SAN ANTONIO — Some of the world’s pre-eminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting.
Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”
It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.
“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.
“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”
Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) told the audience that he had been corresponding with a couple of non-liberal graduate students in social psychology whose experiences reminded him of closeted gay students in the 1980s. He quoted — anonymously — from their e-mails describing how they hid their feelings when colleagues made political small talk and jokes predicated on the assumption that everyone was a liberal.
Right but unlike gays those nasty non-liberal minded students clearly deserve it! Amirite?
I’m sorry GLaDOS but while distortions of the map are important and probably what we should talk about it, I agree with Lammers from the OP here. We should not dismiss the human cost of this situation for the minority of students with non-liberal views.
What most impressed him about the issues raised by the study, Inbar said, is the need to think about “basic fairness.”
Right but unlike gays those nasty non-liberal minded students clearly deserve it! Amirite?
Obviously since non-liberal post-graduate students of social psychology cause all sorts of nasty stuff by their presence.
For example the achievement gap between black and non-black students is probably entirely due to their evil racism. Their presence is probably also sometimes detected by sensitive female students who detect patriarchal bias from them and thus avoid social science, it might even serve as a trauma trigger for them. Don’t forget hail!
In fairness, most forms of discrimination involve choosing among bodies while ignoring the minds. It’s much easier to end up with unbalanced numbers of, say, liberals or atheists or whatever if you select based on intelligence, qualification etc.
A interesting NYT article I saw linked to in your inside higher ed link.
Social Scientist Sees Bias Within
Not surprising at all.
Right but unlike gays those nasty non-liberal minded students clearly deserve it! Amirite?
I’m sorry GLaDOS but while distortions of the map are important and probably what we should talk about it, I agree with Lammers from the OP here. We should not dismiss the human cost of this situation for the minority of students with non-liberal views.
Obviously since non-liberal post-graduate students of social psychology cause all sorts of nasty stuff by their presence.
For example the achievement gap between black and non-black students is probably entirely due to their evil racism. Their presence is probably also sometimes detected by sensitive female students who detect patriarchal bias from them and thus avoid social science, it might even serve as a trauma trigger for them. Don’t forget hail!
Even a simple look in a certain contexts probably suffices for that so we can’t really trust official investigation to keep us safe from this insidious hidden menace. What if some of them start a right wing students club with regular meetings on campus! All these problems brought by non-liberal students also need to be put into context when it comes to the health costs to other students we would incur by making them feel non-excluded. It might for example induce infertility or impotence. Also what if they don white robes and start ridding by night and carrying out meetings?? Pacts with shadowy right wing organizations and them privately repudiating social justice, freedom or equality are also horrible possibilities. They might even speak ill of MLK or FDR, engage in meet ups in order to marry off their female members so they can experience missionary position procreative sex! They also probably use non-fair trade chocolate in their baking recepies! Really? Why don’t you just use human blood!
Also we already know reality has a liberal bias, so us being biased that way is no biggie makes us more accurate really.
In fairness, most forms of discrimination involve choosing among bodies while ignoring the minds. It’s much easier to end up with unbalanced numbers of, say, liberals or atheists or whatever if you select based on intelligence, qualification etc.