Liberalism is at its most pathetic when it
declares that conservatism isn't doing well enough. But that is exactly what a group of psychologists at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology declared at the organization's recent convention. They are upset because most psychologists are liberal, and most of the rest are either moderate or nonpolitical. Only a few are conservative. The group's complaint, as chronicled in the New York Times, is that psychology has a double standard:
“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.”
Dr. Haidt thinks the reason for this disparity is indeed discrimination:
Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) told the audience that he had been corresponding with a couple of non-liberal graduate students in social psychology whose experiences reminded him of closeted gay students in the 1980s. He quoted — anonymously — from their e-mails describing how they hid their feelings when colleagues made political small talk and jokes predicated on the assumption that everyone was a liberal.
“I consider myself very middle-of-the-road politically: a social liberal but fiscal conservative. Nonetheless, I avoid the topic of politics around work,” one student wrote. “Given what I’ve read of the literature, I am certain any research I conducted in political psychology would provide contrary findings and, therefore, go unpublished. Although I think I could make a substantial contribution to the knowledge base, and would be excited to do so, I will not.”
Dr. Haidt, himself an ex-liberal who nevertheless clings to one of liberalism's worst qualities—the conviction that nobody is wrong—can be commended for pointing out that conservatives are underrepresented in psychology, and hypothesizing that discrimination is to blame. That's a valid observation and a legitimate hypothesis. But his approach is grossly unscientific. If he thinks he's proving his case by quoting a couple of anonymous e-mails from conservative students who claim they will not pursue a career in psychology because they have preemptively declared what the conclusions of their research would be and believe that their results would be ignored because of political bias (oh, irony!), then he's not fit to be called a “doctor.”
What's even more outlandish is the elaborate theory he has constructed on the basis of his flimsy data:
“The fight for civil rights and against racism became the sacred cause unifying the left throughout American society, and within the academy,” he said, arguing that this shared morality both “binds and blinds.”
“If a group circles around sacred values, they will evolve into a tribal-moral community,” he said. “They’ll embrace science whenever it supports their sacred values, but they’ll ditch it or distort it as soon as it threatens a sacred value.”
What he's saying is that conservatives have been excluded from the psychology community because liberals have transformed the culture from scientific to moralistic, and the operative morals are liberal-oriented.
It's true that methodological rigor isn't nearly as sharp in the social sciences as in the physical sciences. I remember that back from my college days, and have observed it in the years since when I read in the news about social science research studies. And, given that the social sciences are indeed overwhelmingly liberal at the professional level, it's not unreasonable to suspect that mores and folkways have contributed to the dilution of scientific value in the research output of these fields. So, Haidt's theory isn't completely unreasonable. But is this really a problem of liberalism shutting out conservatism?
That's much harder to say. Haidt's theory, reasonable or not, doesn't follow from his anecdotal data. He's trying to make the case that conservatives are underrepresented in psychology as the result of
liberal narrow-mindedness. To prove something like that would require far more than a few disgruntled conservatives who claim they chose not to pursue a career in psychology because of all those damn liberals—claims which have to be taken skeptically because they carry a preexisting political bias of their own. Nay, to prove such a thing would require consistent documentation of explicitly pejorative anti-conservative bias in areas of the field such as hiring and tenure, research grants, and journal publication. That's a very difficult burden of proof, but warranted: It's a very broad accusation.
In his rush to vilify the culture of the psychology community, Haidt does not seem to have accounted for one very important distinction which can explain the whole thing uncontroversially:
Conservative ideas make you stupid. These ideas self-select individuals away from careers whose physical work challenges the conservative worldview. This is especially noticeable in the realm of science, where conservatives are underrepresented just about everywhere, which tells you something about the intellectual illegitimacy of the modern conservative movement.
To the extent there is establishment-liberal involvement in the underrepresentation of conservatives in psychology, only some of it can be the result of the kind of malicious discrimination Haidt bemoans. Conservatism is an ideological construct. That means it can be discriminated against in two ways: discrimination against conservative people and organizations, and discrimination against conservative ideas. The former mode of discrimination is pejorative (although not always unfounded, when the discrimination is evaluative rather than assumptive), but the latter mode is judicious (and rarely inappropriate). Suppose that Haidt's anonymous student had chosen to pursue a career in psychology. With statements like “Given what I’ve read of the literature, I am certain any research I conducted in political psychology would provide contrary findings and, therefore, go unpublished,” how far do you think the student would have gotten before being pulled aside by an authority figure and told that that is not a scientific mindset? The conservatives who can learn this lesson before it spoils their career prospects, may go on to have careers in that field. The conservatives who won't learn that lesson, don't generally advance. This holds true for non-conservatives as well, to the extent any ideology can corrupt a scientist's scientific mindset, itself to the extent that the scientific community hierarchy is merit-based.
Now, I do have to discuss a couple of points. First, it isn't to be taken for granted at “the scientific community hierarchy is merit-based.” Haidt's whole point is that it
isn't merit-based, because it's scrunching conservatives. Even though he is almost certainly wrong in his specific conclusion, his wrongness doesn't prove that the meritocracy is firmly in control. In the nooks and crannies where meritocracy is weak, the dominant culture will push out the rest, and this leaves room for isolated climates of malicious anti-conservative discrimination to occur, simply because conservatives are so outnumbered. The same applies to all minority groups, such as those who adhere to fringe (but not discredited) schools of psychological thinking. This kind of unjustifiable discrimination ought to be stamped out so that conservatives who do ethical work can build a career in the field like anyone else.
Second, we also have to consider that “conservatism” is a valid source of what I might call “minority malaise.” Being raised conservative will greatly disadvantage a person in many ways, and that often includes intellectual starvation. Some conservatives are too bull-headed to get into psychology, which is what I've discussed so far, but others are so thoroughly disenfranchised in life that they get to the point where they don't have the brains, the aspiration, the money, or the circumstances to pursue a professional career. In this way, conservatives in science are like blacks generally: Many are held back by their own circumstances. (Incidentally, the cause of those circumstances is usually conservatism itself, and the religion that goes with it, which is where the analogy with blacks ends.)
Haidt, in broaching the issue of conservative underrepresentation in psychology, could have taken the opportunity to truly explore the reality of it. Instead, he seemed interested only in pursuing a political agenda. If you read on in that NY Times article, you'll find that Haidt's views suggest he is a bigot of some stripe. I've seen his type before: the dogmatist who has a change of philosophy and becomes an evangelist.
There's something else to be said about the specter of conservative affirmative action in science. If we bring more conservatives into the field, without regard to their fitness as scientists, we're going to do unto the “Ivory Tower” what has already come to pass for “Main Street”: Science will be hopelessly and endlessly distracted into meaningless wars of conservative aggression. Not only will this slow the pace of scientific progress. It will threaten the institution of science itself. Conservatives don't buy into all of this “nobody is wrong” malarkey. They fight to win. Give them an opening in the scientific community, and they will pollute it with their crap just like they have done with society in general. Modern conservatism asserts that science is only valid when it is a tool of conservatism. Conservatism could care less that science is actually a means to discovery.
Do you think I am exaggerating? The sweet and sour finish to this story is that, when I got to the bottom of the article, the NY Times' automatic article suggestion box recommended a story about how
only 28 percent of biology teachers teach evolution in a scientifically disinterested way.
