The COVID‐19 pandemic has hit the world hard. At the time of this writing (20 January 2021), there have been over 94 million confirmed cases globally, including over 2 million deaths (World Health Organization, 2021). These numbers are still climbing; in the past week, over 580,000 new cases were recorded per day. The massive worldwide impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic has led some world leaders to liken it to World War II. Whether these historical comparisons hold true is debatable, but they do speak to the scale of the challenges that humanity is currently struggling to overcome.

Revisiting the history of social psychology, one noticeable trend is that the agenda of social psychologists is interwoven with events that happen in society and the world (Ross et al., 2010). For example, the Holocaust during World War II stimulated social psychologists’ interest in ethnocentrism, aggression, and obedience, just as increasing globalization became one of the impetuses for investigations into the role of culture in human behaviour, and hence the emergence of cultural and cross‐cultural psychology. Considering its immensity, we believe that the COVID‐19 pandemic will likely be a trigger for profound and consequential changes in social psychology (Khazaie & Khan, 2020). We thus organized this special forum in order to initiate a discussion regarding the potential impacts of the pandemic on our field.

In this forum, six leading social psychologists (Dolores Albarracin, Michael Bond, Jolanda Jetten, Yoshihisa Kashima, James Liu, and Sander van der Linden) guide us in taking a step back and reflecting on how social psychology scholarship is being and will be influenced by the pandemic, and what social psychologists can and should do to serve humanity during this crisis. They consider how human systems are being transformed by the pandemic and anticipate what these systems will look like in the post‐pandemic world, and thereby share their views on the new normal of social psychological research, teaching, and practice. They also offer some advice as to how social psychologists can contribute their expertise and establish real‐world impacts; their advice is particularly useful for students and early‐career social psychologists.

Specifically, Albarracin and Jung (2021) lay out a research agenda for the post‐COVID‐19 world. The agenda highlights the need for social psychologists to identify contents for public health messages based on a systematic assessment of theories and findings, to understand self‐regulation of behaviour in social contexts, and to investigate people’s understanding of health statistics, diffusion of health information and behaviour within social networks, the role of prosociality in the containment of the pandemic and people’s adaptation to its impacts, as well as group and intergroup dynamics triggered by the pandemic.

Bond (2021) proposes two major lines of inquiry for social psychologists, particularly those in Asia. First, considering the variations both within Asia and between different parts of the world in terms of nation‐level resilience against the pandemic, there is a need to explain these variations and explore the role of culture in them. Second, in understanding the general public’s responses to the pandemic, it is useful to develop locally and indigenously sensitive measures. This is because existing measures originally developed in mainstream societies in the scientific literature may not suffice to capture the pertinent phenomena.

Liu (2021) echoes Bond’s call for attention to the role of culture by presenting correlations between the epidemiological data (total cases per million and fatalities per million) and Schwartz (2004)’s cultural dimension scores. With this observation as the point of departure, he elaborates how collectivism (or embeddedness) can potentially serve as an effective cultural basis for the public’s adoption of safety measures and compliance with advice from authorities, thereby possibly reducing infection and fatality rates. Liu (2021) further points out that globally oriented social psychologists should be very careful about generalizing findings regarding collective behaviour from research based on European and American populations to other societies. Relatedly, they should refrain from holding any single culture as the gold standard for conjecturing solutions to crises and social problems, and recognize that the future of humanity will be multipolar.

Kashima (2021) exposes a limitation in conventional social psychological theorizing: negligence regarding institutions. He critically points out that although social psychology is a research area that explicitly examines human behaviour as embedded in society and social contexts, institutions are very often left out of the inquiry and relegated to other social sciences. Considering humanity’s struggle against the pandemic, the role of institutions (including national, international, and nongovernmental ones) in behaviour cannot be overstated. Obviously, containing a crisis at the scale of the COVID‐19 pandemic requires timely strategies and responses from various institutions. Thus, questions such as how people cooperate with institutions, how institutions are designed and formed, and how the balance between institutions’ control and the public’s freedom is negotiated in society are issues that social psychologists should not shy away from.

Jetten et al. (2021) take a positive note by discussing several silver linings for social psychology emerging from the pandemic. These positive shifts of our field include a greater emphasis on context dependence in human behaviour and the questioning of “timeless universals,” a stronger focus on processes happening at the collective level, and a higher level of awareness of the necessity of collaborative research efforts and the need for engagement with policymakers and the general public to achieve greater real‐world impact.

Concurring with Jetten et al.’s point regarding real‐world impact, van der Linden (2021) offers several incisive recommendations based on a personal reflection of his career, citing examples from some of his recent works. Relating to the ramifications brought about by the pandemic, he speaks of the importance of choosing questions that people truly care about, reaching out to audiences outside the social psychological circle, and looking for collaborations with people from diverse backgrounds who share a common vision.

To conclude, with this special forum we call for fellow social psychologists to reflect on the potential impacts the COVID‐19 pandemic has on our field and consider how we can move the discipline towards a more informed understanding of this pandemic as well as many other global grand challenges humanity is facing.

COVID-19 大流行给世界带来了沉重打击。截至撰写本文时（2021 年 1 月 20 日），全球确诊病例已超过 9400 万例，其中死亡人数超过 200 万人（世界卫生组织， 2021 年）。这些数字仍在攀升；过去一周，每天新增病例超过58万例。 COVID-19 大流行在全球范围内造成的巨大影响导致一些世界领导人将其比作第二次世界大战。这些历史比较是否正确还有待商榷，但它们确实说明了人类目前正在努力克服的挑战的规模。

回顾社会心理学的历史，一个值得注意的趋势是社会心理学家的议程与社会和世界上发生的事件交织在一起（Ross et al., 2010 ）。例如，第二次世界大战期间的大屠杀激发了社会心理学家对民族中心主义、侵略和服从的兴趣，正如日益全球化成为研究文化在人类行为中的作用的推动力之一，因此文化和跨文化的出现‐文化心理学。考虑到其规模之大，我们认为 COVID-19 大流行可能会引发社会心理学发生深刻而重大的变化（Khazaie & Khan， 2020 ）。因此，我们组织了这次特别论坛，旨在就疫情对我们领域的潜在影响展开讨论。

在本次论坛中，六位领先的社会心理学家（Dolores Albarracin、Michael Bond、Jolanda Jetten、Yoshihisa Kashima、James Liu 和 Sander van der Linden）引导我们退后一步，反思社会心理学学术正在和将受到的影响这场大流行病的影响，以及社会心理学家在这场危机中可以而且应该做什么来为人类服务。他们思考人类系统如何因大流行而改变，并预测这些系统在大流行后的世界中会是什么样子，从而分享他们对社会心理学研究、教学和实践新常态的看法。他们还就社会心理学家如何贡献其专业知识并建立现实世界的影响提供了一些建议；他们的建议对学生和早期职业社会心理学家特别有用。

具体来说，Albarracin 和 Jung ( 2021 ) 为后 COVID-19 世界制定了研究议程。该议程强调社会心理学家需要根据对理论和研究结果的系统评估来确定公共卫生信息的内容，了解社会背景下的行为自我调节，并调查人们对健康统计、健康信息传播和传播的理解。社交网络内的行为、亲社会性在遏制大流行病中的作用和人们对其影响的适应，以及大流行病引发的群体和群体间动态。

Bond（ 2021 ）为社会心理学家，特别是亚洲的社会心理学家提出了两条主要的研究方向。首先，考虑到亚洲内部以及世界不同地区之间国家层面抗疫能力的差异，有必要解释这些差异并探讨文化在其中的作用。其次，为了了解公众对这一流行病的反应，制定本地和本土的敏感措施是有用的。这是因为主流社会在科学文献中最初制定的现有措施可能不足以捕捉相关现象。

Liu（ 2021 ）通过展示流行病学数据（每百万例总病例数和每百万死亡人数）与 Schwartz（ 2004 ）的文化维度得分之间的相关性，呼应了邦德呼吁关注文化作用的呼吁。以此观察为出发点，他阐述了集体主义（或嵌入性）如何可能成为公众采取安全措施和遵守当局建议的有效文化基础，从而可能降低感染率和死亡率。 Liu（ 2021 ）进一步指出，面向全球的社会心理学家应该非常谨慎地将基于欧洲和美洲人口的研究中的集体行为发现推广到其他社会。与此相关的是，他们应该避免将任何单一文化作为猜测危机和社会问题解决方案的黄金标准，并认识到人类的未来将是多极化的。

鹿岛（ 2021 ）暴露了传统社会心理学理论的局限性：对制度的忽视。他批评性地指出，尽管社会心理学是一个明确研究嵌入社会和社会背景中的人类行为的研究领域，但机构常常被排除在调查之外，并被归入其他社会科学。考虑到人类抗击这一流行病的斗争，机构（包括国家机构、国际机构和非政府机构）在行为中的作用怎么强调也不为过。显然，遏制新冠肺炎 (COVID-19) 大流行规模的危机需要各机构及时采取战略和应对措施。因此，人们如何与机构合作、机构如何设计和形成、社会中如何协商机构控制与公众自由之间的平衡等问题是社会心理学家不应回避的问题。

杰顿等人。 （ 2021 ）通过讨论大流行中出现的社会心理学的一些一线希望，采取了积极的态度。我们领域的这些积极转变包括更加强调人类行为的背景依赖性和对“永恒的普遍性”的质疑，更加关注集体层面发生的过程，以及对合作研究工作和合作的必要性的更高认识。需要与政策制定者和公众接触以实现更大的现实世界影响。

与 Jetten 等人关于现实世界影响的观点一致，van der Linden（ 2021 ）根据他的职业生涯的个人反思，引用了他最近的一些作品中的例子，提出了一些精辟的建议。谈到疫情带来的影响，他谈到选择人们真正关心的问题、接触社会心理学圈之外的受众以及寻求与拥有共同愿景的不同背景的人合作的重要性。

最后，通过这个特别论坛，我们呼吁社会心理学家同行反思 COVID-19 大流行对我们领域的潜在影响，并考虑如何推动该学科对这一大流行以及许多其他全球性问题有更明智的理解。人类面临着巨大的挑战。