big challenges of COVID-19? With my indefatigable co-curator, Sakshi Ghai, and thoughtful contributions form a bunch of experts, we put together this piece. I hope you enjoy the perspectives from different researchers (and no, physical distancing isn’t the only thing they worry about).
Click here to read: Dispatches from the Behavioral Scientists Fighting Coronavirus in the Global South
Thoughts? Comments?
Neela Saldanha 