the lack of political diversity in social psychology
Jonathan Haidt
Citation (APA): Haidt, J. (2017). It’s finally out--The big review paper on the lack of political diversity in social psychology [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Parte introduttiva
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the lack of political diversity in social psychology By Jonathan Haidt
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1. Introduction
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In the last few years, social psychology has faced a series of challenges to the validity of its research, including a few high-profile replication failures,
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UNA DISCIPLINA GIÀ SCREDITATA DAI FALLITI TENT DI REPLICA
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In this article, we suggest that one largely overlooked cause of failure is a lack of political diversity.
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UN ALTRO MOTIVO DI PREOCCUP
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We focus on conservatives as an underrepresented group because the data on the prevalence in psychology of different ideological groups is best for the liberal-conservative contrast– and the departure from the proportion of liberals and conservatives in the U.S. population is so dramatic.
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DESTRA SOTTORAPPR
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The lack of diversity causes problems for the scientific process primarily in areas related to the political concerns of the Left– areas such as race, gender, stereotyping, environmentalism, power, and inequality
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MATERIE PARTICOLARMENTE SOGGETTE ALLA DEFORMAZIONE IDEOLOG
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2. Psychology is less politically diverse than ever
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Before the 1990s, academic psychology only LEANED left. Liberals and Democrats outnumbered Conservatives and Republican by 4 to 1 or less. But as the “greatest generation” retired in the 1990s and was replaced by baby boomers, the ratio skyrocketed to something more like 12 to 1.
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DAGLI ANNI 90 IL TRACOLLO DELLA DIVERSITA. RAPPORTO SINISTRA DESTRA. DA 4.1 A 12.1
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3. Three ways that the lack of diversity undermines social psychology
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undermine the self-correction
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IL GUAIO DEL CONFORMISMO
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Risk point 1: Liberal values and assumptions can become embedded into theory and method
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ideological claims are wrongly treated as objective truth,
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Son Hing, Bobocel, Zanna, and McBride (2007) found that: 1) people high in social dominance orientation (SDO) were more likely to make unethical decisions, 2) people high in right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) were more likely to go along with the unethical decisions of leaders, and 3) dyads with high SDO leaders and high RWA followers made more unethical decisions than dyads with alternative arrangements (e.g., low SDO— low RWA dyads). Yet consider the decisions they defined as unethical: not formally taking a female colleague’s side in her sexual harassment complaint against her subordinate (given little information about the case), and a worker placing the well-being of his or her company above unspecified harms to the environment attributed to the company’s operations. Liberal values of feminism and environmentalism were embedded directly into the operationalization of ethics,
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UN ESEMPIO
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Risk point 2: Researchers may concentrate on topics that validate the liberal progress narrative and avoid topics that contest that narrative
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in a politically homogeneous field, a larger-than-optimal number of scientists shine their flashlights on ideologically important regions of the terrain. Doing so leaves many areas unexplored. Even worse, some areas become walled off, and inquisitive researchers risk ostracism if they venture in.
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AREE DI RICERCA INESPLORATA. ANZI PRATICAMENTE SOGGETTE A CENSURA
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[Example:] Stereotype accuracy. Since the 1930s, social psychologists have been proclaiming the inaccuracy of social stereotypes, despite lacking evidence of such inaccuracy. Evidence has seemed unnecessary because stereotypes have been, in effect, stereotyped as inherently nasty and inaccurate (see Jussim, 2012a for a review). Some group stereotypes are indeed hopelessly crude and untestable. But some may rest on valid empiricism— and represent subjective estimates of population characteristics (e.g. the proportion of people who drop out of high school, are victims of crime, or endorse policies that support women at work, see Jussim, 2012a, Ryan, 2002 for reviews). In this context, it is not surprising that the rigorous empirical study of the accuracy of factual stereotypes was initiated by one of the very few self-avowed conservatives in social psychology— Clark McCauley (McCauley & Stitt, 1978).
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ES: LA RICERCA SUGLI STEREOTIPI
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Risk point 3: Negative attitudes regarding conservatives can produce a psychological science that mischaracterizes their traits and attributes
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A long-standing view in social-political psychology is that the right is more dogmatic and intolerant of ambiguity than the left, a view Tetlock (1983) dubbed the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis…. But had social psychologists studied a broad enough range of situations to justify these broad conclusions?
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TERZO RISCHIO: ETICHETTARE L AVV. LA DESTRA È DOGMATICA
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Recent evidence suggests not. The ideologically objectionable premise model (IOPM; Crawford, 2012) posits that people on the political left and right are equally likely to approach political judgments with their ideological blinders on. That said, they will only do so when the premise of a political judgment is ideologically acceptable. If it’s objectionable, any preferences for one group over another will be short-circuited, and biases won’t emerge. The IOPM thus allows for biases to emerge only among liberals, only among conservatives, or among both liberals and conservatives, depending on the situation. For example, reinterpreting Altemeyer’s mandatory school prayer results, Crawford (2012) argued that for people low in RWA who value individual freedom and autonomy, mandatory school prayer is objectionable; thus, the very nature of the judgment should shut off any biases in favor of one target over the other. However, for people high in RWA who value society-wide conformity to traditional morals and values, mandating school prayer is acceptable; this acceptable premise then allows for people high in RWA to express a bias in favor of Christian over Muslim school prayer. Crawford (2012, Study 1) replaced mandatory prayer with voluntary prayer, which would be acceptable to both people high and low in RWA. In line with the IOPM, people high in RWA were still biased in favor of Christian over Muslim prayer, while people low in RWA now showed a bias in favor of Muslim over Christian voluntary prayer. Hypocrisy is therefore not necessarily a special province of the right.
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NN È COSÌ. ESEMPIO
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4. Why political diversity is likely to improve social psychological science
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benefits of viewpoint diversity are most pronounced when organizations are pursuing open-ended exploratory goals (e.g., scientific discovery) as opposed to exploitative goals (e.g., applying well-established routines to well-defined problems; Cannella, Park & Hu, 2008).
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LA DIVERSITÀ IDEOLOG È PARTICOL AUSPICABILE NELLA RICERCA
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4.1. Confirmation bias
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This confirmation bias (Nickerson, 1998) is widespread among both laypeople and scientists (Ioannidis, 2012).
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UNA DISTORSIONE CHE TOCCA TUTTI SC COMPRESI
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people are far better at identifying the flaws in other people’s evidence-gathering than in their own, especially if those other people have dissimilar beliefs (e.g., Mercier & Sperber, 2011; Sperber et al., 2010).
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I DIVERSI VEDONO MEGLIO I RISPETTIVI DIFETTI
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The most obvious cure for this problem is to increase the viewpoint diversity of the field. Nobody has found a way to eradicate confirmation bias in individuals (Lilienfeld et al., 2009), but we can diversify the field to the point where individual viewpoint biases begin to cancel each other out.
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IL CB NELL INDIVID NN È SRADICABILE
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4.2. Minority influence
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Majorities influence decision-making by producing conformity pressure that creates cohesion and community,
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LA PRESSIONE CONFORMISTA
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groupthink
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There is even evidence that politically diverse teams produce more creative solutions than do politically homogeneous teams on problems such as “how can a person of average talent achieve fame” and how to find funding for a partially-built church ineligible for bank loans (Triandis, Hall, & Ewen, 1965)….
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I GRUPPI VARIEGATI LA VORANO MEGLIO SU ALCUNI TEMI
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5. Why are there so few non-liberals in social psychology?
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five explanations
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5.1. Differences in ability
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The evidence does not support
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Social conservatism correlates with lower cognitive ability test scores, but economic conservatism correlates with higher scores (Iyer, Koleva, Graham, Ditto, & Haidt, 2012; Kemmelmeier 2008). [Libertarians are the political group with the highest IQ, yet they are underrepresented in the social sciences other than economics]
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EVIDENZA SULL ABILITÀ: I LIBERTARI SONO ADDIRITTURA I PIÙ INTELL
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5.2. The effects of education on political ideology
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There is little evidence that education causes students to become more liberal. Instead, several longitudinal studies following tens of thousands of college students for many years have concluded that political socialization in college occurs primarily as a function of one’s peers, not education per se (Astin, 1993; Dey, 1997).
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NO EVIDENZA
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NN CONTA L ED MA CHI SI FREQUENTA
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5.3. Differences in interest
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Might liberals simply find a career in social psychology (or the academy more broadly) more appealing? Yes, for several reasons. The Big-5 trait that correlates most strongly with political liberalism is openness to experience (r = .32 in Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloways’s 2003 meta-analysis), and people high in that trait are more likely to pursue careers that will let them indulge their curiosity and desire to learn, such as a career in the academy (McCrae, 1996).
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SÌ. LA CURIOSITÀ È UN TRATTO LIBERAL E ANCHE TIPICO DI CHI INTRAPRENDE RICERCA
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Such intrinsic variations in interest may be amplified by a “birds of a feather” or “homophile” effect. “Similarity attracts” is one of the most well-established findings in social psychology (Byrne, 1969).
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EFFETTO AMPLI: I SIMILI SI ATTRAGG
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Self-selection clearly plays a role.
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5.4. Hostile climate
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Might self-selection be amplified by an accurate perception among conservative students that they are not welcome in the social psychology community? Consider the narrative of conservatives that can be formed from some recent conclusions in social psychological research: compared to liberals, conservatives are less intelligent (Hodson & Busseri, 2012) and less cognitively complex (Jost et al., 2003). They are more rigid, dogmatic, and inflexible (Jost et al., 2003). Their lower IQ explains their racism and sexism (Deary, Batty, & Gale, 2008), and their endorsement of inequality explains why they are happier than liberals (Napier & Jost, 2008). As conservative undergraduates encounter the research literature in their social psychology classes, might they recognize cues that the field regards them and their beliefs as defective?
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CLIMA OSTILE: DIFFICILE NEGARE
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I can’t begin to tell you how difficult it was for me in graduate school because I am not a liberal Democrat. As one example, following Bush’s defeat of Kerry, one of my professors would email me every time a soldier’s death in Iraq made the headlines; he would call me out, publicly blaming me for not supporting Kerry in the election. I was a reasonably successful graduate student, but the political ecology became too uncomfortable for me. Instead of seeking the professorship that I once worked toward, I am now leaving academia for a job in industry.
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LETTERA DI UNA MATRICOLA
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Inbar and Lammers (2012) asked members of the SPSP discussion list: “Do you feel that there is a hostile climate towards your political beliefs in your field?” Of 17 conservatives, 14 (82%) responded “yes” (i.e., a response at or above the midpoint of the scale, where the midpoint was labeled “somewhat” and the top point “very much”), with half of those responding “very much.” In contrast, only 18 of 266 liberals (7%) responded “yes”, with only two of those responding “very much.” Interestingly, 18 of 25 moderates (72%) responded “yes,” with one responding “very much.”
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RICERCHE NON ANED. SUL CLIMA OSTILE
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5.5. Discrimination
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ample evidence using multiple methods demonstrates that social psychologists do in fact act in discriminatory ways toward non-liberal colleagues and their research.
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AEVIDENZA: SÌ LA D È DISCR
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if you change a research proposal so that its hypotheses sound conservative, but you leave the methods the same, then the manuscript is deemed less publishable, and is less likely to get IRB approval]
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COME NN PUBBLICARE UN MANOSCRITTO
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“If two job candidates (with equal qualifications) were to apply for an opening in your department, and you knew that one was politically quite conservative, do you think you would be inclined to vote for the more liberal one?” Of the 237 liberals, only 42 (18%) chose the lowest scale point, “not at all.” In other words, 82% admitted that they would be at least a little bit prejudiced against a conservative candidate, and 43% chose the midpoint (“ somewhat”) or above. In contrast, the majority of moderates (67%) and conservatives (83%) chose the lowest scale point (“ not at all”)….
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LA DISCR È ESPLICITA. DOMANDA DEL SONDAGGIO SOTTOPOSTO AI DOCENTI
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Conservative graduate students and assistant professors are behaving rationally when they keep their political identities hidden,
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COMPORTAM RAZIONALE: NASCONDERE LA PROPRIA IDENT
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6. Recommendations
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6.1. Organizational responses
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anti-discrimination policy
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Implement a “climate study” regarding members’ experiences, comfort/ discomfort,
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encourage and support research training programs and research conferences to attract, retain, and graduate conservative
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6.2. Professorial responses
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Raise consciousness
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Expand diversity statements.
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6.3. Changes to research practices
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Be alert to double standards. 2. Support adversarial collaborations. [3. Improve research norms to increase the degree to which a research field becomes self-correcting.]
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ATTENTI AL DOPPIO STANDARD
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7. Conclusion
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