title: Political bias, explanatory depth, and narratives of progress.
abstract: Political bias has indeed been a distorter of psychology, not just in particular research areas but in an aversion to the explanatory depth available from politically fraught fields like evolution. I add two friendly amendments to the target article: (1) The leftist moral narrative may be based on zero-sum competition among identity groups rather than continuous progress; and (2) ideological bias should be dealt with not just via diversity of ideological factions but by minimizing the influence of ideology altogether.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology,Harvard University,Cambridge,MA 02138.pinker@wjh.harvard.eduhttp://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/about/
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pinker
mesh_terms: D015982:Bias; D033262:Narration; D011057:Politics