To sit on this man’s couch.
Is the field of social psychology biased against political conservatives? There has been intense debate about this question since an informal poll of over 1,000 attendees at a social psychology meeting in 2011 revealed the group to be overwhelmingly liberal.
Formal surveys have produced similar results, showing the ratio of liberals to conservatives in the broader field of psychology is 14-to-1.
Since then, social psychologists have tried to figure out why this imbalance exists.
The primary explanation offered is that the field has an anticonservative bias. I have no doubt that this bias exists, but it’s not strong enough to push people who lean conservative out of the field at the rate they appear to be leaving.
I believe that a less prominent explanation is more compelling: learning about social psychology can make you more liberal. I know about this possibility because it is exactly what happened to me.
And if you read the rest of this article, you’ll notice that he completely believes he is right and everyone who disagree with him are wrong. He goes through a trifecta of of things he believes separate libertarians from liberals (progressives): Gun Control, Environmental Policy, and Treatment for Addiction.
After brushing the surface of these topics, he concludes that only government can make up for human nature, and that if you’re going to have a little government, you may as well have all of it.
I can easily picture him getting into an argument during a session over political topics.
Or, it could just be that soft sciences like sociology attract a breed of folks who don’t particularly care to accomplish anything, and aren’t smart enough to go for a hard science degree, like physics, biology, chemistry, geology…..
That certainly appeared to be the case when I went to college. Whenever I needed to pick up a “humanities” credit or two for an elective, it was pretty easy to head down to the sociology department for an easy “A.” Meanwhile, the psych and soc students were struggling to pass their 100 level science classes.
Dunno. Maybe it’s the regular and heavy doses of heavily leftist theory pushed by the profs, where if you don’t toe the line you fail, so it acts as a heavy filter for program graduates.
Believe some people are fundamentally evil? You fail. Agree that everyone (with enough analysis, fees extracted, therapy session, and medication) can be made to think “correctly” and you pass.
Nah, I don’t see any way that might filter the sorts of people that graduate from the program.