
A review paper on the lack of political diversity in social psychology - ajdlinux
http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-political-diversity/
======
hackuser
Ironically, a lot of conservative criticisms of the political bias of various
institutions [1] are based on two very non-conservative premises: 1) Cultural
relativism: They assume that all political views are equally deserving, which
is almost certainly not true given any random group of political views, nor
based on any reading of history. 2) Affirmative action: Instead of pursauding
people in the marketplace of ideas, they argue that 'conservatives' and
conservative ideas should be gifted with status. (They also assume people are
of pure and immutable ideology; someone either is 100% 'conservative' or 100%
'liberal' forever; they can't have a mix of nuanced beliefs and can't change.
Judges keep disappointing them.)

To be clear, certainly people have an equal right to any belief and an equal
right to voice it. That doesn't mean they have a right to equal acceptance of
their arguments. If so many academic faculty, an exeptionally intelligent and
educated group relative to the general population, lean liberal, maybe that
tells us something. If you don't like it, persuade them otherwise!

(I'll add that it's disappointing to see comments voted down and up based on
politics, not quality. It reinforces the perspective that people of a certain
political pursuasion are not critical thinkers, which undermines everything
they say.)

[1] Some valid and some not. There's criticism of the 'liberal judiciary',
even though most judges were appointed by Republicans (at least that was true
a few years ago); criticism of the 'liberal media' even though Fox dominates
cable news, the Wall Street Journal dominates business news, and radical
conservatives dominate talk radio.

~~~
pavpanchekha
I'd take a look at Haidt's actual paper, not just chalk it up to conservatives
complaining. Among other things, Haidt is fairly liberal in his politics—this
is an honest attempt to improve diversity in sociology (a pretty liberal-
leaning goal, usually), not conservative complaining.

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rubidium
It's good to see self-assigned liberal psychologists realizing the field's
weakness in it's near-universal acceptance of the "liberal progress
narrative", and the need to push for more diversity in the narratives it
embraces.

Perhaps they should set a quota for grad student political affiliations :) ?

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jdp23
There was a discussion of the preprint (or more accurately a blog post
summarizing the preprint) early this year at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8840261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8840261)

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dreamdu5t
> Why are there so few non-liberals in social psychology?

Because social psychology's main role is to justify liberal government policy
and other social engineering. Just take a cursory look at the history of
social psychology and this is obvious.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism_dispute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism_dispute)

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HarryHirsch
What a strange thing this Heterodox Academy is. They bemoan the lack of
political diversity (however you define that, they don't, seems they leave it
an exercise to the reader) in the Social Sciences, and then they proceed to
list Judith Curry, a climate change skeptic, amongst their members. Can
someone make a convincing case they don't have an agenda to sell?

~~~
pavpanchekha
Yes. The main organizer, Jonathan Haidt, is a well-regard sociologist. He's
been crusading for more political diversity in science for... years? A decade?
He has, of course, been doing very impressive science as well; check out his
book, “The Righteous Mind”, if you're interested in understanding how people
talk about morality, for example. Like it or not, climatologists sceptical of
climate change _should_ get their voices heard, just like Levin should be
allowed to doubt the possibility of quantum computers, AI researchers should
be allowed to doubt the possibility of general AI, and so on. They must, of
course, conduct their science to the standards of their field, but the fact
that they can argue for ideas not widely held in their field makes that field
stronger, not weaker. Science isn't a battle for consensus, or even a battle
for getting the largest agreement on a truth; it is a battle for the truth
itself, any discussion and conversation, within a process that enforces good
faith and good epistemology, only helps.

~~~
aristus
As for people with heterodox views who "conduct their science to the standards
of their field", I suggest reading this very amusing/disturbing review of
results in paranormal research.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-
ou...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-
control/)

"Two experimenters in the same laboratory, using the same apparatus, having no
contact with the subjects except to introduce themselves and flip a few
switches – and whether one or the other was there that day completely altered
the result. For a good time, watch the gymnastics they have to do to in the
paper to make this sound sufficiently sensical to even get published. This is
the only journal article I’ve ever read where, in the part of the Discussion
section where you’re supposed to propose possible reasons for your findings,
both authors suggest maybe their co-author hacked into the computer and
altered the results."

~~~
pavpanchekha
Yeah, I've seen that. I would posit that paranormal researchers with unusual
political beliefs are no less an asset to their field than those with normal
political beliefs. (How much of an asset the field as a whole is is for you to
understand.)

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lucio
[Libertarians are the political group with the highest IQ] Nice fact.

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calt
Out of context relevant quote time:

"...and reality has a well-known liberal bias" -Stephen Colbert

~~~
Lawtonfogle
Only if we remember that every generation's liberals is the next generation's
conservatives.

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danharaj
Apologies for the somewhat incoherent post, my lunch break is about to end.

Here I thought this was going to talk about how almost all of social
psychology, economics, and other disciplines that influence social policies
almost never question capitalism. The difference between liberals (lowercase
'l') and conservatives is very little when it comes to the basic premises of
how societies should be structured. Very disappointing. The only departure the
post makes from this dichotomy is a mention of libertarians and moderates.
Something tells me they mean 'right libertarians' and not libertarian
socialists.

Heterodox Academy is a striking name for an institution, so I looked up what
it's supposed to be about and, of course, I found the typical boring premises
that infest right wing institutions[1]: Their ideologies haven't been rejected
because their policies were implemented in real life and produced bad
outcomes; clearly it's because there is a systematic bias against them. Talk
about a persecution complex!

As if neoliberalism infesting governments and supranational governing bodies
isn't enough, it also needs to recapture academia and regain intellectual
primacy! The last thing social psychology needs is an infusion of ideas from
the end of the spectrum that embraces Murray Rothbard.

Last observation before I go: There is a tendency for reactionary movements
(and yes! right libertarianism is a reactionary ideology: it dreams of a never
borne out vision of laissez-faire capitalism the world abandoned generations
ago) to adopt the language and lexicon of those opposed to them. In this case,
the adoption of the language of diversity is being used while very likely the
people who want the social sciences to be more right wing spit vitriol at the
mention of diversity in the broader context of society. I don't think it's
sincere, and if it is, it's laughable.

> [Libertarians are the political group with the highest IQ, yet they are
> underrepresented in the social sciences other than economics]

/snicker

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/2015/09/15/heterodox-academy/)

