Psychology's Political Diversity Problem

We will soon have a paper coming in Behavioral and Brain Sciences reviewing the issues I have been blogging about here over the last year or so.

Here is the title and abstract:

"Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science"

Abstract

"Psychologists have demonstrated the value of diversity—particularly diversity of viewpoints—for enhancing creativity, discovery, and problem solving. But one key type of viewpoint diversity is lacking in academic psychology in general and social psychology in particular: political diversity. This article reviews the available evidence and finds support for four claims: 1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years; 2) This lack of political diversity can undermine the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike; 3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority’s thinking; and 4) The underrepresentation of non-liberals in social psychology is most likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination. We close with recommendations for increasing political diversity in social psychology."

This is with my collaborators José L. Duarte, Jarret T. Crawford, Charlotta Stern, Jonathan Haidt, and Philip E. Tetlock. You can find a prepublication version on Crawford's website:

(He keeps his much more up to date than I keep mine.)

This paper has evoked one histrionic article and several other very reasonable and thoughtful press and blog entries:

http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-psychology-bias…

http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=3125&utm_source=…

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/01/diversity_of_th.html

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sound-science-sound-policy/201411/i…

Though, not all are very supportive.

I have several other papers coming out over the next year or two on this same issue. If you are interested, ping me via the comments sections.