Social Scientist Sees Bias Within

[groovedaddy]

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.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210

[xchrom]

1. that's a bias i'm comfortable with. nt

[Buzz Clik]

2. Yeah, maybe, but it might not be what he thinks.

At a gathering such as that, a person who is fiscally conservative but socially liberal would self identify as liberal.

And why the hell would a social conservative immerse herself/himself in a convention their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities? It isn't discrimination when someone chooses to voluntarily not attend an event that is of absolutely no interest.

[RocketTuna]

3. How many...

evangelicals were in there? Fundamentalist Muslims? How about creationists?

Scientologists?

Palm readers?


God help us - when will the discrimination stop?!

[bemildred]

4. Somebody ought to explain statistics better to Dr Haidt.

Conventions are not random samples of much of anything.

[RKP5637]

6. Exactly, it was a biased sampling. One I like, but nonetheless the results would

have been obvious.

[caraher]

8. It's probably a representative sample...

a sample of the membership of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Even if one could prove some kind of overt inadmissible discrimination against conservatives in that profession, I'm far less worried about that than the opposite imbalance among the people who pull the financial and political strings in this country.

I hope his main message is for his colleagues to be alert to biases they bring to their work. The questions he ask as challenges are good ones to consider, even if I think the actually can be answered honestly in a way that deflects the charge of discrimination.

[bemildred]

10. Well, his argument is babble.

His criticism of his profession for herd-think might well have some merit, but possibly not in the way he thinks. In any case, given the pretensions of his profession, I would expect a bit more competence in the collection and presentation of evidence. It is his misuse of "statistics" that I particularly dislike. He could have made his argument better and clearer without the pretense of measurement of something.

[Igel]

16. It is.

Mostly.

Nobody says the association is to be a random sample of the general population, so the meeting--which isn't random, but selection probably isn't correlated with polical beliefs.

On the other hand, I've known grad students in a number of fields who knew their stuff and did good research, yet left not even just because their research led to unpopular conclusions but because they didn't like the constant browbeating.

I've sat next to people who boasted of precinct walking for Kerry and openly said they'd have to think twice about appointing a republican to a professor's job and discouraged republican students. This is different, they were at pains to say, from McCarthyism because McCarthy went after a non-existent problem whereas republicans are dangerous and shouldn't be allowed to corrupt students.

The guy's main problem is that results consistent with bias are automatically assumed to be proof of bias: Correlation proves causation. Saying that the association isn't a random sample isn't sufficient because that's one of the standard defenses: You are an employer, you live in a city that's 12.9% black, you should have 12.9% black employees. If you have 1%, you'd claim that blacks just didn't want to work there. Of course you'd probably lose in the American courts and be told to institute some sort of outreach program, to justify whatever processes skewed the applicant pool or produced a skewed applicant pool.

[bemildred]

17. Saying that the association isn't a random sample is quite sufficient.

I have no idea what it is you are wandering on about.

[OHdem10]

5. I am not being mean, but I cannot think of a Republican that I

could envision as a social scientist. It is just
as difficult to imagine those types who pursue SS
as cut throat highly successful Business Types.

Maybe there is a Republican Gene and a Liberal Gene??
Just kidding, of course.

[groovedaddy]

9. Are your politics in your genes? Check it out.

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-02-11/health/politics.genes_1_david-amodio-liberals-and-conservatives-genes?_s=PM:HEALTH

[Enthusiast]

11. I agree.

Maybe it's just Ohio. But, somehow, I doubt it.

[drm604]

7. Aren't conservatives generally hostile to the whole concept of "social science"?

We can't really blame the social scientists for that.

[Doctor_J]

12. Why would a reactionary wing nut go to a diversity conference?

What a stupid article.

[libmom74]

13. maybe

that's because science and conservative don't mix well. they hate science, unless it is pseudo science that refutes real science that they don't like (see climate change).

[Demeter]

14. The Mentally Ill and Morally Insane Don't Make the Grade

hence the bias towards people who are at least aware of their biases, and working to overcome them.

[Beartracks]

15. The empathy connection

I've always understood that, generally speaking, professions where empathy is an asset attract people of a more liberal mindset, because liberals by and large tend to statistically demonstrate that quality more than conservatives.

---------------------------

[provis99]

18. what is this jackass's complaint?

Engineering schools are dominated by conservatives; law schools dominated by conservatives; computer science dominated by conservatives; history dominated by conservatives; business school dominated by conservatives; philosophy dominated by conservatives; medical school dominated by conservatives, etc. But his complaint is that there are still a few liberals left, in social science? What a fuckhead.

[OnyxCollie]

19. I see conservative bias

in the poli-sci department at the University of Akron. It's affiliated with the non-partisan (Read: conservative as all hell.) and aptly-named Bliss Institute.

These guys are so ignorant of what has transpired in the last ten years that I often wonder if they're just bullshitting because they're getting paid to do so.

The US Attorney scandal? Don't know a thing about it.
The OLC memos? Never read 'em.
Warrantless wiretaps? You're an alarmist.

I've had a professor tell me that PNAC had nothing to do with Iraq, and that "Rebuilding America's Defenses" was about Israel!