andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-604 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Will Wilkinson adds to the discussion of Jonathan Haidt’s remarks regarding the overwhelming prevalance of liberal or left-wing attitudes among psychology professors. I pretty much agree with Wilkinson’s overview: Folks who constantly agree with one another grow insular, self-congratulatory, and not a little lazy. The very possibility of disagreement starts to seem weird or crazy. When you’re trying to do science about human beings, this attitude’s not so great. Wilkinson also reviewed the work of John Jost in this area. Jost is a psychology researcher with the expected liberal/left political leanings, but his relevance here is that he has actually done research on political attitudes and personality types. In Wilkinson’s words: Jost has done plenty of great work that helps explain not only why the best minds in science are liberal, but why most scientists-most academics, even-are liberal. Individuals with the personality trait that most strongly predicts an inclinati
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1 Will Wilkinson adds to the discussion of Jonathan Haidt’s remarks regarding the overwhelming prevalance of liberal or left-wing attitudes among psychology professors. [sent-1, score-0.405]
2 Jost is a psychology researcher with the expected liberal/left political leanings, but his relevance here is that he has actually done research on political attitudes and personality types. [sent-6, score-1.089]
3 Individuals with the personality trait that most strongly predicts an inclination toward liberal politics also predict an attraction to academic careers. [sent-8, score-0.667]
4 That’s why, as Haidt well notes, it’s silly to expect the distribution of political opinion in academia to mirror the distribution of opinion in society at large. [sent-9, score-0.442]
5 one of the most interesting parts of Jost’s work shows how personality, which is largely hereditary, predicts political affinity. [sent-13, score-0.366]
6 Of the “Big Five” personality traits, “openness to experience” and “conscientiousness” stand out for their effects on political inclination. [sent-14, score-0.445]
7 We live in a liberal and liberalizing culture, so today’s conservatives, for example, are very liberal compared to conservatives of their grandparents’ generation. [sent-19, score-0.645]
8 University professors and military officers The cleanest analogy, I think, is between college professors (who are disproportionately liberal Democrats) and military officers (mostly conservative Republicans; see this research by Jason Dempsey ). [sent-21, score-1.251]
9 Universities have (with some notable exceptions) been centers of political radicalism for centuries, just as the military has long been a conservative institution in most places (again, with some exceptions). [sent-23, score-0.672]
10 military has been described as the one of the few remaining bastions of socialism remaining in the 21st century. [sent-26, score-0.468]
11 Politics and research in statistics and political science I don’t actually have any systematic data to add to the discussion, so, like Haidt, I’ll share my personal experiences. [sent-27, score-0.509]
12 I’ve done most of my research in two fields, statistics and political science. [sent-29, score-0.467]
13 The Bayes/non-Bayes fissure had a bit of a political dimension–with anti-Bayesians being the old-line conservatives (for example, Ronald Fisher) and Bayesians having a more of a left-wing flavor (for example, Dennis Lindley). [sent-35, score-0.469]
14 There was no left-right “politics” involved but the whole aspect felt very political to me, with people taking sides. [sent-43, score-0.276]
15 Oddly enough, my research in political science has not been particularly politically contested. [sent-46, score-0.528]
16 My collaborator Gary King once made the comment that nobody could tell our political attitudes by looking at our research. [sent-47, score-0.374]
17 This may be a good thing or maybe not–a lot of good research is politically committed and unavoidably so–it’s just how things seem to have worked out for me. [sent-48, score-0.246]
18 I never would’ve done the Red State Blue State research had I not cared deeply about politics, but I don’t see the results as having any political slant (beyond the generic U. [sent-49, score-0.532]
19 It probably is true, though, that the general political climate affects my work, at least in the sense of how I feel I need to defend it. [sent-53, score-0.276]
20 For example, if I were working and living in a left-wing environment, I’d probably have to apologize a lot more for my focus on public opinion and voting and my relative lack of attention to campaign funds, backroom deals, the personal interests of congressmembers, and so forth. [sent-54, score-0.328]
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