ABSTRACT
Special efforts for recruitment and retention should be developed to attract members of groups that are underrepresented in psychology, to bring persons into fields of psychology that will otherwise be undersupplied, and to bring highly talented and academically able students into the discipline as a whole. The incorporation of underrepresented groups into psychology, as students and as professionals and researchers, helps guarantee a rich diversity of cultural backgrounds that facilitates the development of more powerful theoretical explanations of human behavior. Exposure to this diversity also adds to the maturation and socialization experiences of the individual students and psychologists. Due in part to affirmative action policies and the small number of women and ethnic minorities who were pursuing graduate psychology degrees in the early 1970s, increasing pressure has been placed on graduate departments to recruit and admit more members of underrepresented groups.
