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With all due respect, the manner of your inferences about our political beliefs is deeply flawed. Just as one does not need to be a woman to be concerned about

With all due respect, the manner of your inferences about our political beliefs is deeply flawed. Just as one does not need to be a woman to be concerned about sexism, or African-American to be concerned about racism, or LGBT to be concerned about homophobia, or Muslim to care about Islamophobia, one does not need to be a conservative to be concerned about leftist biases distorting social science. Psychologists are massively, overwhelmingly, leftwing in their views. I am most certainly NOT conservative. My best guess is that there were ZERO conservatives in this group. For data on the near complete absence of conservatives in psychology, see Duarte et al, 2015, Behavioral and Brain Sciences. The day that only people on the right care about free speech or unbiased science is the day that we are all really and truly doomed. Sincerely, Lee Jussim

comex 9y ago
Hmm. This is a somewhat tricky situation. I did not expect my comment to be read by the people it mentioned. I feel bad if I misrepresented you, but I am not sure I really did. I admit the source I had for you was weaker than the others - but then, if I now investigate further, what I see tends to confirm that your beliefs, at least on the topic of diversity in general, fall into a broad category I'd associate with right-wing thinkers. First of all, it's not just that you're concerned about left-wing bias; it's something you spend quite a lot of your time on. Looking at your blog on Psychology Today[1], just about every article is complaining about liberal bias or liberal beliefs. You're not afraid to use charged language like "creeping tyranny of the left" or "mirror-image McCarthyism". This is a bit random, but here's a quote I found especially surprising from one of your articles: > So whose level of trust in science is more well-justified? My answer: Conservatives. Deep skepticism and even mistrust in science and its conclusions are entirely well-justified. If science reveals some "truth," then it should show up again and again and again and again, so that, at some point, it becomes (to paraphrase the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould) perverse to believe otherwise. Until that time, however, it is not at all perverse to believe otherwise. [2] When it comes to conservative mistrust of science, I'd say there's an elephant in the room, namely climate change. That is, of course, the biggest issue where belief in science has become politicized. And when it comes to the existence of anthropogenic climate change, it became "perverse to believe otherwise" quite a while ago, yet in the United States conservatives still do; in fact, increasingly so[3]. It seems absurd not to mention that (which the article does not, at any point). But going back to the question of diversity... There is some risk of circular reasoning here: I claimed your opinion should be taken somewhat more lightly because you were biased; now I'm claiming that you're biased because you have a different opinion from me. However, I think the following is meaningful to the extent that it ties your opinions on the memo to a broader pattern. One of the entries in your recommended reading list from the 'Four Scientists' article is a WSJ article you co-wrote with Jonathan Haidt[4]. Broadly speaking, the article is an appeal to colleges to not do any of the things liberals want them to do to address social inequality: not just affirmative action, which is pretty much the same issue as in the Google memo, but also such measures as diversity training and microaggression training. While the article cites several different studies at various points, most of the stronger claims are not supported by such citations. In particular: Regarding diversity interventions, your article states: > The evaluations that have been done are not encouraging. A major 2007 review of diversity training in corporations concluded that “on average, programs designed to reduce bias among managers responsible for hiring and promotion have not worked.” A review of diversity interventions published in 2014 in the journal Science noted that these programs “often induce ironic negative effects (such as reactance or backlash) by implying that participants are at fault for current diversity challenges. But the 2014 review states that "there is promising evidence that several interventions raise participants' awareness of diversity issues and reduce explicit and implicit biases." It does criticize the use of non-evidence-based diversity interventions, but its overall message seems quite counter to your article's suggestion that diversity training is overall useless or harmful. (The 2007 review is less so, but it does mention that certain types of training can have positive effects.) Your article goes on to criticize microaggression training, stating that "microaggression training is likely to backfire and increase racial tensions" and "activates an oppressor-victim narrative", and that "the threshold for what counts as an offense falls ever lower". But it cites no studies for these claims, and spends zero words on the potential benefits of such training, i.e. avoiding the harms caused by microaggressions themselves. It is hard not to see bias in a piece that concludes the harms outweigh the benefits without even examining the latter. The article also defines microaggressions in a rather unfair manner: "The idea covers everything from asking someone where they are from to questioning the merits of affirmative action during a classroom discussion." Of course, "questioning the merits of affirmative action" is not a core example of a microaggression (which is not to say nobody has ever claimed it to be one, but still). "Asking someone where they are from" arguably is, but only because of the tendency for people of certain ethnicities to be inundated with such questions, even if they were in fact born in the United States (I'm assuming a U.S. context); this creates the feeling that they're not perceived as real Americans. While I'd argue it's actually an important type of microaggression, it's much less obviously sympathetic, from a short description, than other commonly cited types, and I suspect it was chosen for that reason. Actually, I wasn't surprised to read something along those lines. When I first read your Quilette article, where Jonathan Haidt shows up as well (as the author of one of the books you recommend), the name jumped out at me. I'd heard of him as a coauthor of "The Coddling of the American Mind"[5], a well-known article I find quite infuriating for, among other things, purporting to diagnose liberals with (effectively) a psychological condition, pooh-poohing PTSD, and, more relevantly, taking an extremely one-sided view of microaggressions. I don't know if he was also the driving force behind the section of the WSJ article about microaggressions, but you put your name on it in any case. Meh... I could go on, but I'm not sure I'm making a useful argument to anyone other than myself. After all, it's unlikely that anyone will read this other than perhaps you, Lee Jussim, and I hardly expect to convince you that you're biased! But maybe you can at least see where I'm coming from. FWIW, I care a lot about free speech, and I'm troubled by the scarcity of people who vigorously defend conservatives' ability to express their views without actually agreeing with those views. I kinda wish I could consider you one of them, but I don't think I can; regardless of what you consider yourself, from my perspective you seem pretty far to the right on social issues. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser?page=2 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser?page=2 [2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201304/conservatives-distrust-science-are-they-right-do-so https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201304/co... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/republican-leaders-climate-change.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/republican-le... [4] http://www.businessforum.com/WSJ_Race-on-Campus-05-06-2016.pdf http://www.businessforum.com/WSJ_Race-on-Campus-05-06-2016.p... [5] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...
- js8 9y ago
  Just FYI, Jonathan Haidt is not very conservative (if at all) either. Nor is Steven Pinker, who holds quite similar views. BTW, I am left liberal (although not American) and I agree with Pinker, Haidt and Jussim (in fact I very much enjoyed his articles on the topic that are quoted in the OP). I think many liberals in the U.S. should accept the fact that yes, men and women have different job preferences (regardless whether this is due to culture or nature, I think it's a mix of both), and there is nothing wrong with that. What is really important is that people, who really want to work in some field, can. And personally, I am not sure how many people who opposed The Google Memo I can actually consider to be leftists. To be on the left means to care first and foremost about underprivileged people, and almost no Google employee simply fits that category (maybe a cleaning lady or a security guard, but I am pretty sure they are outsourced).
- alphapapa 9y ago
  Your criticism of Jussim is rooted in the claim that he is biased; and in so doing, you implicitly claim that you are unbiased. This is necessary, otherwise how would you be qualified to criticize him for being biased? So then: are you unbiased? Obviously you are not, for you are obviously biased against conservative/right views. Therefore, how are you qualified to criticize him for being biased? Your criticism rings hollow. Then, despite the inherent self-contradiction of your reasoning, you exhibit a moment of insight: > There is some risk of circular reasoning here: I claimed your opinion should be taken somewhat more lightly because you were biased; now I'm claiming that you're biased because you have a different opinion from me. This should have been the end of your comment. The next line should have been, "This is obviously irrational, and therefore my criticism of you is as well. Therefore, I will now stop and reevaluate my position from first principles." But instead, you doubled-down, following the pattern of those who got the man fired, essentially confirming his argument.
  - comex 9y ago
    > Your criticism of Jussim is rooted in the claim that he is biased; and in so doing, you implicitly claim that you are unbiased. This is necessary, otherwise how would you be qualified to criticize him for being biased? I don't think anyone is truly unbiased, although some people are more biased than others. I did not mean to claim that I was less biased than Jussim. I was actually trying to make a much simpler point. An article titled "Four Scientists Respond", addressing a topic that is not itself part of academia, suggests at least a possibility that the responses are representative of most scientists' views (more precisely, the views of most scientists with relevant experience). When three of the four responses are largely in agreement with each other, one might imagine that their position is the consensus of scientists, and thus arguably of science itself, with its associated cachet and authority. Indeed, if the scientists had somehow been chosen randomly, it would be quite significant that there was such a level of agreement. But they were not. Indeed, the question of what it means to be "conservative" is to some extent a distraction. I could have said it much more simply: The three scientists in question (those other than Schmitt) have all written columns in the past criticizing liberal orthodoxy as stifling. Among scientists with relevant experience, even those that write opinion pieces, I'd assume most have not written about that specific subject. Therefore, those three are very likely to be an unrepresentative sample. Please note that I'm not claiming Quilette did anything wrong. They said four scientists, and they quoted four scientists. Those individual opinions do come with more inherent authority than a random Joe's, due to their authors' having some understanding of the relevant research in connection with their work; it is just that they fall short of actually representing science. Besides, a frequent reader of Quilette would be aware of their bias as an outlet, and wouldn't expect a representative sample in the first place. (I hope it is not controversial that Quilette has a bias; to be clear, this is not inherently bad.) It is not their fault that they were linked to out of context on HN. But by the same token it is appropriate to point out that context. Anyway, I could have left it at 'criticized, therefore unrepresentative' in my followup comment, but by then I had claimed that Jussim (along with the others) was conservative and been called out on it; while I felt bad about the possibility of having made a false accusation, I also wanted to defend my point, after investigating further and deciding it hadn't been false. > This should have been the end of your comment. The next line should have been, "This is obviously irrational, and therefore my criticism of you is as well. Therefore, I will now stop and reevaluate my position from first principles." > But instead, you doubled-down, following the pattern of those who got the man fired, essentially confirming his argument. I was attempting to be upfront about the potential weaknesses of my argument, something which I believe helps advance rational discourse. From your tone in these paragraphs, I am not sure you have the same humility.

comex 9y ago

Hmm. This is a somewhat tricky situation. I did not expect my comment to be read by the people it mentioned. I feel bad if I misrepresented you, but I am not sure I really did. I admit the source I had for you was weaker than the others - but then, if I now investigate further, what I see tends to confirm that your beliefs, at least on the topic of diversity in general, fall into a broad category I'd associate with right-wing thinkers. First of all, it's not just that you're concerned about left-wing bias; it's something you spend quite a lot of your time on. Looking at your blog on Psychology Today[1], just about every article is complaining about liberal bias or liberal beliefs. You're not afraid to use charged language like "creeping tyranny of the left" or "mirror-image McCarthyism". This is a bit random, but here's a quote I found especially surprising from one of your articles: > So whose level of trust in science is more well-justified? My answer: Conservatives. Deep skepticism and even mistrust in science and its conclusions are entirely well-justified. If science reveals some "truth," then it should show up again and again and again and again, so that, at some point, it becomes (to paraphrase the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould) perverse to believe otherwise. Until that time, however, it is not at all perverse to believe otherwise. [2] When it comes to conservative mistrust of science, I'd say there's an elephant in the room, namely climate change. That is, of course, the biggest issue where belief in science has become politicized. And when it comes to the existence of anthropogenic climate change, it became "perverse to believe otherwise" quite a while ago, yet in the United States conservatives still do; in fact, increasingly so[3]. It seems absurd not to mention that (which the article does not, at any point). But going back to the question of diversity... There is some risk of circular reasoning here: I claimed your opinion should be taken somewhat more lightly because you were biased; now I'm claiming that you're biased because you have a different opinion from me. However, I think the following is meaningful to the extent that it ties your opinions on the memo to a broader pattern. One of the entries in your recommended reading list from the 'Four Scientists' article is a WSJ article you co-wrote with Jonathan Haidt[4]. Broadly speaking, the article is an appeal to colleges to not do any of the things liberals want them to do to address social inequality: not just affirmative action, which is pretty much the same issue as in the Google memo, but also such measures as diversity training and microaggression training. While the article cites several different studies at various points, most of the stronger claims are not supported by such citations. In particular: Regarding diversity interventions, your article states: > The evaluations that have been done are not encouraging. A major 2007 review of diversity training in corporations concluded that “on average, programs designed to reduce bias among managers responsible for hiring and promotion have not worked.” A review of diversity interventions published in 2014 in the journal Science noted that these programs “often induce ironic negative effects (such as reactance or backlash) by implying that participants are at fault for current diversity challenges. But the 2014 review states that "there is promising evidence that several interventions raise participants' awareness of diversity issues and reduce explicit and implicit biases." It does criticize the use of non-evidence-based diversity interventions, but its overall message seems quite counter to your article's suggestion that diversity training is overall useless or harmful. (The 2007 review is less so, but it does mention that certain types of training can have positive effects.) Your article goes on to criticize microaggression training, stating that "microaggression training is likely to backfire and increase racial tensions" and "activates an oppressor-victim narrative", and that "the threshold for what counts as an offense falls ever lower". But it cites no studies for these claims, and spends zero words on the potential benefits of such training, i.e. avoiding the harms caused by microaggressions themselves. It is hard not to see bias in a piece that concludes the harms outweigh the benefits without even examining the latter. The article also defines microaggressions in a rather unfair manner: "The idea covers everything from asking someone where they are from to questioning the merits of affirmative action during a classroom discussion." Of course, "questioning the merits of affirmative action" is not a core example of a microaggression (which is not to say nobody has ever claimed it to be one, but still). "Asking someone where they are from" arguably is, but only because of the tendency for people of certain ethnicities to be inundated with such questions, even if they were in fact born in the United States (I'm assuming a U.S. context); this creates the feeling that they're not perceived as real Americans. While I'd argue it's actually an important type of microaggression, it's much less obviously sympathetic, from a short description, than other commonly cited types, and I suspect it was chosen for that reason. Actually, I wasn't surprised to read something along those lines. When I first read your Quilette article, where Jonathan Haidt shows up as well (as the author of one of the books you recommend), the name jumped out at me. I'd heard of him as a coauthor of "The Coddling of the American Mind"[5], a well-known article I find quite infuriating for, among other things, purporting to diagnose liberals with (effectively) a psychological condition, pooh-poohing PTSD, and, more relevantly, taking an extremely one-sided view of microaggressions. I don't know if he was also the driving force behind the section of the WSJ article about microaggressions, but you put your name on it in any case. Meh... I could go on, but I'm not sure I'm making a useful argument to anyone other than myself. After all, it's unlikely that anyone will read this other than perhaps you, Lee Jussim, and I hardly expect to convince you that you're biased! But maybe you can at least see where I'm coming from. FWIW, I care a lot about free speech, and I'm troubled by the scarcity of people who vigorously defend conservatives' ability to express their views without actually agreeing with those views. I kinda wish I could consider you one of them, but I don't think I can; regardless of what you consider yourself, from my perspective you seem pretty far to the right on social issues. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser?page=2 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser?page=2 [2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201304/conservatives-distrust-science-are-they-right-do-so https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201304/co... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/republican-leaders-climate-change.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/republican-le... [4] http://www.businessforum.com/WSJ_Race-on-Campus-05-06-2016.pdf http://www.businessforum.com/WSJ_Race-on-Campus-05-06-2016.p... [5] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...

js8 9y ago
Just FYI, Jonathan Haidt is not very conservative (if at all) either. Nor is Steven Pinker, who holds quite similar views. BTW, I am left liberal (although not American) and I agree with Pinker, Haidt and Jussim (in fact I very much enjoyed his articles on the topic that are quoted in the OP). I think many liberals in the U.S. should accept the fact that yes, men and women have different job preferences (regardless whether this is due to culture or nature, I think it's a mix of both), and there is nothing wrong with that. What is really important is that people, who really want to work in some field, can. And personally, I am not sure how many people who opposed The Google Memo I can actually consider to be leftists. To be on the left means to care first and foremost about underprivileged people, and almost no Google employee simply fits that category (maybe a cleaning lady or a security guard, but I am pretty sure they are outsourced).
alphapapa 9y ago
Your criticism of Jussim is rooted in the claim that he is biased; and in so doing, you implicitly claim that you are unbiased. This is necessary, otherwise how would you be qualified to criticize him for being biased? So then: are you unbiased? Obviously you are not, for you are obviously biased against conservative/right views. Therefore, how are you qualified to criticize him for being biased? Your criticism rings hollow. Then, despite the inherent self-contradiction of your reasoning, you exhibit a moment of insight: > There is some risk of circular reasoning here: I claimed your opinion should be taken somewhat more lightly because you were biased; now I'm claiming that you're biased because you have a different opinion from me. This should have been the end of your comment. The next line should have been, "This is obviously irrational, and therefore my criticism of you is as well. Therefore, I will now stop and reevaluate my position from first principles." But instead, you doubled-down, following the pattern of those who got the man fired, essentially confirming his argument.
- comex 9y ago
  > Your criticism of Jussim is rooted in the claim that he is biased; and in so doing, you implicitly claim that you are unbiased. This is necessary, otherwise how would you be qualified to criticize him for being biased? I don't think anyone is truly unbiased, although some people are more biased than others. I did not mean to claim that I was less biased than Jussim. I was actually trying to make a much simpler point. An article titled "Four Scientists Respond", addressing a topic that is not itself part of academia, suggests at least a possibility that the responses are representative of most scientists' views (more precisely, the views of most scientists with relevant experience). When three of the four responses are largely in agreement with each other, one might imagine that their position is the consensus of scientists, and thus arguably of science itself, with its associated cachet and authority. Indeed, if the scientists had somehow been chosen randomly, it would be quite significant that there was such a level of agreement. But they were not. Indeed, the question of what it means to be "conservative" is to some extent a distraction. I could have said it much more simply: The three scientists in question (those other than Schmitt) have all written columns in the past criticizing liberal orthodoxy as stifling. Among scientists with relevant experience, even those that write opinion pieces, I'd assume most have not written about that specific subject. Therefore, those three are very likely to be an unrepresentative sample. Please note that I'm not claiming Quilette did anything wrong. They said four scientists, and they quoted four scientists. Those individual opinions do come with more inherent authority than a random Joe's, due to their authors' having some understanding of the relevant research in connection with their work; it is just that they fall short of actually representing science. Besides, a frequent reader of Quilette would be aware of their bias as an outlet, and wouldn't expect a representative sample in the first place. (I hope it is not controversial that Quilette has a bias; to be clear, this is not inherently bad.) It is not their fault that they were linked to out of context on HN. But by the same token it is appropriate to point out that context. Anyway, I could have left it at 'criticized, therefore unrepresentative' in my followup comment, but by then I had claimed that Jussim (along with the others) was conservative and been called out on it; while I felt bad about the possibility of having made a false accusation, I also wanted to defend my point, after investigating further and deciding it hadn't been false. > This should have been the end of your comment. The next line should have been, "This is obviously irrational, and therefore my criticism of you is as well. Therefore, I will now stop and reevaluate my position from first principles." > But instead, you doubled-down, following the pattern of those who got the man fired, essentially confirming his argument. I was attempting to be upfront about the potential weaknesses of my argument, something which I believe helps advance rational discourse. From your tone in these paragraphs, I am not sure you have the same humility.