Political diversity will improve social psychological science

[Over 9000]

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/political-diversity-will-improve-social-psychological-science-1/A54AD4878AED1AFC8BA6AF54A890149F

 

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Volume 38

January 2015, e130

Political diversity will improve social psychological science1

Abstract

Psychologists have demonstrated the value of diversity – particularly diversity of viewpoints – for enhancing creativity, discovery, and problem solving. But one key type of viewpoint diversity is lacking in academic psychology in general and social psychology in particular: political diversity. This article reviews the available evidence and finds support for four claims: (1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years. (2) This lack of political diversity can undermine the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike. (3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority's thinking. (4) The underrepresentation of non-liberals in social psychology is most likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination. We close with recommendations for increasing political diversity in social psychology.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Over 9000

[Over 9000]

Professor who tweeted against PC culture is out at NYU

By Melkorka Licea
October 30, 2016

 

An NYU professor crusading against political correctness and student coddling was booted from the classroom last week after his colleagues complained about his “incivility,” The Post has learned.

Liberal studies prof Michael Rectenwald, 57, said he was forced Wednesday to go on paid leave for the rest of the semester.

“They are actually pushing me out the door for having a different perspective,” the academic told The Post.

Rectenwald launched an undercover Twitter account called Deplorable NYU Prof on Sept. 12 to argue against campus trends like “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings” policing Halloween costumes and other aspects of academia’s growing PC culture.

He chose to be anonymous, he explained in one of his first tweets, because he was afraid “the PC Gestapo would ruin me” if he put his name behind his conservative ideas on the famously liberal campus.

“I remember once on my Facebook I posted a story about a kid who changed his pronoun to ‘His Majesty’ because I thought it was funny,” he told The Post. “Then I got viciously attacked by 400 people. This whole milieu is nauseating. I grew tired of it, so I made the account.”

On Oct. 11, Rectenwald used his internet alter ego to criticize “safe spaces” — the recent campus trend of “protecting” students from uncomfortable speech — as “at once a hall of mirrors and a rubber room.”

Two weeks ago he posted on his “anti-PC” feed a photo of a flyer put out by NYU resident advisers telling students how to avoid wearing potentially offensive Halloween costumes.

His caption read: “The scariest thing about Halloween today is . . . the liberal totalitarian costume surveillance. NYU RAs gone mad,” he wrote.

“It’s an alarming curtailment of free expression to the point where you can’t even pretend to be something without authorities coming down on you in the universities,” Rectenwald told The Post.

But the Twitter feed soon sparked a “witch hunt” by the growing army of “social justice warriors,” he said.

In an interview published Monday in the Washington Square News, NYU’s Independent Student Newspaper, the eight-year instructor admitted he was the Deplorable NYU Prof.

“My contention is that trigger warning, safe spaces and bias hot-line reporting is not politically correct. It is insane,” he told the student paper. “The crazier and crazier that this left gets . . . the more the alt-right is going to be laughing their asses off [and] getting more pissed.”, he was quoted as saying.

The divorced father of three came forward because “I thought there was nothing objectionable about what I had said.”

But Rectenwald says he began getting “dirty looks” in his department and on Wednesday figured out why: A 12-person committee calling itself the Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group, including two deans, published a letter to the editor in the same paper.

“As long as he airs his views with so little appeal to evidence and civility, we must find him guilty of illogic and incivility in a community that predicates its work in great part on rational thought and the civil exchange of ideas,” they wrote of the untenured assistant professor.

“We seek to create a dynamic community that values full participation. Such efforts are not the ‘destruction of academic integrity’ Professor Rectenwald suggests, but rather what make possible our program’s approach to global studies,” they argued [sic]. Rectenwald likened the attack to “a Salem witch trial. They took my views personally. I never even mentioned them and I never even said NYU liberal studies program. I was talking about academia at large,” said the professor, a popular instructor who was graded 4.4 out of 5 on ratemyprofessors.com.

The same day the letter was published, Rectenwald was summoned to a meeting with his department dean and an HR representative, he says.

“They claimed they were worried about me and a couple people had expressed concern about my mental health. They suggested my voicing these opinions was a cry for help,” Rectenwald told The Post. “Then they said I should leave and get help.”

He said, “They had no reason to believe that my mental health was in question, unless to have a different opinion makes one insane.”

Students told him that professors openly discussed with students how he may be fired.

The leave has “absolutely zero to do with his Twitter account or his opinions on issues of the day,” said NYU spokesman Matt Nagel.

But Rectenwald is disheartened.

“I’m afraid my academic career is over,” he said Rectenwald. “Academic freedom: It’s great, as long as you don’t use it.”

Edited November 10, 2016 by Over 9000

[Daecon]

For someone to be anti-"political correctness" usually says a lot more about the type of person they are, than it does about the shortcomings of "political correctness" itself.

[Ophiolite]

For someone to be anti-"political correctness" usually says a lot more about the type of person they are, than it does about the shortcomings of "political correctness" itself.

In my case I guess it says:

• I agree with Voltaire who said (in translation), I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.
• I abhor the expectation that I must acknowledge and respect your culture and outlook, but you need not not do the same for mine.
• I object to the rule of the masses. (Never confuse that with democracy.)
• I genuinely resent being lambasted as a sexist when I hold the door open for a militant feminist, not because she is a militant feminist, but because she is someone who would benefit from having a door held open for her.
• Etc.

Over 9000 is probably an asshole. That does not mean some of his data and some of his points are incorrect.

[Sirona]

In my case I guess it says:

• I agree with Voltaire who said (in translation), I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.
• I abhor the expectation that I must acknowledge and respect your culture and outlook, but you need not not do the same for mine.
• I object to the rule of the masses. (Never confuse that with democracy.)
• I genuinely resent being lambasted as a sexist when I hold the door open for a militant feminist, not because she is a militant feminist, but because she is someone who would benefit from having a door held open for her.
• Etc.

Over 9000 is probably an asshole. That does not mean some of his data and some of his points are incorrect.

I have an enormous amount of respect for you because from what I have observed, it is more important for you to speak your mind than to be accepted and at the risk of becoming unpopular. I can understand the fear of being ostracised from a group where you feel comfortable, however, I don't believe it should override one's ability to be sincere. I'm not innocent of it myself, but I recognise the importance of conflicting perspectives to learning and understanding. People get offended too easily and this is a fundamental flaw of mine too and perhaps this is partially influenced by increasing political correctness (I do not actually know, I am merely speculating). However, I do believe that militant political correctness inhibits one's freedom to a certain degree and encourages a culture of holding back our true opinions in fear of being cast out socially or made to feel ignorant and/or insensitive. I do believe personal inference is needed because there are times that speaking your mind can be factless and rude. There certainly is a medium ground.

[StringJunky]

I have an enormous amount of respect for you because from what I have observed, it is more important for you to speak your mind than to be accepted and at the risk of becoming unpopular

Only if people listen, otherwise you would be pissing into the wind.

[Ophiolite]

Only if people listen, otherwise you would be pissing into the wind.

If you have to piss, you have to piss. It's up to others whether they take it or not.

[StringJunky]

If you have to piss, you have to piss. It's up to others whether they take it or not.

If the mods deem to allow it. It is not a democracy. Sometimes dictatorships are good when run by the right people. Benevolent dictatorships are the way to go on a forum.

Edited November 11, 2016 by StringJunky

[Ophiolite]

If the mods deem to allow it. It is not a democracy. Sometimes dictatorships are good when run by the right people. Benevolent dictatorships are the way to go on a forum.

I was once a mod on this forum, but became inactive. I am currently an active mod on one other forum and an inactive mod on two others. I was admin on a further forum in the past, though I see it has gone dark recently.

 

The problem I have with your noble suggestion (no sarcasm intended) is that benevolence is difficult to find and even more difficult to maintain. One cause of the problem in the US at present is that neither side takes sufficient time to lack past the surface rhetoric of the other. It is all to easy to fall into a reaction, rather than a well considered dialogue.I believe we benefit from hearing and facing unpopular views, for those same views are popular in some quarters.

[CharonY]

In my case I guess it says:

• I agree with Voltaire who said (in translation), I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.
• I abhor the expectation that I must acknowledge and respect your culture and outlook, but you need not not do the same for mine.
• I object to the rule of the masses. (Never confuse that with democracy.)
• I genuinely resent being lambasted as a sexist when I hold the door open for a militant feminist, not because she is a militant feminist, but because she is someone who would benefit from having a door held open for her.
• Etc.

Over 9000 is probably an asshole. That does not mean some of his data and some of his points are incorrect.

 

I would agree with almost all of your points but the last. The mere presenting of data is never wrong, but the way you contextualize it. It is precisely by pushing an agenda that it creates sides that shout at each other rather than trying to make sense of the data. By deflecting attempts to discuss the complexity of the issue it becomes impossible to form a discussion which inevitably results in some PC or anti-PC nonsense shouting match.

 

For example, one could easily ask a) what is the evidence for the black IQ gap (such as which populations have been analyzed) b) what are the contributing factors c) what is the uncertainty of the data, especially for complex traits. And anyone who has read even a little on the topic can point to a dozen issues ranging from what we measure, to the lack of a mechanism. Yet equipped with the certainty of the ignorant some just take factoids and have generated the perfect model how muscle fibers and hormonal levels (not to mention melanin) lead to stupidity and violence and hence crime rate.

Conveniently ignoring the complexity of the issue or the simple fact that the biggest predictor for violent crime is being male. If we applied the same level of extrapolation we should all pushing for complete female rule or something silly like that.

Yes, contrarian views are important, sometimes even for as a sanity check. However, there is a difference between challenging assumptions and trying to replace reality with a complete mock-up. No one would argue that any assumptions based on violation of the laws of thermodynamics are not worth exploring too much. But just because in other sciences there are larger gaps of understanding, we cannot just summarily dismiss what is known nor can we dismiss the shape of uncertainty and replace it with gut feeling.

 

Here is the thing: whenever we discuss science, we should always approach it with the willingness to learn something new, regardless what your original position is. And for that it is important to contextualize findings (on complex issues), otherwise we just shout at each other because we create caricatures of reality which no side can accept. And if our agenda is so strong that we are willing to build up small scientific factoids as the new reality then we simply have not a sturdy groud to found a solid discussion on. And if we go down that route, I am going to declare all day that storks deliver babies all day long by providing charts to show the undeniable correlation between storks and birth rates.

 

Now regarding unpopular views, As I mentioned, they are important. However, I think it is also important to mention that perceptions can be heavily distorted. For example, one can often hear the moan of PC-thought police claims. Yet in reality I have encountered far often acts of subtle or blatant racism and sexism but not a single time got yelled at by a "femnazi". That does not mean that extremes do not exist, in fact, they may be more common in a weird place like academia than elsewhere, but they are not the prevalent school of thought. The obnoxious ones are those that interestingly share pretty much the same traits (absolute certainty in their position, paired with ignorance) and if not for what they happen to believe in, they would make good bedfellows.

 

Now, getting back on topic, for each case where an academic is fired, one should carefully look into the overall reasons, not just the soundbites. The whole reason for tenure is that people can speak and teach their minds. And I know plenty of academics that have distinctly non-leftists views and go on their business without issue. As a matter of fact, if there is conflict brought open in academia, it is rarely because of a one-time thing someone said, but usually it has (as with all other human groups) more to do with the underlying dynamics.

I have never seen a situation where someone was shunned just because of their religious or political position. However, academia is also fiercely competitive and stupid in specific ways. Sometimes there feuds between people and usually than personal views are getting used as ammo to undermine someone's position. It is almost certain that firings in situations with non-TT people is mostly connected to either budget, or that someone has gotten into dispute with someone (usually faculty or admin).

It is no different from companies: you do not get fired there for your political views, you get fired because either you underperformed or the boss hates your guts. If you do a cock-up in the public it adds another issue. However, tenure usually also offers some protection from that.

 

To add another thing: much of this outrage can be prevented by not feeling to be entitled to something. You can't expect a respectful discourse if you are disrespectful and disruptive yourself. A recent example: a colleague of mine was approached by a few students who politely requested to be addressed either gender neutrally or at least different than one might expect. His answer was that he will try to accommodate their wishes but since it is counter-intuitive he may not always maintain it. He certainly means no disrespect by that however. Both side were reasonably happy without the need for a youtube/twitter war.

Edited November 11, 2016 by CharonY