The Haidt article is excellent; thank you for recommending it. He owns the impulse to be intolerant and devaluing in his own (and everyone’s) political opinions and recognizes how greatly that has limited his understanding. Opinions, especially emotionally charged ones, are always subject to prejudice, confirmation bias, and cherry-picking of evidence. As professionals we are required to use discipline and relatively objective methods as ways to avoid these pratfalls of intellectual inquiry. We never succeed completely, but we get as close as we can. That is what the public expects of professionals. For instance, it is fine to cite studies that suggest that we should not infer competence from confidence or that certainty is a self-validating emotional state, and use them as a guide for assessing politicians and bloggers. It falls beneath the standards of the discipline to cite those general studies as a reason to mistrust the confidence of the politician you don’t like but not the confidence of the politician you like. Terms such as “psychopath, liar, phony, and ignorance” are devaluing and, at best, ad hominem attacks. Assuming that those who use such terms are not abusive, use of the terms is probably motivated by intolerance of differing opinions. A special responsibility comes in devaluing charismatic political or religious figures; devaluing them devalues everyone who supports them as somehow inferior in acumen, judgment, morality, or decency. It is akin to insulting your in-laws, which is bound to hurt the feelings of your spouse. Respectful disagreement is a necessary art in families and public discourse. Ironically (for those who use devaluing terms), they are more likely to antagonize than persuade. The ethical issue of concern involves the use of diagnostic terms to describe a candidate. Diagnosis is a difficult thing to do properly; it requires careful and objective examination and questioning, ideally supported by testing and interviews with family members and coworkers. Doing it publically, based on public persona, is, at best, irresponsible. (Having treated a number of well known politicians and celebrities for family issues, I can assure you they are very different from their public personae.) When Bill O’Reilly or Keith Olbermann says that a candidate is a psychopath or suffers from a personality disorder, the public puts the comment in the context of their perceived prejudice. When a psychologist says it, his/her prejudice is veiled by presumed expertise. Perhaps this analogy will be helpful. People are unlikely to be influenced by a political commentator’s assertion that a candidate looks ill and may not survive his/her term, because we can judge by our own eyes. But if a physician says it on a medical website (thankfully, they seem to be careful in their analyses), we are more likely to be influenced by the expertise supporting the observation and more vulnerable to be misled if the observation is born of prejudice, confirmation bias, and cherry-picking.