Social Scientist Sees Bias Within

New York Times: Social Scientist Sees Bias Within

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.” ...

Comments

[Dennis Sanders]

As I read some blogs relating to this article, I was thinking about how it is to be a pastor. I tend to be socially liberal/fiscally conservative, and I've learned to not be so vocal of my own views with other pastors in mainline settings. Of course, most of my colleagues are not so quiet and tend to reflect the dominate left-leaning view and assume that everyone else thinks the same way they do. I wish there was a way we could actually talk about these issues respecting that others might not see eye to eye.

[Michael W. Kruse]

Dennis, I frequently experience what I call a "salute the flag" moment when I get around groups of Presbyterians. A group of people who don't know each other become part of a task force or a committee. Early on in informal conversation, someone makes a disparaging remark about Bush, or Republicans, or some conservative view that is recently in the news. Then everyone chimes in to affirm their displeasure and, by doing so, shows their allegiance to the "correct" ideology. It is important the we make it safe for people to disagree while also being honest about our own views. I think that is a real struggle.