Social psychology, as currently taught in the Philippines, evinces a colonial quality that prioritizes Euro-American perspectives on human social cognition, influence, and relationships. As a consequence, people are imagined primarily as autonomous and agentic individuals who navigate their environments independent of or minimally influenced by their social, material, historical, and cultural contexts. At another level, social psychological knowledge originating from the Global North is privileged as universal and central, whereas that offered by Majority World scholars is considered parochial and peripheral. In contrast, within the indigenous and decolonial traditions (including Sikolohiyang Pilipino), the primacy of relationship-centered interactions, power relations, colonial and imperial histories, material conditions, and cultural influences is acknowledged and emphasized.

As such, current efforts to develop a culturally and contextually appropriate social psychology education in Asia localize the discipline by supplementing foreign reference materials with local publications, integrating indigenous concepts in class discussions, and citing relevant social issues as points of application. However, such initiatives largely follow the sequence of Euro-American textbooks structured around social cognition, influence, and relationships. 

In response, we have developed a syllabus for an indigenous and decolonial approach to the teaching of social psychology in the Philippines, which centers Filipino society, culture, and politics in its content and structure. Through its implementation, students are encouraged to interrogate the discipline’s colonial and neoliberal legacies and attend to social inequalities and injustices through the lens of intersectionality. In doing so, they then envision relationships (kapwa), power (kapangyarihan), and democratic citizenship (pagkamamamayan) as sites of social psychological intervention for individual and collective well-being (ginhawa). 

This syllabus project started during the Decolonizing and Indigenizing Psychology Summer School convened by the University of the Philippines Diliman Department of Psychology in July 2025. In this presentation, we share our experiences in teaching social psychology following the Decolonial and Indigenous Social Psychology Syllabus in three higher education institutions during the First Semester of the Academic Year 2025–2026. In Pampanga State University, one of the two state universities in Pampanga, this syllabus’ implementation aims to begin the incorporation of indigenous and decolonial perspectives in the psychology department and to help students develop a critical understanding of social psychology. Meanwhile, the University of the Philippines (UP) is the Philippines’ national university, known in the country as a bastion of activism, especially during Marcos Sr.’s authoritarian regime. As such, its students and faculty have a strong stance towards critical, indigenous, and decolonial perspectives. In UP Diliman’s psychology department and in UP Visayas’ social sciences division, great emphasis is given to scientific research, professional practice, and public service and advocacy. Therefore, this syllabus embodies these universities’ commitments through its orientation towards positive social change.

By presenting our comparative experiences across the three implementation sites, we highlight how this syllabus advances previous attempts to indigenize psychology education in the Philippines and Asia. Specifically, it demonstrates how the teaching of social psychology can be designed to respond to the diverse realities and needs of students and their local communities, rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all curriculum.