Social Psychologist Finds Liberal Bias Within His Field
by The Federalist Society
Posted February 09, 2011, 7:39 PM
John Tierney wrote this article in the New York Times Tuesday detailing how Jonathan Haidt, a University of Virginia social psychologist, has determined that there is bias in the social psychology community against conservatives, noting at a recent conference that conservatives were underrepresented among his audience "by a factor of more than 100."
Dr. Haidt argues that a reason for such underrepresentation is that the fight for civil rights unified liberals and the academy throughout the 1960s, causing academics to unite around certain sacred values and form a "tribal-moral community" from which conservatives were excluded. This situation has since made it difficult for conservative social psychologists to reveal their political views to their colleagues, both in informal settings and in their scholarship.
Dr. Haidt encouraged his fellow psychologists to focus on "shared science" rather than "shared morality" and to become more accepting of their colleagues with different ideologies.