Dear colleagues,

We are living in times of escalating global tensions. Whether Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Mali, or Sudan, tens of millions of people are being displaced, and millions are killed in wars and armed conflicts. We are once again witnessing proxy wars, and new conflicts are on the horizon. These wars and other conflicts threaten the lives of millions of people worldwide and affect their mental health and well-being seriously.

We are concerned about the potential involvement of work and organizational psychology in ongoing conflicts and wars. In the last decades, the scientific community and the public were shocked to learn about the involvement of the American Psychological Association, collaborating with U.S. government institutions, in devising and justifying torture methods (Aalbers & Teo, 2017). This example warrants directing more attention toward our professional ethical responsibilities, as some of us have previously suggested (Bal et al., 2019).

The impetus for this open letter are current developments within the “European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology” (EAWOP). Specifically, we are disturbed and outraged by an EAWOP-funded Small Group Meeting entitled “Strengthening European Military & Organisational Psychology” (University of Leuven, 21-22 February 2024). According to the program, the event featured high-level military personnel from NATO and collaboration with Ukrainian military psychologists, who, as the organizers put it, need to be supported in “fulfilling their mission”. This event was preceded by a keynote speech at the 21st EAWOP Congress 2023 in Katowice, entitled: “‘…a time for war and a time for peace…’: What role can and should Work and Organizational Psychologists take in times of war?”. At the same time, the initiative “European Military & Organizational Psychology” (EMOP) was founded under the auspices of EAWOP. The materials made publicly available by this group speak for themselves and exceed our worst expectations.

We strongly oppose and reject this militarization of work and organizational psychology and its European association, collaborations with armed forces, such as NATO, and trivializations that misconstrue soldiers as first responders. In our view, times in which millions of people are killed, injured, and fleeing from wars and armed conflict, require a fundamentally different response: Instead of strengthening military psychology, psychologists should support peace and humanitarian efforts that foster healing and well-being among civilians affected by wars and conflicts.

Following this imperative, it is time to problematize the moral and pragmatic implications of the instrumentalization of psychology for military purposes:

• Refusing cooperations with military: Psychologists and their professional associations should refuse to cooperate with armed forces, arms industry, and related parties as the scientific knowledge and skills of scholars can be used for social engineering, for instance, with regard to the morale, endurance or compliance of soldiers, which are essential for continuing wars and armed conflicts.

• Defunding research that serves or cooperates with the military: We are aware that psychological concepts and theories may be adapted for military purposes. However, researchers who explicitly dedicate their research for that purpose or cooperate with above-mentioned organizations should not receive funding from psychological associations, university funds, or union-associated foundations. Applicants should be required to declare that proposed projects do not serve military purposes.

• Fostering research on social consequences of wars: We believe that work and organizational psychology can play an important role in addressing the social consequences of wars, such as re-integrating displaced persons into gainful employment and designing work systems accordingly. Moreover, critical psychological perspectives are needed to better understand the (proximal and distal) implications of wars and violent conflicts on work and organizations in directly affected as well as more indirectly involved countries.

• Supporting nonviolent initiatives that demand peace negotiations: As psychologists, we feel that it is our duty to speak up against the militarization of society and to support nonviolent initiatives that demand ceasefires, peace negotiations, and ending arms trade. Commitments to peace should be anchored in university or institutional statutes as well as in agreements that involve multiple institutions, such as the German Civil Clause (Schlögl-Flierl & Merkl, 2018).

We call on all scientists, scientific associations, editorial boards, scientific institutions, research foundations, ethics committees, and universities to publicly commit themselves to refrain from supporting military research in any way and instead focus on peace-keeping research and practice. This implies that they anchor this commitment in their statutes and curricula. Psychology and psychologists should not participate in the militarization of society and the normalization of wars and armed conflicts. Therefore, we demand a firm and principled rejection of military psychology from all areas of psychology, but especially work and organizational psychology, where we currently observe such a militarization.

References

Aalbers, D., & Teo, T. (2017). The American Psychological Association and the torture complex: A phenomenology of the banality and workings of bureaucracy. Journal für Psychologie, 25(1), 179-204.

Bal, P. M., Dóci, E., Lub, X., Van Rossenberg, Y. G., Nijs, S., Achnak, S., ... & Van Zelst, M. (2019). Manifesto for the future of work and organizational psychology. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 28(3), 289-299.

Schlögl-Flierl, K., & Merkl, A. (2018). Introducing civil clauses against expanding military research at German universities? A descriptive and ethical analysis of the discussion. Sicherheit und Frieden (S+F) / Security and Peace, 36(2), 98-103.