title: Political diversity will improve social psychological science.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281. jlduarte@asu.eduhttp://joseduarte.com
authors.forename: José L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Duarte
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ 08628. crawford@tcnj.eduhttp://crawford.pages.tcnj.edu/
authors.forename: Jarret T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Crawford
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden. lotta.stern@sofi.su.sehttp://www2.sofi.su.se/~lst/
authors.forename: Charlotta
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Stern
authors.affiliation: Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, NY 10012. haidt@nyu.eduhttp://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/jonathan-haidt.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Haidt
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. jussim@rci.rutgers.eduwww.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/
authors.forename: Lee
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jussim
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. tetlock@wharton.upenn.edu http://www.sas.upenn.edu/tetlock/
authors.forename: Philip E
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Tetlock
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D011057:Politics; D011593:Psychology, Social
keywords: academic bias; academic diversity; confirmation bias; discrimination; open science; political psychology; social psychology