Political & Elections

Highly recommended reading:

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2011/03/two_bombshells_for_social_psyc.html

The closing paragraphs from the linked article:

"Like his earlier article on the treatment of religion by academic psychologists and the New Atheists, Haidt's address on the leftist bias of the social psychology profession was reproduced on the www.edge.org website where various colleagues were asked to respond. Some of the responses did more than Haidt could ever have done to confirm his claim that a tribal or cult-like insularity and conformity informs many in the social psychology profession. One distinguished psychologist, a Harvard professor, suggested that the near monopoly of people on the left among social psychologists might simply reflect the fact, not that there are barriers to entry for conservatives, but that "liberals may be more interested in new ideas, more willing to work for peanuts, or just more intelligent, all of which may push them to pursue the academic life while deterring their conservative peers." Another professor from NYU suggested that the fact that so many ordinary Americans are conservative but almost all social psychologists are liberal may simply reflect the greater knowledge and expertise of the latter. "We should ask honestly," he wrote, "whether social scientists are too liberal or society is too conservative." "After all," he went on to explain, "when experts and laypersons disagree, we do not usually rush to the conclusion that the experts are biased."

Not all of the responses to Haidt's address were hostile, however -- or ideologically self-serving. Lee Jussim, for instance, the chairman of Rutgers psychology department, had this to say: "I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to, and enthusiasm for, Jon Haidt's speech. As he so refreshingly pointed out, liberal bias infects, distorts, and undermines the quality of our science. … If [Haidt's speech] leads even one researcher to be more sensitive to the extraordinary double standards and blindness that sometimes taint our field, it will have been a rousing success."

Another supporter of Haidt's speech was Paul Bloom, professor of psychology at Yale. To get across Haidt's central idea of a hostile work environment confronting non-conformists, Bloom asked his fellow psychologists to imagine the following scenario:

Imagine that you are a beginning graduate student accepted into a top-ranked psychology department. The first colloquium talk you go to is about deception, from a famous social psychologist. In the middle of her talk, she makes a remark about how some people are simply incapable of ever telling the truth, and then she puts up a large picture of Barack Obama. People roar with laughter, and there's a bit of applause. You are a teaching fellow in a large Introduction to Psychology course, and the professor talks a bit about popular delusions, giving the example of liberals who believe in global warming. Al Gore is mentioned in a lecture on clinical psychology, in the context of narcissistic personality disorder. Everyone you know is a conservative Republican and assumes that you are one too, making off-hand jokes to you about brain-dead liberals. But suppose you are, in fact, a liberal yourself. How would you feel about this new life you have chosen?

Bloom then went on to state the obvious: "Nobody wants to be part of a community where their identity is the target of ridicule and malice." This, he said, is obvious to social psychologists in dealing with all sorts of other biases involving gender, race, and sexual orientation. It should be obvious, too, he said, for biases against those who hold political views outside the left-liberal mainstream. For a community that proclaims the value of diversity, Bloom said, we should be much more sensitive to these issues of political bias. "Jon is right that we should do better."