Sep 16, 2016 07:13 PM
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...ty/500219/
EXCERPT: [...] Psychologists and other social scientists used to argue for the irrationality of women and minorities, particularly of African descent—arguments that are now understood to be false. Now they make this claim about political conservatives. One popular theory is that conservatives are highly prone to “system justification,” which leads them to endorse, as John Jost and his colleagues put it “a fairly wide range of rationalizations of current social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements.” Note the word “rationalizations,” as opposed to actual arguments or reasons. Conservative policies—such as opposition to affirmative action and income redistribution—are seen as the products of cognitive biases.
One response to this has been raised by José Duarte and his colleagues, who worry that political psychologists are an ideologically homogenous bunch—the number of prominent scholars in this area who self-identify as conservative could fit conformably into a Prius. When members of the preeminent Society for Social and Personality Psychology (SPSP) were polled, they not only characterized themselves as overwhelmingly liberal, but many also said that they would discriminate against conservative colleagues, for everything from awarding grants to faculty hiring.
So reading the theories of many political psychologists is like hearing about homosexuality from the research division of the Westboro Baptist Church, or about female psychology by a cadre of all-male scientists who are proud members of the men’s rights movement. You couldn’t be certain that their conclusions were mistaken, but you’d be right to worry about bias. People are not best situated to pass judgments on the mental health of their enemies.
Indeed, as Maria Konnikova has reviewed, the evidence that personality and psychological traits can lead a person to be conservative is weak. There are correlations—the conservatives-are-less-tolerant-of-ambiguity findings are pretty solid—but little support for cause and effect. If you want to reliably predict someone’s political views, you’re are a lot better off if you put aside the psychological tests altogether and looked at considerations that reflect people’s experiences and roles in society, such as ethnicity, sex, age, and income....
EXCERPT: [...] Psychologists and other social scientists used to argue for the irrationality of women and minorities, particularly of African descent—arguments that are now understood to be false. Now they make this claim about political conservatives. One popular theory is that conservatives are highly prone to “system justification,” which leads them to endorse, as John Jost and his colleagues put it “a fairly wide range of rationalizations of current social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements.” Note the word “rationalizations,” as opposed to actual arguments or reasons. Conservative policies—such as opposition to affirmative action and income redistribution—are seen as the products of cognitive biases.
One response to this has been raised by José Duarte and his colleagues, who worry that political psychologists are an ideologically homogenous bunch—the number of prominent scholars in this area who self-identify as conservative could fit conformably into a Prius. When members of the preeminent Society for Social and Personality Psychology (SPSP) were polled, they not only characterized themselves as overwhelmingly liberal, but many also said that they would discriminate against conservative colleagues, for everything from awarding grants to faculty hiring.
So reading the theories of many political psychologists is like hearing about homosexuality from the research division of the Westboro Baptist Church, or about female psychology by a cadre of all-male scientists who are proud members of the men’s rights movement. You couldn’t be certain that their conclusions were mistaken, but you’d be right to worry about bias. People are not best situated to pass judgments on the mental health of their enemies.
Indeed, as Maria Konnikova has reviewed, the evidence that personality and psychological traits can lead a person to be conservative is weak. There are correlations—the conservatives-are-less-tolerant-of-ambiguity findings are pretty solid—but little support for cause and effect. If you want to reliably predict someone’s political views, you’re are a lot better off if you put aside the psychological tests altogether and looked at considerations that reflect people’s experiences and roles in society, such as ethnicity, sex, age, and income....