Science
Study Finds Bias in Social Psychology Community
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By SAM KITTERMAN
Prof. Stephen J. Ceci and Prof. Wendy M. Williams, human development, have responded to a paper in the most recent edition of Brain and Behavioral Sciences that suggests the ideological makeup of social psychologists has gone too far left. The paper — written by a team of five liberal-identified social psychologists including José L. Duarte, Arizona State University, psychology — reports that the proportion of self-described liberals to conservatives in psychology is currently around 12 to 1, up from the 4 to 1 ratio preceding the 1990s. The authors posit three manners in which this polarity may mar social psychology: the dispersion of faulty and demeaning views towards conservative individuals, the refusal to study topics that may run in the face of liberal ideologies of social progress and the implanting of ideology into theory. Ceci says he has encountered these roadblocks firsthand. “For quite some time there has been a censorious mood in the social science community,” Ceci said.