PurposeCoronavirus (COVID-19) rapidly became the “new normal” with profound implications for everyone's daily life. In this paper, emerging psychologists from diverse cultural backgrounds discuss four main ways in which COVID-19 impacted diverse psychological populations.Design/methodology/approachThis paper was written as a reflection on how COVID-19 has impacted diverse psychological populations using authors' academic and personal experiences.FindingsFirst, the authors explore inaccessible populations with a focus on domestic violence victims living in rural areas. Second, the authors consider consequences of social isolation with a focus on remote workers. Third, the authors investigate the consequences of public (dis)trust in the pandemic with a focus on migrant worker communities. Finally, the authors discuss pandemic-relevant subcultures with a focus on “anti-vaxxers”.Social implicationsThe paper concludes with a discussion of negative implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on diverse psychological populations, both for the present and the future, and ends with an action plan of possible interventions to overcome these limitations.Originality/valueOverall, the current paper provides a broad overview of how the pandemic has shaped and will continue to shape diverse psychological populations.

Current animal victimology and speciesism research has predominantly focussed on anthropocentric speciesism (prejudice favouring humans over animals) and neglects pet speciesism (prejudice favouring pets over non-pets). Moreover, research rarely explores whether identifiability of animal victims affects perceptions of them in line with the identifiable ( human ) victim effect. Drawing on speciesism and dehumanization theories, the current experiment addressed these gaps in the literature by comparing 160 adult participants’ perceptions of a dog vs. pig victim of kidnapping. As predicted, a MANOVA confirmed that people feel more empathy for, and are more willing to help, dogs (vs. pigs). Conversely, people expressed greater victim derogation towards pigs (vs. dogs). Participants also displayed more second-hand forgiveness for perpetrators of crime against pig (vs. dog) victims. However, species had no effect on victim blaming and identifiability of the animal victim had no effect on perceptions of the animal, and there were no significant species x identifiability interactions. The current experiment uniquely extends our human-based knowledge to perceptions of dog vs. pig victims and further evidences the existence of pet speciesism. It also highlights that the identifiable ( human ) victim effect may not apply to animal victims, thus distinguishing animal victimology as a distinct area of investigation. Theoretical implications for animal victimology and pet speciesism literature, and practical implications for policy and public perceptions of animal victims, are discussed.