On psychology and subversion

Neo-NeoCon has a good post on the NYT's article on the bias of social psychologists that many of you have been emailing me about (thanks btw):

For obvious reasons, several people have sent me this link to a NY Times article on the overwhelming presence of liberals in the field of personality and social psychology. Conservatives? This group has barely ever heard of em, except perhaps as subjects to study.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has, however, and he addressed the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s recent convention, confronting members with the fact that their profession is almost completely dominated by liberals to a degree so profound that it is a “statistical impossibility” that it is accidental.

So Haidt has suggested that the group begin a affirmative action hiring policy for conservatives in order to offset it, and a few members (although not the executive committee) have even agreed that it would be a good idea to set a goal that by 2020 the Society include a whopping 10% conservatives.

Wow, talk about tokens! It’s hard to imagine that the affirmative action one out of ten would feel especially welcome around those casual discussions that tend to feature the knee-jerk dissing of conservatives and their political position. I know; I’ve been there too many times.

Haidt has a suggestion for that, too, although it’s a sly one. He gave the assembled psychologists an assignment: “to overcome taboos, he advised them to subscribe to National Review and to read Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions.”

Watch out, social psychologists! In Haidt, you not only have a conservative on your hands, you’ve got a subversive.

I was one of those token libertarians in my psychology program, and I admit, it was rough. I almost fell out of my seat listening to some of my professor's ideas about politics and society. I still hear some of this biased liberalism when I go to Continuing Education classes, so I usually do them online now so it won't bother me as much. I do speak up now whenever I go to one of these events but it is tiring to have to do that over and over. I can only imagine how the (rare) current crop of conservative or libertarian psychology grad students feel. My advice to those students: Don't let them run you out of the field. Stand your ground and try to make it to the other side of the PhD and get your ideas out there. Or just do what Haidt did, become a subversive. You just might change a few minds.