No less a figure than Steven Pinker, one of the world’s best known academics, has called it “one of the most important papers in the recent history of the social sciences”.  He is referring to a paper which deals with what amounts to the ideological capture of the social sciences by the political left, and the consequences of this.

The authors, who include another very prominent and well known academic, Jonathan Haidt, are all on the liberal side of the political spectrum themselves, but are both honest enough and objective enough to recognise and call out the fact that almost all social psychologists today are on the left and that this is causing problems.

The extent of the left-wing dominance of the social sciences is demonstrated by the fact that people working in this field who describe themselves as “liberal” outnumber those who call themselves “conservative” by more than 12 to one. This is a staggering ratio.

They show that over the decades this ratio has become worse and worse.

The abstract to their paper lists the consequences of this:

“ (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.”

They give specific examples of how this bias distorts research. One is the question of whether or not stereotypes exist. Liberals resist this question because they think belief in stereotypes increases prejudice.

However, subsequent research (begun by one of the few conservatives working in the field) found that some stereotypes are accurate (“e.g. the proportion of people who drop out of high school, are victims of crime, or endorse policies that support women at work”), and it has now been established that “stereotype accuracy (of all sorts of stereotypes) is one of the most robust effects in all of social psychology.”

If a conservative social scientist had not broken the taboo against studying whether stereotypes are accurate, would we have discovered this at all?

In a similar vein (not cited in the paper), Professor Robert Putnam, himself a liberal, found himself in trouble with his fellow social sciences when his research led him to the unpalatable conclusion that indigenous populations in areas with high numbers of migrants tended to become more withdrawn and isolated from their communities.

Following the controversy over his finding, Putnam said, “it would be unfortunate if a politically correct progressivism were to deny the reality of the challenge to social solidarity posed by diversity”.

Another example: when anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon challenged the notion that ancient tribal peoples still found in some parts of the world are peace-loving and were in fact often very violent, it sparked one of the bitterest rows in the history of anthropology.

Chagnon found himself ostracised. But although he is still controversial, plenty of evidence has come to light in the intervening period to back him up.

So we can see how dangerous an ideological bias in the social sciences can be; it stops the truth from coming out, or if not quite the truth, then the true complexity of a given issue.

If this new paper by Haidt et al can lead to better diversity in the field of social science they will have done a huge service to us all because so much public policy is influenced by the social sciences.

(PS Is it remotely possible that this left-wing bias exists in the field of research into the wellbeing of children raised by same-sex couples?)