Ursula Moffitt

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Assistant Professor at University of New Mexico

Psychological science has historically centered white, cisgender male experiences. Using predominantly quantitative, comparative methods and designs, this limited slice of humanity has been deemed normative and universal. The study of identity is one area in which diversity and minoritized experiences have increasingly been examined. Yet, this work...

Research on racial identity among Youth of Color has expanded considerably in recent years, but a parallel examination of racial identity among white youth has not occurred, reiterating whiteness as normative. We applied Janet Helms’s White Racial Identity Development (WRID) model among white U.S. youth (8–14 years old) to address this research gap...

The American Psychological Association (APA) released the second edition of the Inclusive Language Guide in late 2023. One aspect of this guide that was not updated from the previous version was the recommendation for authors to use either “White” or “European (nationality)” when “writing about people of European ancestry.” In this commentary, we a...

The call for psychological science to make amends for “causing harm to communities of color and contributing to systemic inequities” (American Psychological Association, 2022a) requires a critical acknowledgment that science itself is not neutral but a sociopolitical and ideological endeavor. From its inception, psychology used science to produce w...

Racism permeates societies globally, including within Germany’s educational system. Specifically, people from the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region experience anti-Muslim racism. This study explores how racially minoritized parents subjected to the asylum system navigate racist discourse within societal and institutional structures, fo...

In the open science era, Registered Reports (RRs) have emerged as a novel publication format aimed at addressing challenges in research replicability and transparency. This article explores the application of RRs to the study of identity and migration, focusing on the advantages and limitations of this format across both quantitative and qualitativ...

Objective: We aimed to explore the domains of white German parents’ racial-ethnic socialization (RES) in a superdiverse context. Background: White individuals are becoming numerical minorities in many Western European cities, despite persistent white supremacy. In this context, some white individuals embrace diversity, whereas others perceive it as...

The American Psychological Association (APA) released the second edition of the Inclusive Language Guide in late 2023. One aspect of this guide that was not updated from the previous version was the recommendation for authors to use either “White” or “European [nationality]” when “writing about people of European ancestry.” In this comment, we argu...

As attending college became a normative life experience in the U.S., society developed a cultural narrative about what a “good” college experience looks like. But, for racially minoritized college students, this master narrative often excludes their experiences. Integrating narrative and ethnic-racial identity, the current study investigates how a...

Parents help youth make sense of current society, including in relation to racial-ethnic inequity. The goal of the current study was to assess white racial-ethnic socialization (RES) in Germany. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 28 white German parents of elementary school children in an eastern German city and analyzed the data using re...

Parents help youth make sense of current society, including in relation to racial-ethnic inequity (Umaña-Taylor & Hill, 2020). The goal of the current study was to assess white racial-ethnic socialization (RES) in Germany. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 28 white German parents of elementary school children in an eastern German city an...

The call for psychological science to make amends for “causing harm to communities of color and contributing to systemic inequities” (APA, 2022a) requires a critical acknowledgement that science itself is not neutral, but a sociopolitical and ideological endeavor. From its inception, psychology used science to produce what was framed as incontrover...

In this study, we drew on the m(ai)cro framework, which centers racism as a macrosystem, to examine how college-going emerging adults made meaning about society and themselves during the 2020 U.S. presidential election and 2021 inauguration. This period was marked by racial justice protests, a global pandemic, anti-Asian violence, and the storming...

A global challenge for developmental psychology is to better understand how young people around the world make sense of their identities growing up in pluralistic societies. The study of ethnic-racial identity provides an important lens for this process. This paper describes how five European countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, and Sweden) a...

As developmental scholars increasingly study ethnic and racial identity among white youth, careful reflection is needed regarding its framing, implementation, and interpretation. In this three‐part conceptual paper, we offer a foundation for such reflection. First, we discuss the sociocultural context of white supremacy that shapes U.S. society, ps...

Across continental Europe, educational research samples are often divided by ‘migrant background’, a binary variable criticized for masking participant heterogeneity and reinforcing exclusionary norms of belonging. This study endorses more meaningful, representative, and precise research by offering four guiding questions for selecting relevant, so...

Schools are key contexts for the development of adolescents’ critical consciousness. We explored how three dimensions of the classroom cultural diversity climate (critical consciousness, color-evasion, and multiculturalism) related to adolescents’ critical reflection (i.e., perceived societal Islamophobia) and intended critical action (i.e., politi...

Being perceived as a foreigner regardless of one’s generational status, citizenship, or self-identification is called foreigner objectification. This is a form of identity denial and is linked to psychological distress. To test how foreigner objectification could be measured in Europe, we assessed whether the Foreigner Objectification Scale demonst...

There is an inextricable link between humans and their cultural environments, as each reciprocally creates and is created by the other. This chapter discusses interviewing as a critical methodological tool for understanding culture as intricately intertwined with subjective meaning making and identity processes. We start from the premise that the s...

Children in the United States grow up in a context wherein colorblindness and racism coexist. This article examined how colorblindness functions as a societal “master narrative” that shapes how children construct their own racial identities. Data were collected via semi‐structured interviews with 217 Black, White, and Multiracial children (Mage = 9...

Ethnic-racial identity (ERI) is an important aspect of youth development and has been well-studied for the last several decades. One issue less discussed is how the construct of ERI translates across different countries and cultures. The purpose of our paper is to describe the sociohistorical context of Germany and implications for the study of eth...

Across continental Europe, educational research samples are often divided by ‘migrant background,’ a binary variable criticized for masking participant heterogeneity and reinforcing exclusionary norms of belonging. This study endorses more meaningful, representative, and precise research by offering four guiding questions for selecting relevant, so...

As cultural diversity is increasing around the globe, a more nuanced understanding of the cultural diversity climate in classroom settings is needed, including how its different aspects relate to student outcomes. We developed the Classroom Cultural Diversity Climate Scale (CCDCS), integrating theory and research from social psychology and multicul...

There is an inextricable link between humans and their cultural environments, as each reciprocally creates and is created by the other. This chapter discusses interviewing as a critical methodological tool for understanding culture as intricately intertwined with subjective meaning-making and identity processes. We start from the premise that the s...

Among emerging adults, peers are central to ethnic-racial identity (ERI) exploration, acting as primary interlocuters in discussions about ethnicity and race. Although ERI development is understood as adaptive, particularly for young people of color, ethnicity and race related conversations are often highly charged, and can consist of both positive...

We examined whether German adolescents who participated in an adapted 8-week school-based intervention, the Identity Project, reported greater changes in heritage and global identities and perceptions of classroom cultural climate. We used a longitudinal, wait-list control design pooling eight classrooms across the school years of 2018-2019 and 201...

Among emerging adults, peers are central to ethnic-racial identity (ERI) exploration, acting as primary interlocuters in discussions about ethnicity and race. Although ERI development is understood as adaptive, particularly for young people of color, ethnicity and race related conversations are often highly charged, and can consist of both positive...

Among emerging adults, peers are central to ethnic-racial identity (ERI) exploration, acting as primary interlocuters in discussions about ethnicity and race. Although ERI development is understood as adaptive, particularly for young people of color, ethnicity and race related conversations are often highly charged, and can consist of both positive...

The increasing application of intersectionality to the psychological study of identity development raises questions regarding how we as researchers construct and operationalize social identity categories, as well as how we best capture and address systems of oppression and privilege within our work. In the continental European context, the use of t...

We investigate how economic immigrants in Canada negotiate their identity in the process of “becoming Canadian” through an analysis of public texts. Drawing on the master narrative framework, we examine the interplay between individual and societal narratives as immigrants grapple with the tension between notions of “desirable” immigrants as those...

Despite growing European and global interconnectedness, questions of national identity have only gained in importance in recent years. Yet the role researchers play in perpetuating norms of national belonging has gone largely unexamined. Who is included in unmarked national group labels such as German, Dutch, or Danish, who is understood as Other,...

Recent discursive research has built on Michael Billig's theory of banal nationalism, arguing that minoritized individuals who explicitly claim adherence to a national group may be further marginalized from a perceived majority who view such acts as socially undesirable. In Germany, a master narrative of muted national pride precludes hot nationali...

Fast jeder würde zustimmen, dass Kinder ein Recht auf Bildung haben. Doch es gibt sehr viele strukturelle und zwischenmenschliche Hindernisse, die Schülerinnen und Schüler davon abhalten, sich in ihren Klassenräumen wohlzufühlen. Zugehörigkeitsgefühle in der Schule stehen im Zusammenhang mit globaleren Fragen, zum Beispiel, ob sie sich in dem Land,...

Recent discursive research has built on Michael Billig's theory of banal nationalism, arguing that minoritized individuals who explicitly claim adherence to a national group may be further marginalized from a perceived majority who view such acts as socially undesirable. In Germany, a master narrative of muted national pride precludes hot nationali...

Turkish heritage students are underrepresented at university-track secondary schools in Germany, yet the institutional discrimination contributing to this ongoing disparity often remains unquestioned, situated within inequitable norms of belonging. Drawing on critical race theory and a risk and resilience framework, the current study investigated t...

Schools are important for the academic and socio-emotional development, as well as acculturation of immigrant- and refugee-background youth. We highlight individual differences which shape their unique experiences, while considering three levels of the school context in terms of how they may affect adaptation outcomes: (1) interindividual interacti...

Objective: We examined whether two key emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, moderated the relations between discrimination (i.e., foreigner objectification and general denigration) and adjustment. Methods: Participants were U.S. Latino/a and Asian-heritage college students (N = 1,279, 67% female, 72% U...

In dieser Masterarbeit wird eine konstruktivistische Diskursanalyse durchgeführt um die These zu unterstüt-zen, dass eine grundlegende Umgestaltung im amerikanischen Verständnis der türkisch-amerikanischen Be-ziehung unter Präsident Obama im zuge eines übergeordneten Wandels der amerikanischen Außenpolitik stattgefunden hat. Anhand einer analytisch...

Au cours des decennies passees, les entreprises ont commence a reagir aux pressions societales croissantes en orientant leurs objectifs axes seulement sur la maximalisation du profit vers trois composantes de base, les personnes, la planete et le profit. Depuis l’introduction de ce concept, les initiatives de durabilite centrees sur les personnes e...

Over the past decades, business has begun reacting to growing societal pressures by broadening its focus from profit maximization alone to the “triple bottom line” of people, planet and profit.1 In the years since this concept was first introduced, people and planet focused sustainability initiatives have become standard practice amongst businesses...