Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T04:12:19.720Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

It may be harder than we thought, but political diversity will (still) improve social psychological science1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2015

Jarret T. Crawford ,
José L. Duarte ,
Jonathan Haidt ,
Lee Jussim ,
Charlotta Stern  and
Philip E. Tetlock
Jarret T. Crawford
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ 08628. crawford@tcnj.eduhttp://crawford.pages.tcnj.edu/
José L. Duarte
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287. jlduarte@asu.eduhttp://joseduarte.com
Jonathan Haidt
Affiliation:
Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, NY 10012. haidt@nyu.eduhttp://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/jonathan-haid
Lee Jussim
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. jussim@rci.rutgers.eduwww.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/
Charlotta Stern
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden. lotta.stern@sofi.su.sehttp://www2.sofi.su.se/~lst/
Philip E. Tetlock
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. tetlock@wharton.upenn.eduhttp://www.sas.upenn.edu/tetlock/
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In our target article, we made four claims: (1) Social psychology is now politically homogeneous; (2) this homogeneity sometimes harms the science; (3) increasing political diversity would reduce this damage; and (4) some portion of the homogeneity is due to a hostile climate and outright discrimination against non-liberals. In this response, we review these claims in light of the arguments made by a diverse group of commentators. We were surprised to find near-universal agreement with our first two claims, and we note that few challenged our fourth claim. Most of the disagreements came in response to our claim that increasing political diversity would be beneficial. We agree with our critics that increasing political diversity may be harder than we had thought, but we explain why we still believe that it is possible and desirable to do so. We conclude with a revised list of 12 recommendations for improving political diversity in social psychology, as well as in other areas of the academy.

Type
Authors' Response
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 38 , 2015 , e164
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1.

All authors contributed substantially to this Response and are listed in alphabetical order.

References

Ahn, H.-K., Kim, H. J. & Aggarwal, P. (2014) Helping fellow beings: Anthropomorphized social causes and the role of anticipatory guilt. Psychological Science 25(1):224–29.Google Scholar
Brandt, M. J. & Crawford, J. (2013) Replication-extension of “Not for All the Tea in China!” Political ideology and the avoidance of dissonance-arousing situations (Nam, Jost, & Van Bavel, 2013, PLoS One). Social Science Research Network, Online article, December 6, 2013. Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2365281 Google Scholar
Brandt, M. J., Reyna, C., Chambers, J. R., Crawford, J. T. & Wetherell, G. (2014) The ideological-conflict hypothesis: Intolerance among both liberals and conservatives. Current Directions in Psychological Science 23(1):27–34.Google Scholar
Crano, W. D. (2012) The rules of influence: Winning when you are in the minority. St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Crawford, J. T. (2012) The ideologically objectionable premise model: Predicting biased political judgments on the left and right. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48(1):138–51.Google Scholar
Crawford, J. T. (2014) Ideological symmetries and asymmetries in political intolerance and prejudice toward political activist groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 55:284–98.Google Scholar
Crawford, J. T., Brandt, M. J., Chambers, J. R., Inbar, Y., Motyl, M. & Wance, N. M. (in preparation a) A multi-dimensional approach to political prejudice: Social and economic ideologies differentially predict prejudice across the political spectrum.Google Scholar
Crawford, J. T., Collins, T. P. & Brandt, M. J. (in preparation b) Ideological symmetry in people's avoidance of dissonance-arousing situations: A failure to closely or conceptually replicate Nam, Jost, and Van Bavel (2013).Google Scholar
Eagly, A. H. (1995) The science and politics of comparing women and men. American Psychologist 50:145–58.Google Scholar
Eagly, A. H. (2011) A mis-citation classic. In: Most underappreciated: 50 prominent social psychologists describe their most unloved work, ed. Arkin, R. M., pp. 250–53. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, S. & Johnston, C. (2014) Understanding the determinants of political ideology: Implications of structural complexity. Political Psychology 35(3):337–58.Google Scholar
Gaertner, S. L., Mann, J. A., Murrell, A. & Dovidio, J. F. (1989) Reducing intergroup bias: The benefits of recategorization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57:239–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, J., Haidt, J. & Nosek, B. A. (2009) Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96:1029–46.Google Scholar
Greenwald, A. G., Banaji, M. R. & Nosek, B. A. (2015) Statistically small effects of the Implicit Association Test can have societally large effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108:553–61.Google Scholar
Gross, N. & Simmons, S. (2007) The social and political views of American professors. Working Paper presented at a Harvard University Symposium on Professors and Their Politics, October 6, 2007.Google Scholar
Inbar, Y. & Lammers, J. (2012) Political diversity in social and personality psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science 7(5):496–503.Google Scholar
Ioannidis, J. P. (2012) Why science is not necessarily self-correcting. Perspectives on Psychological Science 7:645–54.Google Scholar
Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W. & Sulloway, F. J. (2003) Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin 129(3):339–75. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339.Google Scholar
Jussim, L. (2012a) Liberal privilege in academic psychology and the social sciences. Commentary on Inbar & Lammers (2012). Perspectives on Psychological Science 7(5):504–507.Google Scholar
Jussim, L. (2012b) Social perception and social reality: Why accuracy dominates bias and self-fulfilling prophecy. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jussim, L., Crawford, J. T., Anglin, S. M., Chambers, J., Stevens, S. T. & Cohen, F. (in press a) Stereotype accuracy: One of the largest relationships in all of social psychology. In: Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination, 2nd edition, ed. Nelson, T.. Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. (2012) Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Kemmelmeier, M. (2008) Is there a relationship between political orientation and cognitive ability? A test of three hypotheses in two studies. Personality and Individual Differences 45:767–72.Google Scholar
Malka, A., Lelkes, Y., Srivastava, S., Cohen, A. B. & Miller, D. T. (2012) The association of religiosity and political conservatism: The role of political engagement. Political Psychology 33:275–99.Google Scholar
Malka, A. & Soto, C. J. (2015) Rigidity of the economic right? Menu-independent and menu-dependent influences of psychological dispositions on political attitudes. Current Directions in Psychological Science 24:137–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mannix, E. & Neale, M. A. (2005) What differences make a difference? Psychological Science in the Public Interest 6:31–55.Google Scholar
Menz, M. (2012) Functional top management team members: A review, synthesis, and research agenda. Journal of Management 38(1):45–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nam, H. H., Jost, J. T. & Van Bavel, J. J. (2013) “Not for all the tea in China!” Political ideology and the avoidance of dissonance-arousing situations. PLoS One 8:e59837.Google Scholar
Nickerson, R. S. (1998) Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology 2(2):175–220.Google Scholar
Oswald, F., Mitchell, P. G., Blanton, H., Jaccard, J. & Tetlock, P. E. (2013) Predicting ethnic and racial discrimination: A meta-analysis of IAT criterion studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 105:171–92.Google Scholar
Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y. & Ross, L. (2002) The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28(3):369–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redding, R. E. (2001) Sociopolitical diversity in psychology: The case for pluralism. American Psychologist 56(3):205–15.Google Scholar
Rothman, S. & Lichter, S. R. (2008) The vanishing conservative: Is there a glass ceiling? In: The politically correct university: Problems, scope, and reforms, ed. Maranto, R., Redding, R. E. & Hess, F. M., pp. 60–76. AEI Press.Google Scholar
Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D. & Simonsohn, U. (2011) False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science 22(11):1359–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tetlock, P. E. (1994) Political psychology or politicized psychology: Is the road to scientific hell paved with good moral intentions? Political Psychology 15(3):509–29.Google Scholar
Tetlock, P. E. & Mitchell, G. (2009) Implicit bias and accountability systems: What must organizations do to prevent discrimination? Research in Organizational Behavior 29:3–38.Google Scholar
Van Hiel, A., Onraet, E. & De Pauw, S. (2010) The relationship between social-cultural attitudes and behavioral measures of cognitive style: A meta-analytic integration of studies. Journal of Personality 78:1765–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, K. Y. & O'Reilly, C. A. (1998) Demography and diversity in organizations: A review of 40 years of research. Research in Organizational Behavior 20:77–140.Google Scholar