November 18, 2020
Hello, and I hope that wherever you are on Earth (our pale blue dot, per Carl Sagan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g), that you are safe, healthy, and surrounded by friends and family. I am writing because I wanted to introduce a new blog - The Sounding Board - to connect with our ACBS community and make the work our Board does more visible. The term “sounding board” has multiple meanings - it is a board that is placed behind a speaker to project their voice forward; also, when someone is a “sounding board” for someone else, it means serving the function of listening to ideas and reflecting them back. I am calling this blog “The Sounding Board” because I intend it to serve both purposes for the community. We on the Board know that our work is mostly behind the scenes, and we know what that can look like...silence...and inaction...and disconnection. I would love you to know that nothing could be further from the truth, and thus, I want to connect with you through this blog about goings on in ACBS each month.
First and foremost, I wanted to share with you a message from our Poland Chapter, ACBS Polska, regarding our decision to host our 2021 ACBS World Conference virtually. Given the uncertainty around the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns raised by our LGBTQIA+ members, climate issues, and our concerns for the health and safety of everyone in our community, the Board voted to host a virtual conference in 2021. We made this decision with a good deal of consideration, and with sadness about not being able to celebrate advances in our contextual behavioral science in person. Our ACBS Polska chapter has opted to hold off on their involvement in the 2021 conference and wishes our community to consider a live conference in Poland at some point in the future. Thus, I wanted to share with you excerpts from a message from the ACBS Polska chapter. They write:
“We agree that in light of the current pandemic, the safety and health of conference participants have to be an absolute priority. Therefore, we fully understand the decision to cancel the live world conference in Poznań in 2021 and organize it online instead.
We believe that organizing ACBS WC in Poland is important, given that the decision to designate the venue for the world conference in Poznań has been met with an extremely positive response from both the ACBS community in Poland, Central, and Eastern Europe, and the wider community of scientists, psychologists, and clinicians from low-income countries in this region. In line with the principle that if we want to see change, we should be an active part of it, and bearing in mind the values guiding ACBS, such as inclusiveness and spreading knowledge, the Polish Chapter was enthusiastically involved in organizational work in Poland:
1. In order to increase the impact on the region, we managed to engage other European ACBS Chapters in co-creating a more cultural and linguistic diverse conference program and were able to obtain financial support from the Poznań City Hall for invited speakers who would be ready to prepare open-access lectures for city residents.
2. In response to concerns regarding the safety of conference participants, including the LGBTQ + community, we worked together with the Diversity Equity and Inclusion SIG, Polish LGBTQ + organizations, and the venue management in Poznań. This Task Force produced recommendations to address the safety standards and ensure diversity and inclusion features in the future world conferences.
3. Bearing in heart environmental challenges, we have convinced the Poznań Congress Center to lower the environmental burden for our event. We also have undertaken many initiatives in cooperation with representatives of local organizations, authorities, and universities, which resulted in their commitment to provide participants with:
● free local public transportation,
● discounts on long-distance transportation,
● carbon footprints reimbursement possibilities,
● free access to tourist attractions,
● online transmission and translation support,
● low budget accommodation and much more.
“ACBS raised high hopes for countries in our region, recognizing the difficult path we took to be a part of the modern world and part of the scientific community. Therefore, we do not want to cause disappointment among members of various groups, including the Polish LGBTQ+ community, who are counting on our international health specialists to support equality. Moreover, one of the missions and statutory goals of ACBS Polska is to promote psychological knowledge in Poland and advise political, legal, and decision-making entities in the field of contextual sciences. A world conference in Poland would be a way to achieve these goals and enable the dissemination of ACBS position on human suffering, including the suffering of LGBTQ + people.”
Best regards,
ACBS POLSKA
President: Hubert Czupała
Vice president: Barbara Kossakowska
Secretary/Treasurer: Lidia Baran
Members at Large: Magdalena Hyla, Barbara Ostrowska, Jakub Szymański
Members of the Review Committee: Konrad Ambroziak, Mateusz Fudali, Agnieszka Wroczyńska
Student Representative: Joanna Gawrońska
We would like to thank ACBS Polska for its exceptional work and look forward to working with them in hosting a future World Conference.
Coming Together to Light Up the Darkness: Some News About Our 2021 World Conference Theme
It has been such a difficult year, for all of us, all around the world. For those of you who have lost someone; for those on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic; for those of you who are worn out from fighting against marginalization and oppression; for those of you who have been displaced or struggling due to fires or floods set in motion by our climate crisis; for those of you who are weary, and stressed, and suffering, may you be safe; may you have health; may you experience kindness; may you know peace. I was listening to Brene Brown’s podcast called “Unlocking Us” last night to hear Gabby Rivera, author of the young adult novel Juliet Takes a Breath, and creator of the Marvel superhero America Chavez, who is young, queer, and Latina, like Rivera. It was late, I was tired, and I had a long drive ahead through the darkness to my house. And yet, there was an energy in that conversation between Brown and Rivera that was electrifying. Joy is an act of resistance, Rivera asserted. I had never heard that before. In these dark times, cultivating joy seems vital. No one ever told me about joy. So I knew that joy must be the most important thing, Rivera said. Joy is an act of resistance.
Each year, we come together as a community at the ACBS World Conference to celebrate our connections to one another, to revel in our scientific advances, to gain skills such that we can help to alleviate suffering. In 2021, our World Conference will be online, and we will connect in the virtual world – despite our distance, despite our struggles, we will find a way to be together. And in our gathering, we will light the way for each other to begin to heal; through our sharing of ideas and rigorous science, we will light the way for us to cultivate kinder, more equitable, more nurturing relationships with ourselves and with one another.
It is time for contextual behavioral science to shine its light in the darkness. Our technology for behavior change is exactly what we need right now to inform best practices for shifting to a more sustainable and just world. It is clear that the strength of a community can be measured by the collective actions of its members. Transforming current ways of living and creating a world in which our planet and its inhabitants are shielded from further harm requires shared strategic planning and community-level commitment. However, we are used to working at the level of the individual and of small groups; we are more comfortable addressing mental health than focusing on shaping a more just and sustainable philosophy – and practice – of living.
It is time to scale up our science and its applications and capitalize on interdisciplinary collaborations with evolutionary science, technology, economics, public health, and policy advocacy such that we can bring our work to bear in the larger world to address issues of discrimination, racism, health disparities, overconsumption of our natural resources, and our behavioral impact on the climate. Where there is division, we can sow nurturance and fairness; where there is lack of regard for our interrelationship with the natural world, we can amplify awareness and evaluate best practices for collective committed actions that will leave our home better than we found it for generations to come.
Thus, the theme for this year’s conference is Broadening Our Vision: Using CBS to Nurture a Just and Sustainable World. This is meant to encourage ACBS to broaden our vision such that we shift our scientific and practical focus from behavior change at an individual level to a population level; that we evaluate best practices to amend disparities and divisions to create prosociality and cooperation; that we widen our perspective from individuals’ psychological well-being to consider how our science might inform public policy; that we embed our behavioral science within efforts to address the climate crisis – to create a more just and nurturing world for all of us.
Please look out for the Sounding Board monthly - there are many other goings-on to tell you about - and I look forward to deepening the connection with you all, all around the world! If you have ACBS news that you are proud of, that you would like to amplify, that you would like to celebrate and share, please email me – I would love to try to include it here!
As always, we send our members care and compassion as we all walk through this incredible, unprecedented time. May you know joy, may you share it in our community.
With kindness,
Lisa Coyne, President, ACBS Board of Directors